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Oil-for-Food Scandal Brings Calls for Annan to Resign; Does Stress Really Cause Premature Aging?

Aired December 01, 2004 - 13:37   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Critics are calling it the worst fraud in the history of the United Nations. They're talking about allegations of corruption in Iraq's Oil-For-Food Program. U.N. chief Kofi Annan is under fire. He says he's disappointed in his son, Kojo, for staying on the payroll of a company with an oil-for-food contract. Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota heads the Senate investigation of the program. He's calling for Annan to resign.
Coleman appeared on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. NORM COLEMAN (R), MINNESOTA: We're not going to get to the bottom of this with any kind of credibility unless the guy that was in charge step back and then let us figure out what happened. And bottom line is what happened to the billions that are out there? And are those billions being used to fund an insurgency that's taking American and coalition lives today?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: "Forbes" magazine staff writer Michael Maiello has been covering the oil-for-food controversy. He joins us now live from New York.

Mike, good to see you.

MIKE MAIELLO, "FORBES" MAGAZINE: Thank you having me.

PHILLIPS: Well, when you first wrote your article, you exposed a lot of loopholes in the Oil-For-Food program. Just in a nutshell, to give our viewers an understanding of how the U.N., how it all started by the U.N. setting the prices for this oil as it began to, this program with Iraq.

MAIELLO: Right. Well, the program was not as simple, it seems, as the U.N. thought it would be. They wanted to encourage companies to buy Iraqi oil, because the oil proceeds were going to go to feed the people of Iraq. To encourage them, they set the prices through most of the program for Iraqi oil at below market rates. Of course this created an immediate opportunity for companies to profit by buying the oil, and then quickly trading it on the secondary market, trading it to other companies, trading it to other traders, sometimes individuals it seems.

In basically an unregulated market for this oil that was bought at a mandated discount...

PHILLIPS: Keyword, "unregulated." You had this trading then that wasn't monitored properly by the U.N. You didn't have enough inspectors there in Iraq and other places to monitor it. You had Saddam Hussein, who was picking the companies he wanted to deal with. OK, then comes companies companies like Cotecna, who were brought in, or it was brought in, to monitor the humanitarian aid. Here comes Kojo Annan. Now what happened with this dynamic?

MAIELLO: Well, Cotecna was a Swiss company that people would not know much about, that was contracted by the U.N. to monitor the humanitarian goods that were flowing into Iraq. It seems that Secretary-General Annan's son, Kojo, is working as a consultant for this company. They say he was working in West Africa, not in Iraq, and that he stopped working for them in 1999. This came out a while ago. This was revealed maybe about a year ago at this point, but their immediate thing was to say that Kojo had stopped working there back in '99 and there was no real problem.

Now it turns out that Kojo had a noncompete agreement with the company so the company was paying him a salary not to get into the same industry until -- up until the end of the program so...

PHILLIPS: Why would Cotecna want Kojo?

MAIELLO: Well, I mean, I guess one could speculate that if you wanted to get U.N. contracts it would be nice to have a connection with the secretary-general. I mean, that would be the most cynical explanation one could come up with. And there's an appearance problem here. I think that -- you know, whether or not that is true, whether or not that's why they hired him, that's what it looks like. And credibility was the main issue with this entire -- with the entire Oil-For-Food Program, it was one of the most important things to have. And it astounds me that the U.N. would have allowed this to go on and allow this to become an issue that basically has brought the entire institution up for question now.

PHILLIPS: And now of course you're working on another big report for "Forbes" magazine. And all of these requests from various political leaders, saying, Kofi Annan should resign. What are you hearing? And do you think that's fair? What do the people say that you're interviewing now and talking about this relationship and his job basically being at stake?

MAIELLO: Well, Mr. Annan's job is, indeed, at stake. Norm Coleman, who is running the Senate investigation, of course, has been spearheading -- just had a column in "The Wall Street Journal" today, calling for Mr. Annan's resignation. He does make one good point, which is how can we trust the U.N.'s internal investigation into this while Mr. Annan is still in charge?

It seems that -- if only for appearance's sake, Mr. Annan has to go. I think that that's right. I don't hear a lot of sympathy for Mr. Annan from anyone I'm talking to. And it's hard to have sympathy for him at this point, too because you have to remember, the Oil-For- Food Program was vitally important. It is the program that kept the peace for six years. It's the reason we weren't back at war in Iraq earlier than we wound up going. Had the program worked...

PHILLIPS: Is it scary to you that the U.N.'s reputation is at stake now?

MAIELLO: It is, to me, because I happen to believe that having a vibrant global political body is important, especially in a world where money flows so quickly, commodities flow so quickly, and people move so quickly from place to place. We have to have a global institution that we can trust. And I think this is just hurtful for the world political scene, in general.

I don't think it's good going forward. I think -- there are a lot of people in America who have always been skeptical of the United Nations. I think that even if some of these allegations are overblown, the fact that the appearances are there has given ammunition to the U.N.'s critics. And I think for people like me who really believe in having a vibrant, global body like this that it's very disappointing...

PHILLIPS: Michael Maiello...

MAIELLO: ... just get so easily attacked.

PHILLIPS: Point well made, Michael Maiello, looking for your next story in "Forbes" magazine. Thank you.

MAIELLO: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Fred.

WHITFIELD: Ladies, we all know stress is not good for you, but did you know it just might be aging you? Elizabeth Cohen will be joining us with more on that traumatic bit of information when LIVE FROM continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: A startling revelation out of the Netherlands. A hospital says it is and has been carrying out mercy killings on terminally ill newborns. The revelation came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether doctors can euthanize terminally ill people with no free will. That would include children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in irreversible coma after an accident. Right now, doctors can perform these procedures at the request of sick adult patients. The Netherlands was the first country to legalize euthanasia. The hospital is expected to release more details on this Monday.

WHITFIELD: Health news now. Do you find yourself constantly stressed out? You know it can send your heart racing and blood pumping. But did you know it can also make you age quicker, perhaps add a few more gray hairs on your head? CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here with some of these details.

Kind of no surprise, but now there's scientific proof? ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, exactly. There is scientific proof for what people say all the time, you certainly hear people say after they've been through a stressful event, man, I just feel like I aged 10 years in 10 minutes. And in fact there may be some proof that stress can age you prematurely.

What researchers at the University of California-San Francisco did was they looked at two groups of mothers. One group had a child who was chronically ill. The other moms had children who were healthy. So the moms of the chronically ill were under more stress. And then they looked at their immune cells. They looked right on a cellular level. And what they found is that the moms who were under more stress, when you looked at those cells, they showed 10 years premature aging of those cells. The women who were under lower stress had no premature aging.

Now this doesn't just apply to women. For example, all you have to do is take a look at this man to see that he aged under stress. President Bush, before -- the beginning of his term, and there's a recent picture. Also, Bill Clinton, this is not party politics here, happens to Democrats, too, the beginning of his term and then at the end of two term, you can see that he aged.

Stress really does do something to you. And they think, Fred, that it has to do with hormones, stress affects your hormones and hormones can affect a cell, the biology of a single cell.

WHITFIELD: And also wouldn't not getting enough sleep, not eating properly, all of that stuff, which is usually associated with stress as well, certainly play a role?

COHEN: Right, that does play a role. And what that gets into is what you can do about this. It's one thing to say, you know, gee, these women had chronically ill children, of course they're going to be under stress, there's nothing they can do about it. And that is true to some extent.

However, how we handle stress, for example, Fred mentioned how much sleep we get, how we -- do we get counseling, do we try to deal with it, that is important because what they found in this research is that the women who perceived that they were under a lot of stress also had the premature aging. It wasn't just the actual stress, it was how they perceived it.

WHITFIELD: And speaking still of women and hormones, testosterone patch, what's new with that?

COHEN: What's new with that is that an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration is taking a look at whether or not to recommend the approval for a testosterone patch for women. Now it may seem strange, giving testosterone to women, but women do have relatively small amounts of testosterone, relatively small compared to men, and may need that testosterone for their sex drives.

So researchers have developed a -- or a pharmaceutical company has developed a testosterone patch for women to help women with low testosterone. Now one of the things that's important to remember here is that this won't help women who have sex drive problems for other reasons. For example, let's say their sex drive problems are rooted in emotional issues. A patch is not going to...

WHITFIELD: Or they're stressed out.

COHEN: Or they're just stressed out, right, having a testosterone patch is not going to help women who are just stressed out.

WHITFIELD: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

COHEN: Thanks.

WHITFIELD: Well, patrolling the mean streets. Some call them the guardian geishas. Others, the kimono squad. A trio of tough chicks are on the job in Japan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Well, New York has the Guardian Angels. Well, not to be outdone, Tokyo has what you might call guardian geishas. These kimono-clad crimebusters wear green sashes that say, "protect our town, because it's our town that we love."

PHILLIPS: The team, which makes monthly rounds is composed of Tokyo's so-called mama-sans, female bar owners who say their fighting the rising incidents of pickpocketing and muggings in the Ginka (ph) district. They're accompanied by male cops when they hit the streets in a show of support, I guess. In a stylish kind of way.

WHITFIELD; That's right, you know, they're tough women, we know that.

PHILLIPS: I like it.

I guess this is some of the weirdest news that maybe we've heard in a while. The city council in Provo, Utah, is about to change a local ordinance after getting called on the carpet by animal lovers. Well, the fur started flying after a family wasn't allowed to adopt a kitten at an animal shelter, because they already had a cat and dog. Under Provo law, residents may only have cats or dogs. The law will reportedly be scratched off the books.

WHITFIELD: It's one or the other?

PHILLIPS: It's not fair.

WHITFIELD: No.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

WHITFIELD: Coming up in our second hour of LIVE FROM...

PHILLIPS: Have you been tricked into handing over credit card and band account data online? Well, it's one of the fastest-growing scams out there. We didn't do it, huh, Fred?

WHITFIELD: No.

PHILLIPS: Find out how to protect yourself from phishing. Daniel Sieberg's privacy series continues. LIVE FROM's hour of power right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired December 1, 2004 - 13:37   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Critics are calling it the worst fraud in the history of the United Nations. They're talking about allegations of corruption in Iraq's Oil-For-Food Program. U.N. chief Kofi Annan is under fire. He says he's disappointed in his son, Kojo, for staying on the payroll of a company with an oil-for-food contract. Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota heads the Senate investigation of the program. He's calling for Annan to resign.
Coleman appeared on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. NORM COLEMAN (R), MINNESOTA: We're not going to get to the bottom of this with any kind of credibility unless the guy that was in charge step back and then let us figure out what happened. And bottom line is what happened to the billions that are out there? And are those billions being used to fund an insurgency that's taking American and coalition lives today?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: "Forbes" magazine staff writer Michael Maiello has been covering the oil-for-food controversy. He joins us now live from New York.

Mike, good to see you.

MIKE MAIELLO, "FORBES" MAGAZINE: Thank you having me.

PHILLIPS: Well, when you first wrote your article, you exposed a lot of loopholes in the Oil-For-Food program. Just in a nutshell, to give our viewers an understanding of how the U.N., how it all started by the U.N. setting the prices for this oil as it began to, this program with Iraq.

MAIELLO: Right. Well, the program was not as simple, it seems, as the U.N. thought it would be. They wanted to encourage companies to buy Iraqi oil, because the oil proceeds were going to go to feed the people of Iraq. To encourage them, they set the prices through most of the program for Iraqi oil at below market rates. Of course this created an immediate opportunity for companies to profit by buying the oil, and then quickly trading it on the secondary market, trading it to other companies, trading it to other traders, sometimes individuals it seems.

In basically an unregulated market for this oil that was bought at a mandated discount...

PHILLIPS: Keyword, "unregulated." You had this trading then that wasn't monitored properly by the U.N. You didn't have enough inspectors there in Iraq and other places to monitor it. You had Saddam Hussein, who was picking the companies he wanted to deal with. OK, then comes companies companies like Cotecna, who were brought in, or it was brought in, to monitor the humanitarian aid. Here comes Kojo Annan. Now what happened with this dynamic?

MAIELLO: Well, Cotecna was a Swiss company that people would not know much about, that was contracted by the U.N. to monitor the humanitarian goods that were flowing into Iraq. It seems that Secretary-General Annan's son, Kojo, is working as a consultant for this company. They say he was working in West Africa, not in Iraq, and that he stopped working for them in 1999. This came out a while ago. This was revealed maybe about a year ago at this point, but their immediate thing was to say that Kojo had stopped working there back in '99 and there was no real problem.

Now it turns out that Kojo had a noncompete agreement with the company so the company was paying him a salary not to get into the same industry until -- up until the end of the program so...

PHILLIPS: Why would Cotecna want Kojo?

MAIELLO: Well, I mean, I guess one could speculate that if you wanted to get U.N. contracts it would be nice to have a connection with the secretary-general. I mean, that would be the most cynical explanation one could come up with. And there's an appearance problem here. I think that -- you know, whether or not that is true, whether or not that's why they hired him, that's what it looks like. And credibility was the main issue with this entire -- with the entire Oil-For-Food Program, it was one of the most important things to have. And it astounds me that the U.N. would have allowed this to go on and allow this to become an issue that basically has brought the entire institution up for question now.

PHILLIPS: And now of course you're working on another big report for "Forbes" magazine. And all of these requests from various political leaders, saying, Kofi Annan should resign. What are you hearing? And do you think that's fair? What do the people say that you're interviewing now and talking about this relationship and his job basically being at stake?

MAIELLO: Well, Mr. Annan's job is, indeed, at stake. Norm Coleman, who is running the Senate investigation, of course, has been spearheading -- just had a column in "The Wall Street Journal" today, calling for Mr. Annan's resignation. He does make one good point, which is how can we trust the U.N.'s internal investigation into this while Mr. Annan is still in charge?

It seems that -- if only for appearance's sake, Mr. Annan has to go. I think that that's right. I don't hear a lot of sympathy for Mr. Annan from anyone I'm talking to. And it's hard to have sympathy for him at this point, too because you have to remember, the Oil-For- Food Program was vitally important. It is the program that kept the peace for six years. It's the reason we weren't back at war in Iraq earlier than we wound up going. Had the program worked...

PHILLIPS: Is it scary to you that the U.N.'s reputation is at stake now?

MAIELLO: It is, to me, because I happen to believe that having a vibrant global political body is important, especially in a world where money flows so quickly, commodities flow so quickly, and people move so quickly from place to place. We have to have a global institution that we can trust. And I think this is just hurtful for the world political scene, in general.

I don't think it's good going forward. I think -- there are a lot of people in America who have always been skeptical of the United Nations. I think that even if some of these allegations are overblown, the fact that the appearances are there has given ammunition to the U.N.'s critics. And I think for people like me who really believe in having a vibrant, global body like this that it's very disappointing...

PHILLIPS: Michael Maiello...

MAIELLO: ... just get so easily attacked.

PHILLIPS: Point well made, Michael Maiello, looking for your next story in "Forbes" magazine. Thank you.

MAIELLO: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Fred.

WHITFIELD: Ladies, we all know stress is not good for you, but did you know it just might be aging you? Elizabeth Cohen will be joining us with more on that traumatic bit of information when LIVE FROM continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: A startling revelation out of the Netherlands. A hospital says it is and has been carrying out mercy killings on terminally ill newborns. The revelation came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether doctors can euthanize terminally ill people with no free will. That would include children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in irreversible coma after an accident. Right now, doctors can perform these procedures at the request of sick adult patients. The Netherlands was the first country to legalize euthanasia. The hospital is expected to release more details on this Monday.

WHITFIELD: Health news now. Do you find yourself constantly stressed out? You know it can send your heart racing and blood pumping. But did you know it can also make you age quicker, perhaps add a few more gray hairs on your head? CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here with some of these details.

Kind of no surprise, but now there's scientific proof? ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, exactly. There is scientific proof for what people say all the time, you certainly hear people say after they've been through a stressful event, man, I just feel like I aged 10 years in 10 minutes. And in fact there may be some proof that stress can age you prematurely.

What researchers at the University of California-San Francisco did was they looked at two groups of mothers. One group had a child who was chronically ill. The other moms had children who were healthy. So the moms of the chronically ill were under more stress. And then they looked at their immune cells. They looked right on a cellular level. And what they found is that the moms who were under more stress, when you looked at those cells, they showed 10 years premature aging of those cells. The women who were under lower stress had no premature aging.

Now this doesn't just apply to women. For example, all you have to do is take a look at this man to see that he aged under stress. President Bush, before -- the beginning of his term, and there's a recent picture. Also, Bill Clinton, this is not party politics here, happens to Democrats, too, the beginning of his term and then at the end of two term, you can see that he aged.

Stress really does do something to you. And they think, Fred, that it has to do with hormones, stress affects your hormones and hormones can affect a cell, the biology of a single cell.

WHITFIELD: And also wouldn't not getting enough sleep, not eating properly, all of that stuff, which is usually associated with stress as well, certainly play a role?

COHEN: Right, that does play a role. And what that gets into is what you can do about this. It's one thing to say, you know, gee, these women had chronically ill children, of course they're going to be under stress, there's nothing they can do about it. And that is true to some extent.

However, how we handle stress, for example, Fred mentioned how much sleep we get, how we -- do we get counseling, do we try to deal with it, that is important because what they found in this research is that the women who perceived that they were under a lot of stress also had the premature aging. It wasn't just the actual stress, it was how they perceived it.

WHITFIELD: And speaking still of women and hormones, testosterone patch, what's new with that?

COHEN: What's new with that is that an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration is taking a look at whether or not to recommend the approval for a testosterone patch for women. Now it may seem strange, giving testosterone to women, but women do have relatively small amounts of testosterone, relatively small compared to men, and may need that testosterone for their sex drives.

So researchers have developed a -- or a pharmaceutical company has developed a testosterone patch for women to help women with low testosterone. Now one of the things that's important to remember here is that this won't help women who have sex drive problems for other reasons. For example, let's say their sex drive problems are rooted in emotional issues. A patch is not going to...

WHITFIELD: Or they're stressed out.

COHEN: Or they're just stressed out, right, having a testosterone patch is not going to help women who are just stressed out.

WHITFIELD: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

COHEN: Thanks.

WHITFIELD: Well, patrolling the mean streets. Some call them the guardian geishas. Others, the kimono squad. A trio of tough chicks are on the job in Japan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Well, New York has the Guardian Angels. Well, not to be outdone, Tokyo has what you might call guardian geishas. These kimono-clad crimebusters wear green sashes that say, "protect our town, because it's our town that we love."

PHILLIPS: The team, which makes monthly rounds is composed of Tokyo's so-called mama-sans, female bar owners who say their fighting the rising incidents of pickpocketing and muggings in the Ginka (ph) district. They're accompanied by male cops when they hit the streets in a show of support, I guess. In a stylish kind of way.

WHITFIELD; That's right, you know, they're tough women, we know that.

PHILLIPS: I like it.

I guess this is some of the weirdest news that maybe we've heard in a while. The city council in Provo, Utah, is about to change a local ordinance after getting called on the carpet by animal lovers. Well, the fur started flying after a family wasn't allowed to adopt a kitten at an animal shelter, because they already had a cat and dog. Under Provo law, residents may only have cats or dogs. The law will reportedly be scratched off the books.

WHITFIELD: It's one or the other?

PHILLIPS: It's not fair.

WHITFIELD: No.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

WHITFIELD: Coming up in our second hour of LIVE FROM...

PHILLIPS: Have you been tricked into handing over credit card and band account data online? Well, it's one of the fastest-growing scams out there. We didn't do it, huh, Fred?

WHITFIELD: No.

PHILLIPS: Find out how to protect yourself from phishing. Daniel Sieberg's privacy series continues. LIVE FROM's hour of power right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com