Coleman is not pursuing a right-wing vendetta against the world organization. The senator was a born and bred liberal Democrat from Brooklyn before the claustrophobic liberalism of Minnesota's Democratic Farmer Labor Party compelled him to become a Republican in 1996 as the elected Democratic mayor of St. Paul. He had no anti-UN mindset when he embarked on his investigation.
What's more, Coleman has been joined in rare bipartisan cooperation by the subcommittee's fiercely liberal ranking Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan. Coleman sent Levin a draft of a tough letter to Annan, and Levin -- after making a few edits -- signed it. The bipartisan letter demanded access to UN internal audits and key UN personnel. It also accused the Volcker committee of "affirmatively preventing the subcommittee" from investigating the scandal. A major point of dispute is the UN's flat refusal to permit Lloyd's Register, hired by the UN to inspect Iraq's oil-for-food transactions, to provide any documents to the Senate.
The reaction by the UN bureaucracy has been an intransigent defense of its stone wall. Edward Mortimer, the secretary general's director of communications (and a British national), publicly sneered at the Coleman-Levin letter as "very awkward and troubling." Privately, Annan's aides told reporters that they were not about to hand over confidential documents to the Russian Duma and every other parliamentary body in the world.
But the U.S. Senate is not the Russian Duma. These are not just a few right-wing voices in the wilderness who are confronting Kofi Annan. "In seeing what is happening at the UN," Coleman told me, "I am more troubled today than ever. I see a sinkhole of corruption." The United Nations and its secretary general are in a world of trouble.