Top U.S. Official at Unesco Resigns Before Audit’s Release
New York Times 3/20/07
The official, Peter Smith, had served for 21 months as assistant director general for education at Unesco’s Paris headquarters. He said in a resignation letter dated March 12 that he was resigning because of a “threat against my life, the inadequate support and follow-up to that threat, and a negative climate in the workplace.”
Word of the resignation began to leak out late last week. Copies of the letter were widely circulated on Web sites, and a Unesco spokeswoman in New York confirmed that it was Mr. Smith’s resignation letter.
The letter says Mr. Smith plans to step down when his current contract ends on June 17. But last week, Unesco’s director general, Koichiro Matsuura, accepted his resignation, effective immediately, a Unesco spokeswoman in Paris said.
Mr. Smith, 61, a former president of California State University, Monterey Bay, who represented Vermont in the House of Representatives as a Republican in 1989 and 1990, has reportedly left France and could not be reached for comment.
The report was by Cour de Comptes, an independent French accounting body that supervises the French government’s accounts and is also Unesco’s external auditor. The audit was requested last fall by Unesco’s executive board after staff members complained about contracts worth $2.1 million that Mr. Smith granted to a Chicago-based firm, Navigant Consulting Inc.
The Cour de Comptes audit said the reasons for selecting Navigant “are not immediately apparent.” It noted that the “restricted bidding procedure” used “was conducted in a way that rendered it ineffective.” It said that “incomplete” information on the bidding procedure was provided to Unesco’s Contracts Committee. And it concluded that “the fees payable on the various contracts were not negotiated in any verifiable manner.”
The Unesco spokeswoman in Paris, Sue Williams, said Mr. Matsuura had agreed to carry out the 55-page report’s recommendations for tightening Unesco’s contract procedures. She said any further response to the report would come from the 58-nation executive board, which meets here next month. “At this point, no charges against Mr. Smith are envisaged,” she added.
The case nonetheless represents something of an embarrassment for the United States, which in late 2003 ended a 19-year boycott of Unesco amid pledges to accelerate reforms of the organization. At the time, with the Bush administration giving priority to Unesco’s work in education, it was considered logical for an American to lead its education department.
“It’s a blow to the United States because it always spoke of moralizing Unesco,” said one ambassador to the body who asked not to be identified because of his country’s close ties with the United States.
Unesco officials said that after Mr. Smith took up his post in June 2005, he embarked on a reorganization of the education department. But diplomats assigned to Unesco said they were surprised early last year when he called an informal meeting of Unesco ambassadors to discuss his plans. At the meeting, they said, the presentation was made not by Mr. Smith but by Letitia Chambers, the managing director of Navigant’s Washington office.
In his resignation letter, Mr. Smith made no direct reference to Ms. Chambers, but he noted that “the products developed by our staff with Navigant Consulting were essential elements of the overall effort” at reform.
Navigant did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Smith also acknowledged that “because of the pace, scope and visibility of the Ed Sector reform, questions have been raised about the use of derogations” of the rules for some of the contracts.
However, much of Mr. Smith’s letter was devoted to praising his department’s work and complaining about internal resistance to reforms.
“There is a small group who have worked steadily since the unveiling of the reform recommendations to kill the reforms by discrediting me, attacking you, and demonizing America,” he wrote. “I see the latter of these efforts as tactics to achieve the first: kill the reform.”
He also contended that Unesco responded inadequately to a death threat he said he received on Feb. 9. “After receiving the death threat, I can no longer tolerate the working environment of Unesco,” he wrote.
Ms. Williams, the Unesco spokeswoman in Paris, said the French police investigated the death threat and recommended to Mr. Smith that he not discuss it publicly. “But he was very upset and talked openly about it all the time,” she said.