US lobbyist bats for Aussie wheat Cheats

The ‘proverbial’ is beginning to fly of the fans at a furious rate at the Cole Inquiry into Australia’s UN Wheat Cheats. We have been firmly convinced the ‘who knew what’ extended into some lofty heights. From yesterday’s session:

Lobbyists hired by AWB – Sydney Morning Herald

AWB enlisted the help of an influential Washington lobby firm headed by the former US defence secretary, William Cohen, to deal with a United Nations investigation into kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein.

The wheat exporter hired the Cohen Group last year as part of its strategy, code-named Project Rose, to deal with the UN inquiry headed by Paul Volcker and corruption allegations made against it by US wheat farmers and hostile US politicians.

Everyone in Canberra knew of kickbacks - The AUSTRALIAN

JOHN Howard, senior ministers and dozens of senior bureaucrats were warned five years ago Iraq was trying to corrupt the oil-for-food program by forcing Australia's wheat exporter, AWB, to pay kickbacks to Iraqi officials.
The scam was outlined in a diplomatic cable dated April 10, 2001 from Bronte Moules, an official at Australia's permanent mission to the UN in New York.

Among the slew of reports of yesterday's proceedings was a side note:

Department arrives to defend its own – Sydney Morning Herald
The witness Tim Snowball asked the question on all our minds. A strange and rumpled figure had risen from among the lawyers to quiz him. Snowball asked: who do you work for?
"It is of no concern to you, Mr Snowball," snapped the commissioner. "Mr Snowball, your obligation is to tell the truth, no matter who asks you questions." Terence Cole, QC, is known as one of the hard men of the law. He's sharp. He snaps. He asks withering questions. But this was ugly.
Snowball's Melbourne barrister, Lachlan Carter, protested: "What is wrong with him knowing the answer to that?" Cole ordered the questioning to proceed.
But then the mystery lawyer, Alan Robertson, SC, courteously apologised to the tall man in the witness box. "I didn't hear that question, Mr Snowball. I represent the Department of Foreign Affairs."

Who is Snowball?
Torture under cross-examination - The AUSTRALIAN
"I'm just acting as a postbox here (New York) under direction from (AWB's former manager of marketing for the Middle East) Mark Emons and (colleague) Andrew McConville and Bronte Moules at the mission (Australia's permanent New York mission to the UN)," a desperate Snowball told the hearing, as a relentless Agius all but skinned him alive.”

…Snowball is relatively young - late 30s, early 40s at most. Two days in the witness stand revealed him as a polite, deferential person who doesn't appear to have done anything much in New York except what he was told from AWB's Melbourne headquarters.”