Judd Gregg: “I wanted to speak about Sierra Leone and especially about the attempts I have made to address this issue as chairman of…”

“I wanted to speak about Sierra Leone and especially about the attempts I have made to address this issue as chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and the Judiciary. The New York Times and a number of other daily papers have reported that I have limited the ability of the State Department to spend money on behalf of the United Nations, or send money to the U.N. for the purpose of peacekeeping in Sierra Leone, and that is correct. However, the numbers that the New York Times, at least, used were incorrect. I think the record needs to be corrected. I presume this story came from a momentum within the U.N. to try to put pressure on the Congress to spend money on U.N. initiatives. Obviously, the U.N. feels that by using our media sources in this country, they can influence the activity of the Congress, specifically of the Senate. However, I would have hoped that the New York Times reporter would have reviewed the actual facts and determined the facts before reporting them as facts.”