The UN Gang: A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat [Hardcover]

Pedro Sanjuan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 13, 2005

On the day Pedro Sanjuan moved into his new office at the UN Secretariat in 1984, he had the foresight to unscrew his telephone receiver. Out fell a little packet of high-grade cocaine. When he confronted the undersecretary to the chief Soviet diplomat—really a KGB colonel and the top Russian spy—the agent laughed good-naturedly and congratulated him on passing the test.

That was the beginning of Sanjuan’s long, peculiar odyssey into the looking-glass world of the United Nations Secretariat.

Pedro Sanjuan had been appointed by then–Vice President George H. W. Bush to a high-ranking UN post. His real mission: to keep an eye on Soviet espionage activities. Over the years, the Russians had managed to install nearly four hundred KGB and GRU agents in strategic positions throughout the Secretariat, and had turned it into a massive spy facility, operating openly and with absolute impunity on American soil.

But this, it turned out, was the least of the problem. Sanjuan soon discovered that incompetence, corruption, anti-Semitism, and outright criminality were rife throughout the UN Secretariat. Among the shady activities that he personally observed or documented were rigged bidding for major service contracts; drug transactions conducted in the UN’s parking garage; sale of shotguns and beryllium directly out of the UN building; ties to global organized crime figures; use of UN Information Centers and other agencies to disseminate anti-US and pro-PLO propaganda; systematic theft and abuse of UN facilities and budgets in East Africa; graft and corruption in Vienna; widespread sexual harrassment; use of the UN employee’s lounge to plan anti-Israel and anti-US activities by Muslim delegates; open celebration of 9/11 by said delegates in the halls of the UN; and inexplicable tolerance of all of the above on the part of the secretary general and the US government.

Sanjuan’s cast of characters includes every secretary general from Kurt Waldheim to Kofi Annan, and a large number of bureaucratic rogues and scoundrels. Much of what he documents in The UN Gang is absurdly comical. But its seriousness should not be overlooked.

Ultimately, Sanjuan argues, the weakness and corruption of the UN is our own responsibility. During the Cold War, the superpowers conspired to render it a useless forum for international pronouncements and posturing. Now, however, it has become the focal point of global resistance to American interests and policies. Will we continue to host an unholy convention of anti-Semitic, America-hating hypocrites? Or will we take steps to reform this once-proud institution and make it serve the ends of peace, justice, and international order? Only time will tell.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The United Nations headquarters appears as a byzantine bureaucracy riddled with lazy staff, rampant sexual harassment, hectoring anti-Semitism and flagrant drug dealing in this contemptuous memoir. And worse: Sanjuan alleges that the U.N. library housed the largest KGB intelligence operation in America and hints darkly—with no apparent evidence—that the 9/11 attacks may have been plotted by Islamic jihadists at the U.N. Sanjuan served as policy planning director in the U.N. Secretariat, but his real job, he says, was to "spy" on the organization's inner workings for the Reagan and Bush administrations. It's hard to see how he accomplished either of these delicate assignments, given his bristling, bull-in-the-china-shop approach to the tasks. He loathes everyone at the U.N., from the "pusillanimous" former secretary-general Javier Pérez de Cuellar to the security guard he upbraids for not saying "please," and he delights in verbatim accounts of the long dressings-down he metes out to those who step on his toes. "I used a very strong expletive with reference to the Soviet undersecretary-general's mother" pretty much sums up his attitude toward diplomatic niceties. The author delivers a lively, preening, sometimes eye-opening insider's account, but his obvious polemical intent and the enormous chip on his shoulder overshadow his critique of the U.N.'s failings. (Sept. 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Like city hall, the UN employs only those with clout. Sanjuan's clout was then vice--president George H. W. Bush, who sponsored him in 1984 as an undersecretary-general; Sanjuan's real job was to spy on spies. Lest some object to such tawdry subversion of the UN, let them absorb his amusingly cynical account of his experiences in the Secretariat. Sanjuan found minds not occupied with world peace but rather with Jewish U.S. politicians; with denying Israel its quota of Secretariat slots; and with drug dealing in the diplomatically immune UN garage. "For me," Sanjuan writes, "it was the beginning of an anti-Semitic journey of ten years' duration." Besides the prejudice and its fellow traveler, inveighing against the iniquities of the U.S., Sanjuan found a bureaucratic wonderland of assistants and deputies whose first concern seemed to be keeping their jobs rather than brokering cease-fires. Who wants Ouagadougou when you've got Manhattan? However exaggerated its over-the-top effect, Sanjuan's memoir is being published amid enough scandalous news about the UN to lend it credence. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (September 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385513194
• ISBN-13: 978-0385513197
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,368,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very illuminating, September 13, 2005

By 

Jill Malter ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The UN Gang: A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat (Hardcover)

When I was much younger, I had a high regard for the United Nations. I liked their postage stamps. I thought that they did a good job with international tasks such as eliminating smallpox and at least a useful one with, say, Planned Parenthood.

Still, I had to notice that the UN was not very effective in times of conflict. Whether the conflicts were in Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, or Europe, the UN always seemed helpless at best. In 1974, when Arafat was applauded there, I began to have more serious doubts about how it was doing. And within a few years, the values of its postage stamps fell dramatically. For me, that was confirmation that the UN itself was of very low value. And since then, I've been in favor of getting rid of it. I think it is just too perverse to be of much help to the people of this planet. We could replace it by restricting ourselves to sets of bilateral agreements, or by creating ad hoc single-issue international organizations, issue by issue (to avoid building up too much esteem, which would permit their perversion). We could also have competing advice-giving organizations that could stand or fall on their own merits (poor ones would go out of business).

Well, just how bad is the UN? This book gives us an idea about the UN, and the Secretariat in particular. Incredibly, the Secretariat employs over 6000 people and costs over 2 billion dollars per year. And I may be biased, but I find it hard to believe that it serves any useful purpose at all.

Sanjuan describes the amount of Soviet influence and control in the Secretariat, which extended to, for example, the UN library. By the way, one of the few people the author has kind words for is the present US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton. Among other things, Bolton helped get the infamous UN resolution repealed that equated Zionism and racism.

The author describes some of the endemic anti-semitism at the UN. To me, it seems surreal. It is a little like hearing that the UN is against Martians, and that many people there suspect that quite a few of the people they meet are related to Martians, or are Martian-lovers, or are friends of Martians. And that there is a vast Martian conspiracy to run the United States or worse. In any case, these sorts of fantasies can't be productive. In addition, they have to be bad for real live Jews, even though such people rarely resemble the fantasy ones. And the assault on rationality, sanity, and truth has to be bad as well.

Sanjuan describes some of the ways that the UN wastes money. But I think that may be the least of its problems.

The book finishes with ten modest recommendations from the author. He's against UN Secretariat's nepotism, conflicts of interest, antisemitism, racism, moonlighting, contacts with local and international crime, corruption, espionage, and support for terrorism. And he thinks that members of the Secretariat that engage in them "ought to be relieved of their posts." That's nice, but I think the UN is unsalvageable. We humans do not need it, we can do better without it, and if we really need to, we can create a much better organization than the UN.

This book is very readable, and I highly recommend it.

29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Rebuke for the U.N., September 16, 2005

By 

4history - See all my reviews

This review is from: The UN Gang: A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat (Hardcover)

Sanjuan has laid bare the anti-Americanism, the incompetence and the tower of hypocrisy that has become the United Nations. Far from its original intent as an institution born out of the need to confront hatred and inhumanity, the UN now embodies those very evils. The Oil for Food scandal apparently is just the tip of the corruption iceberg. Thankfully Sanjuan's book is giving us the necessary specifics if any clean-up is going to take place.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In support of The UN Gang, January 12, 2006

By 

Sevile (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The UN Gang: A Memoir of Incompetence, Corruption, Espionage, Anti-Semitism and Islamic Extremism at the UN Secretariat (Hardcover)

I'd like to respond to some reviewer criticisms of The UN Gang.

Indeed, as noted in Publisher's Weekly, Sanjuan eludes to a possible connection between the 2001 World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings and intelligence gathering at the UN while giving no evidence to support this hypothesis. But should we scoff at this as the Publisher's Weekly reviewer does? Sanjuan demonstrates in his memoir that the UN's New York offices (off limit to U. S. law enforcement) were utilized as a huge intelligence gathering post for first the Soviet Union and afterward for Russia. He also shows a UN propensity toward coddling Islamists. Lastly he notes the importance intelligence played in targeting the buildings at their most vulnerable locations. Should we not be concerned about the possibility of the UN being a haven for hostile intelligence gathering and could this not have consequences for us in the future? If Sanjuan overstates the case for a 9/11 connection, he does it to call attention to an important and neglected security issue.

Another criticism worth addressing is Sanjuan's accusation of anti-Semitism regarding the transfer of the Chagall stained glass mural from the UN employee entrance. One thing that the critic above (A reader - New York City) does not address is that Sanjuan paraphrases the UN Secretary General as admonishing "that was not what the UN was about" after having the window moved from a prominent location in the employee entrance to a location in the visitor entrance. The implication is that the UN director felt the staff should not have to pass by a work of art by a Jewish artist. This is quite plausibly an instance of anti-Semitism.

Other claims in the book that seem worth noting have been neglected by reviewers. For example, there are accusations against the U. S. State Department. One accusation is the toleration of a massive Soviet spy ring at the UN by spies hiding behind diplomatic and territorial immunity. Another is long standing complaisance of the State Department to anti-Semetism extending from the 1960's to its present toleration of anti-Semitism at the UN. A third is the State Department's punishing and firing a member of the UN budget oversight committee (Linda Shenwick of the ACABQ) after she exposed unbridled corruption at the UN while testifying before congress.

As other reviewers have noted: the book isn't full of numbers and exhaustive research, it does not give a detailed plan for saving the UN, and the writing often embellishes events. But then it never claimed to be an academic treatise. It fulfills its claim to be a memoir of incompetence, corruption, anti-Semitism and Islamic extremism at the UN Secretariat.