Todd Tiahrt: “I want to speak in favor of the legislation because I am very concerned about how the United Nations has mismanaged not…”

“I want to speak in favor of the legislation because I am very concerned about how the United Nations has mismanaged not only classified information but other financial matters that they have gotten, and I am speaking specifically to Cambodia, where they lost some $20 million plus worth of equipment that has just disappeared. We are not just talking about hardware here, we are talking about classified information and the inability of the United Nations to handle that information in a prudent fashion. Before I came to the Congress, I worked for the Boeing company, and I worked in classified areas where top-secret documents were stored and handled and even developed. We were under very strict guidelines. And if I look at what has happened in Somalia, as pointed out by Senator Snowe, if similar occurrences had occurred in the work environment that I was working under, it would have resulted in a certain loss of job and a potential prosecution under U.S. law. Because we are giving classified information to the United Nations, they do not fall under the same guidelines, the same legal restrictions that we have here in the United States.”