GQ to Excerpt U.N. Scandal Book

Industry sources tell NewsMax's Stew Stogel that excerpt rights to the controversial book by three U.N. employees, "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures" (Miramax Books), due for release on June 9, has been obtained by GQ (Gentlemen's Quarterly) magazine.

The move by Miramax is a prelude to a public relations tour by the authors at the end of the month to promote the book.

Two of the three authors are current United Nations employees.

U.N. staff rules prohibit outside activity by any United Nations employees related to their professional duties without specific approval by executives of the world body.

In early April, the U.N. denied permission to the authors.

The U.N. complained that the book had already been written and sold by the time the authors requested permission.

However, the publisher (Miramax, a division of the Walt Disney Co.) has insisted it is not bound by any U.N. rules and intends to release the book next month.

The controversy revolves around activities which the authors claim to have witnessed during a decade traveling the world for the U.N.'s department of peacekeeping operations.

The book tells of sex parties in Cambodia, peacekeeping troops who were in reality prison inmates and of a cover-up of an ambush of U.N. personnel in Somalia.

Those were just a few among many "unusual" incidents by U.N. peacekeeprs throughout the 1990s and into the 21st century as recalled in the book.

While the U.N. says it cannot stop Miramax from releasing the book, it can and says it "reserves" the right to act against the authors.

Andy Thomson, one of the authors, who works as a doctor in the U.N.'s medical unit in New York, has told friends he fears losing his job.

That drew a comment from another fellow staffer:

"The time to have worried about losing one's job was before, not after the book was written and sold to a publisher."

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told NewsMax that two more "unauthorized" books by current U.N. staffers are also believed to be in the works.

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