NYC Letter: A "West Wing View Of The UN"

As any good publisher knows the biggest budget item for a published book is promotion. Outgoing SG Kofi "Wake Up And Smell Me" Annan has used a clever strategem to save the UN big bucks in promotion costs for a recently published UN must-read. How? you ask -- with a big bucks production costs scandal!

UN SHELLS OUT £290,000 ON A PAPERBACK

LOS ANGELES December 17, 2006 (Telegraph) - [W]hile it might look like a modest paperback, the newly published official history of the UN Development Programme would surely be one the most expensive gifts [Kofi Annan] had ever received.

Figures uncovered last week revealed that the book, which was authorised by Mr Annan's former right-hand man, Mark Malloch Brown, cost a staggering $567,379 (£290,000) to produce.

This is so clever we almost mistook it for malfeasance or another unintentional defalcation by UN sub-bosses. Here's how it works. Kofi gives a little wink to a bossling, who now knows to spend, spend, overspend to the tune of half a million dollars and publish a little book on the UN that anyone else could publish for $5,000 or less contracting a vanity press.

Branded a "vanity publication" by critics, it has become the latest symbol of profligate spending and waste at the international organisation's headquarters in New York.

Despite being offered for sale to the general public, the catchily-titled The United Nations Development Programme: A Better Way (online price $29.99) is unlikely to challenge the latest Dan Brown or Patricia Cornwell in the bestseller lists. It is languishing at 577,233 in the sales rankings of Amazon.com, the internet bookseller.

Now Kofi winks again and an independent auditor is found to "discover" the outrageous overspend.

The true cost of the book was uncovered by Matthew Lee, a community activist from New York with a long history of probing financial irregularities in banks and other public organisations.

BINGO! -- the book is now being promoted on page 13 of every mainstream newspaper in the world! For free!

Page 13? Why isn't this story on the front page, you ask. Ah, gentle reader, because there is real news, important news, for which room must be made. A UN scandal should not crowd out real news, important news. So it's page 13. Hey, it's still free!

But what has provoked outrage are the huge costs incurred in producing the book, which was published through the Cambridge University Press. They include a salary of $252,000 paid to the author, Professor Craig Murphy, for about two years' work. Prof Murphy was also given $37,299 in travel expenses for interviews, while an unnamed "project co-ordinator" was given $87,639.

Research and editing cost $91,559, and $26,752 was spent on office space. The United Nations Development Programme also paid Cambridge University Press more than $55,000 for hundreds of copies of the 390-page tome, which it bought to distribute to libraries and other interested organisations.

... Describing the book, Prof Murphy, an international relations expert, calls it "a sort of West Wing view of the UN" - comparing it to the hugely popular television series. In his introduction, he singles out for praise the British-born Mr Malloch Brown, a former administrator for the World Bank, saying he offered the "unbeatable combination" of a "good salary and travel budget".