MADELEINE ALBRIGHT'S VENDETTA

...In April 1996, for example, Albright personally ordered the hiring of a retired former deputy chief of the U.S...

...The post—"senior program adviser" at a Department of Energy lab—called for advising the lab director on matters such as environmental research...

...Gelber, meanwhile, had an ethics problem of his own...

...ness...

...Subsequent remarks, however, revealed that his real concerns with Shenwick were not ethical but political...

...In August 1991 and again in November 1993, representatives of other U.N...

...as "the queen of mean" for her rudeSUPER-SENSITIVE ABOUT HER PUBLIC IMAGE, ALBRIGHT WAS ALWAYS CAREFUL TO EXPRESS SATISFACTION WITH SHENWICKS WORK...

...ambassador to the U.N., had violated State Department procurement regulations by having his wife make non-competitive purchases of everything from furniture to catering services...

...mission to the United Nations, where she first was assigned to handle personnel and budget issues...

...Senior U.S...

...He gave her an "unsatisfactory" rating...

...On April 26, Shenwick reluctantly visited the Var-ick Street lab—she had been warned not to leave messages with any lab officials, as everything about the job offer was "confidential"—and she came away believing the job was inappropriate for her...

...Linda Shenwick started working at the State Department in 1979 while she was still in law school, driven by a sense of public service and an interest in foreign affairs...

...The disclosures also factored into the U.S...

...Albright, who's been in Washington as secretary of state, has quietly backed them, as Shenwick learned when she complained about her treatment to Albright's successor as U.N...

...ry Pressler, a South Dakota Republican, had placed on the nomination of David Birenbaum for a top management and reform job...

...malfeasance, Shenwick didn't shy away from revealing wrongdoing by a senior appointee of a Republican president...

...He was no help...

...He told her, "Your problems are with Madeleine...

...But both of these charges collapse under scrutiny...

...budget negotiations contrary to the position of the U.S...

...for him to release his hold on Holbrooke's nomination, "fairness and civility must prevail...

...and its foreign-policy priorities, enamored of phrases like "assertive multilateralism...

...Shenwick eventually filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that seeks to resolve personnel disputes, alleging her unsatisfactory rating had been retaliatory and was thus prohibited (according to Shenwick, Sklar warned her against pursuing this complaint, saying in November 1997, "We will break you financially and professionally...

...These votes of confidence reflected the respect accorded to her by U.N...

...Shenwick subsequently asked a senior U.S...

...This was the strongest signal of all that Albright wanted Shen-wick ousted, for once State Department employees belonging to the Senior Executive Service have been rated unsatisfactory, they must be transferred out of their jobs...

...Rod Grams, a Minnesota Republican, Albright wrote that Shenwick was a "valued member" of the "reform team...

...Equally revealing, the decision to dump Shenwick from the ACABQ came at a time when Albright was loudly criticizing Boutros-Ghali for failing to clean up the U.N.'s finances...

...That prompted Albright's deputy, Ned Walker, to tell Shenwick, "These articles hurt you with Ambassador Albright...

...Providing Capitol Hill and the media with public information about waste, mismanagement, and rule-breaking by officials at the United Nations and the U.S...

...In recent years, some have tried to portray Shen-wick as a tool of Jesse Helms and other Republican critics of the U.N...

...officials...

...Gelber got his revenge when he issued his evaluation of Shenwick's job performance on December 4, 1996...

...She countered by accusing him of illegally retaliating against her, and when the matter was finally resolved in November 1992, Shenwick was granted two retroactive promotions, back pay, and reimbursement of $16,000 in legal fees...

...she once told the Washington Post that prominent in her "galaxy of people I have no use for" are "women who don't help other women...

...Shortly after Albright arrived at the United Nations in 1993, Pickering's ethical problems were rehashed in the press in connection with his nomination as ambassador to Russia...

...ambassador to the United Nations...

...Shenwick, according to the State Department, had had a poor relationship with the chairman of the ACABQ, hadn't given proper credit to her staff for writing memos, and had failed to have a going-away party for a member of her staff...

...Illustrating the sheer pettiness of the department's case against Shenwick are the charges it forwarded to the Office of Special Counsel last year to justify her "unsatisfactory" rating...

...And, she says, "while this is not a battle I have sought out, I'm going to be in it until the end...

...Pickering challenged the allegation and tried to get Shenwick's job-performance downgraded (in an earlier job evaluation, he had praised her as "well organized" and "very analytical...

...The official also confided that the source of the job offer was Bill Richardson, now serving as energy secretary...

...There was, however, a limit to the use Albright would make of Shenwick's budget expertise...

...The latter two were demonstrably false...

...budget for congressional staffers...

...The only problem is that information discussed at ACABQ meetings is strictly confidential, and Shenwick could have been removed from the committee for violating her confidentiality oath...

...MADELEINE ALBRIGHT'S VENDETTA The Persecution of a Career Civil Servant By Matthew Rees " I have never seen such a blatant, raw attempt to I harass and silence a whistleblower who simply -Ltold the truth...

...Jamie Rubin, now the secretary's spokesman at the State Department, said on July 22 that Albright "was not, as some have suggested, engaged in some persecution of Miss Shenwick...

...Albright's interest in disposing of Shenwick was so great that she not only was willing to transfer one of the State Department's coveted Senior Executive Service slots to the Department of Energy if it would take Shenwick, she also was willing to provide Energy with $2.5 million over five years to cover a variety of projects in addition to Shen-wick's salary and expenses...

...Interestingly, no congressional Dem-ocrat—not even foreign-policy hatchetman Joe Biden—has jumped on the anti-Shenwick bandwagon...

...budget issues is invaluable to the United States...

...This sum, as a lab official revealed to Shenwick, was considerably more than the lab needed from State...

...In the spring of 1996, when the United States had to nominate someone for the U.N.'s Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, Albright dumped Shenwick, who had just completed nearly five years on the committee...

...That's a reference to Albright, though her office denies any wrongdoing...

...But in recent weeks, the stakes have been ratcheted up a few notches...

...mission, Albright's devoted press aide, Jamie Rubin, yelled at Shenwick that she'd be sacked if she ever talked to reporters, or Pressler, again...

...budget and management practices, and he had used the information in Birenbaum's confirmation hearing...

...it cited a diplomat from Belgium, Peter Maddens, and one from Britain, Nick Thorne...

...Within a month of accepting the job, he had raised questions about Shenwick's use of entertainment funds, telephones, and fax machines (an investigation by the State Department's inspector general found no wrongdoing...

...With respect to insubordination, when Shen-wick's lawyer asked for examples over two months ago, a State Department lawyer replied that no one could recall any specific instance...

...effort to curb waste at the U.N...

...mission and Gelber had once been a top deputy to Thomas Pickering, the U.N...

...I want people to know what can happen to anyone who gets on the wrong side of Madeleine Albright...

...procurement practices, she ordered her "never to meet with Hill staffers alone again" (Rubin repeated the order a few days later...

...When Shenwick didn't back down, the harassment escalated...

...Her performance also won her regular promotions, and in 1988 she was admitted to the Senior Executive Service, an elite corps of federal civil servants...

...There was just one problem: Shenwick had no experience in any of the areas for which she would be responsible...

...She resisted taking the new job—she says she's almost as unqualified for it as she is for the Department of Energy lab job—but State refused to negotiate...

...The State Department abandoned the charges against Shenwick a few months after making them, only to come forward with an entirely new set of allegations last month...

...In Seasons of Her Life, an evenhanded biography of Albright published last year, Ann Blackman writes that "many of those who have watched Albright's evolution over the years say that she changed at the United Nations, that the friendly, easygoing woman they had known showed a new tendency to be imperious and somewhat dismissive of those who got in her way...

...It's important to remember that while Albright gained publicity in 1995-96 for being an outspoken critic of the U.N...

...That's when the State Department lawyer handling the case, Melinda Chandler, told Victoria Toensing, Shenwick's lawyer, that a job had been found for Shenwick in Manhattan (where she has lived for the past 15 years...

...Her offense...

...money and personnel should be allocated...

...and its secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali—he blames Albright for his not being reappointed—this was not always so...

...budget issues and extensive contacts on Capitol Hill and in the media, led Madeleine Albright to distrust her from the beginning...

...This was highly suspicious, given that no such position had previously existed at the U.S...

...mission official with whom she had friendly relations why the crusade against her was suddenly intensifying, and she was given a simple answer: Washington...

...Similarly, State charged that Shenwick had expressed positions in U.N...

...In March 1995, Shenwick attended a meeting of top U.S...

...Three days later, the State Department upped the ante, telling Shenwick that if she didn't take the position she would be transferred to a job in Washington in 60 days...

...This move was hypocritical on two fronts...

...Indeed, even after engineering Shenwick's ouster from the ACABQ, Albright wasn't content...

...The rating also underscored the hardball tactics Albright was deploying against Shenwick: According to Office of Personnel Management data, no State Department employee belonging to the SES had ever received an "unsatisfactory" rating...

...Shenwick's supposed sin...

...Shortly after handing down this evaluation, Gelber returned to retirement...

...It's just not true...

...On April 23, Shenwick met with a senior lab official at a Manhattan coffee shop to discuss the job, but the official was unable to answer even her most elementary questions about the offer...

...Charles Grassley, a normally even-keeled Iowa Republican, thundering in a recent speech about the treatment of Linda Shenwick...

...mission officials—Richard Sklar and A. Peter Burleigh in particular—have taken the lead...

...The State Department's final allegation is that Shenwick refused to share information from ACABQ proceedings with her U.S...

...This is payback...

...But it was different in private...

...That's Sen...

...member states elected Shenwick to serve on the influential Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ), which recommends how U.N...

...management and reform—relieved her of her authority to assign work to much of her staff, claiming she was too busy with her ACABQ duties...

...Albright and her acolytes have been dogging Shenwick, whose job until recently was to monitor the U.N...

...mission, it won't undo the damage that's been done: six-figure legal bills, loss of salary, character assassination, and the dissemination of unsubstantiated allegations about her personal life...

...And when it appeared that Sen...

...Pressler, who was up for reelection in 1996, was in jeopardy, Gelber told Shenwick, "It looks like he's going to be gone, and you'll be next...

...This set off a new round of negotiations with State Department officials, which culminated on June 16 with Shenwick's being handed a faxed memo from Alex De La Garza, a State Department personnel official, informing her she had 48 hours to vacate the U.S...

...He says the State Department, in responding to the Shenwick matter, has provided him with explanations that are "weak, and at times false or misleading...

...budget process...

...This won't be easy...

...These disclosures complied with both the letter of State Department regulations and the spirit of the U.S...

...She had, in full compliance with State Department regulations, responded to requests from Pressler about U.N...

...Shenwick, according to the department, had become ineffective in dealing with foreign missions to the U.N...

...And her service on the committee helped her acquire a detailed knowledge of the byzantine U.N...

...It didn't take Gelber long to strike...

...ambassador Shenwick had tangled with years earlier...

...Grass-ley, in protest of the "outrageous treatment" of Shenwick, announced on June 24 he was placing a "hold" on Richard Holbrooke's nomination to be the next U.S...

...In 1984 she was transferred to the U.S...

...budget experience who tend to be hostile to macro-reforms, is precisely the kind of forum where a representative with Shenwick's thorough knowledge of U.N...

...Surely the strangest development of all came on April 13...

...Until the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the U.N...

...mission colleagues...

...As for the original source of hostility toward Shen-wick—her sharing public information with Capitol Hill and the media—the State Department recently conceded in a letter to Grassley that she is a "protected whistleblower...

...The memo also reiterated that Shenwick was to begin a new State Department job in Washington on June 29...

...In the weeks since Grassley's announcement, his spine has only stiffened...

...But she didn't budge, telling State in early May she didn't want the Department of Energy lab job...

...As for her poor relations with the ACABQ chairman, they stemmed from her role in helping to publicize that he had determined his own compensation package, traveled lavishly, and put his common-law wife on his staff...

...decision not to support the chairman's reelection bid in 1997...

...reform...

...The State Department did not respond to multiple inquiries seeking further comment...

...Albright, who witnessed the exchange, walked away without saying anything and hasn't spoken with Shenwick since...

...budget, Albright used it as the basis for the American position in that year's round of budget negotiations...

...Shenwick could, of course, have minimized her troubles by resigning a few years ago when it was clear Albright wanted her out...

...These contradictions rarely received press coverage...

...mission official...

...But presented with the opportunity to reward a talented civil servant who happens to be a woman, Albright gave more weight to a parochial dispute...

...Albright's deputies adopted a similarly hostile tone...

...And he says that in order Matthew Rees is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard...

...In mid-June, the State Department expelled Shenwick from the U.S...

...No one deserves to be treated this way...

...Shortly after he took the job, Shenwick informed the inspector general that State Department regulations barred employees from receiving a pension while serving in a supervisory role, forcing Gelber to have his pension temporarily suspended...

...She told her that while her performance had been "excellent," she had been "too tenacious on U.N...

...mission to the United Nations, Shenwick has been the target of a ruthless campaign spearheaded by Madeleine Albright...

...And when Albright learned Shenwick had shared public information with a Senate Appropriations Committee staffer about shoddy U.N...

...A veteran civil servant at the U.S...

...In 1989 she reported to the State Department's inspector general that Thomas Pickering, then the U.S...

...This persistence, coupled with Shenwick's expertise on U.N...

...The ACABQ, dominated by individuals with years of U.N...

...The president wants this nomination," hissed Albright, "and you are impeding it...

...Indeed, the official conceded the position of "senior program adviser" to the lab director had never before existed, and that Shenwick was unqualified for it...

...LarJAMIE RUBIN YELLED AT SHENWICK THAT SHED BE SACKED IF SHE EVER TALKED TO REPORTERS, OR SENATOR PRESSLER, AGAIN...

...Shenwick, meanwhile, tried to make a personal appeal to Albright at a U.S...

...Albright makes much of her commitment to hiring and promoting women in government...

...That morning, following a senior staff meeting at the U.S...

...mission, and on June 29 her pay was suspended pending resolution of a dispute over her next federal job...

...inspector general...

...mission social event, but didn't get very far...

...In October 1994, Birenbaum—by this time confirmed as deputy representative for U.N...

...In a February 1996 letter to Sen...

...But even if these senators help persuade the State Department to give her back her job at the U.S...

...mission...

...officials approached him, he refused comment...

...When she pointed to her favorable personnel evaluations—she'd received an "excellent" and an "outstanding" during the period from July 1992 to May 1994—Albright quickly interjected, "We are looking into changing that...

...ambassador, Bill Richardson...

...But this is a caricature...

...Shenwick's job performance evaluations praised her approach to the "entrenched" chairman...

...And given Shenwick's success in uncovering specific instances of waste, fraud, and abuse at the U.N.—such as the production of a book commemorating the U.N.'s 50th anniversary at a cost of $715 per page—a clash was inevitable...

...government...

...Elaine Shocas, Albright's chief of staff and a one-time Democratic party activist, quickly intervened and told Shenwick, "We know all about [the unsatisfactory evaluation] and we are prepared to deal with the legal and political consequences...

...So why was she offered this position...

...The first instance of outright hostility came in June 1994...

...And at a Senate hearing two months later, a senior State Department official, Princeton Lyman, said of Shenwick's ACABQ tenure, "It was Ambassador Albright's judgment that Miss Shenwick had done an outstanding job...

...As for Shenwick, she's happy to have the support of senators like Charles Grassley, Trent Lott, and Olympia Snowe, as well as the 287 House members who on July 21 voted for a resolution supporting her complaint against the State Department...

...Richardson had flown the lab official to Washington and met with him for 30 minutes to discuss finding a position for Shenwick...

...Albright, super-sensitive about her public image, was always careful to express satisfaction with Shen-wick's work...

...All of the complaints about Shenwick notwithstanding, Albright regularly called on her for assistance with U.N...

...In the two and a half years since Gelber's career-derailing evaluation, the campaign to intimidate Shenwick has persisted...

...On July 17, 1994, the Washington Post published a brief article about shortcomings in a U.S.-sponsored proposal for a U.N...

...mission, Herbert Gelber, and made his primary responsibility overseeing Shenwick and evaluating her performance...

...What do you expect after what you did at Biren-baum's hearings," he told her...

...mission...

...Shenwick disagreed and took the matter up with Edward Gnehm, a senior U.S...

...budget, for much of the past five years...

...Indeed, she viewed criticism of the institution as criticism of her...

...While she has indeed blown the whistle on U.N...

...Albright also retained Shenwick as a lead negotiator during multilateral budget sessions and had her conduct briefings on the U.N...

...it's simply incorrect...

...Albright was known around the U.N...

...mission officials, and they criticized her job performance...

...She quickly carved out a reputation for diligence and hard work, which won her three consecutive "outstanding" rat-ings—the highest given— between January 1987 and July 1989...

...During a senior staff meeting attended by Shenwick, Albright blamed her for the hold Sen...

...And not only was Albright willing to discard Shenwick's expertise, but the individual nominated in Shenwick's place was defeated in the ACABQ election, depriving the United States of a voice in this powerful arena...

...But there was a problem with these charges...

...But she says she has no regrets about standing up to the guerrilla warfare...

...she feels uncomfortable with you...

...Maddens has told Shenwick's lawyer that he had a professional relationship with Shenwick and never had any difficulty with her, while Thorne says that when U.S...

...He once said to her, during a meeting in his office, "What you do with Republicans is between you and God, but I don't know how you sleep at night...

...And Rubin refused to answer questions about Albright's role in the effort to procure a job for Shenwick outside the department, declaring (incorrectly) that the Privacy Act prevented him from answering...

...Richardson admitted he had acted only after being urged to do so in a Saturday phone call from Albright (the Department of Energy confirmed in writing that the State Department had "approached" it about finding a job for Shenwick, but refused to confirm—or deny—Albright's involvement...

...budget issues...

...Indeed, when Shenwick crafted a proposal in late 1995 to cut over $154 million from the U.N...

...The State Department's attempts to resolve the matter quietly have proven comical and corrupt...