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LAST WEEK TED TURNER PUT TIM Wirth in charge of the philanthropic foundation the media mogul launched this fall to give $1 billion to the United Nations. Wirth, who will leave his post as an undersecretary of state to take the job, is a former Democratic senator from Colorado. He spoke with NEWSWEEK editors in New York. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: Why are you leaving the State Department?
WIRTH: This is just an extraordinary opportunity, with a guy like Turner who has very, very significant energy. He's a man of deep idealism and not insignificant genius. He's a guy who, once he gets honed in on something, has a focus that's just unstoppable. It's not just about spending the money; he wants to change the public's perceptions about the United Nations, and about our engagement around the world.
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We have four central missions we want to undertake. One is to help U.N. [Secretary-General] Kofi Annan with reform efforts. Here is a very embattled person who is dealing with Iraq, and dealing with Central Africa, and yet there is this very high expectation for reform. We want to help him to do that. The second thing is to demonstrate really good U.N. programs that work: children's health, population, environment, land-mine issues. Third, we want to raise a lot more money for this on the private side. And fourth is telling the story to Americans. Why should we be involved in the U.N.? How are we involved? The U.N. was created 50 years ago as a postwar institution, and the world has changed very significantly after 50 years.
You're reinventing . . .
The institution. Darn right. You have to change, you have to reform. The United Nations is not an entitlement program.
The skeptics say that nobody can waste money like the U.N.
I am absolutely determined that we're not going to create the Ford Foundation of the U.N. We're not going to have a vast enterprise over there. The world now has spawned a vast array of NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], and the Internet is accessible to just about everybody. And if it's not, you can make it accessible to them, and that's a lot cheaper than buying an airplane ticket to wherever they are. With the use of NGOs, and the use of electronics, we can be much, much more effective without creating a whole new establishment. Lots of the foundation world has gotten very comfortable. You know, Turner is not a comfortable person. [Laughs]. We're going to make people think about what they do, and why. My wife heads a small environmental foundation. It drives her crazy, the smugness and the arrogance of a lot of the foundation world. We have an opportunity to try and change part of the face of philanthropy too.
So you'll be a skinflint with the money?
This is not going to be a billion dollars that is put out on the stump in the middle of the night, and everybody comes and takes their percentage. And this is not going to be something where anybody throws an application in, over the transom. Then you end up with a zillion staff people sitting there sorting through applications. I would assume that the board will set a few targets of things that it wants to do, and we'll work very closely with Kofi Annan. Ted is committed to spending, over the next 10 years, a hundred million dollars a year. How all that works, I don't know. I'm sure the lawyers are lining up.
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