Countenance of Truth

Shirley Hazzard has written an expose of the corruption of the United Nations. She argues that Kurt Waldheim campaigned to become the U.N.'s Secretary General, confident that details of his past as a Nazi officer would be hushed up. Waldheim, during his UN years, emerges as a tool, both of the Soviets, for whom he carried out unbelievable favours, and of the US, quite possibly as a CIA agent. Hazzard worked at the UN for ten years, and Waldheim is seen as symptomatic of that organization's political and moral bankruptcy. She also reveals that all prospective UN employees were screened by the CIA, and that hundreds were fired through political motives. This book has caused a furore in the States - it is political dynamite.