As details of the U.N. Oil for Food scandal continue to drip forth, a new internal survey of U.N. employees provides further evidence that the organization is rife with corruption, scandal, unethical managers, crooked bureaucrats and shady deals.

As a part of the U.N.’s "Organization Integrity Survey," more than 6,000 U.N. employees — roughly a third of the total U.N. staff — returned questionnaires prepared by Deloitte Consulting in order to gauge staff perceptions of U.N. ethics. According to the questionnaires, many staffers believe that the organization is riddled with unethical behavior, rule-breaking and favoritism. They also show concern that staffers who report such behavior are penalized while unethical managers are promoted and demonstrate a troubling "cover-up" culture.

"Senior leaders caught in serious breaches of ethics should be punished, not promoted as usual," one staffer wrote. Another criticized the lack of clear rules and the frequent practice of disregarding rules already in place. "Get rid of the old boy network! Address the issues of discrimination, nepotism and sexism rampant in the Organization," the staffer said. A third expressed a similar sentiment: "Too often, guidelines and rules that are put forth have a counter directive that allows supervisors to manipulate promotion selection and the like." A fourth simply wrote, "Stop corruption."

Overall, more than 64 percent of the U.N. staffers responding to the survey said they had "seen / experienced breaches of guidelines on professional conduct." In addition, more than 45 percent disagreed with the statement that "Leaders who violate guidelines on professional conduct are disciplined fairly and consistently," while only 8 percent agreed. Finally, 43 percent agreed with the statement that "Reporting violations of guidelines on professional conduct is career limiting at the U.N.," while only 10 percent disagreed.

As if that weren’t enough, Fox News recently reported that "the U.N.’s own anti-corruption department has been rocked by accusations that the office itself is corrupt. The head of the department is one of those accused. A senior investigator has been suspended, and there are accusations of financial and sexual misconduct."

With these indicting comments from the U.N.’s own staff and new charges against the U.N. official responsible for policing staff behavior, it is clear that labeling the organization as "little better than a third-rate banana republic" is too flattering.

Taken together, the allegations that U.N. staff participated in Oil for Food corruption, the staff members’ charges of routine unethical behavior in U.N. operations, and the charges of improper behavior against the head of the U.N.’s own investigative department raise serious questions about whether the organization has been so thoroughly corrupted as to be incapable of accomplishing any mission, much less its primary mission of achieving and ensuring world peace.

It may be time (yet again) for American taxpayers to ask serious questions about where their money is going. According to some estimates, the United States supplies anywhere from a quarter to a third of the U.N.’s annual budget (not to mention some pretty hot real estate in Manhattan.) That figure does not include U.S. contributions of money and troops to United Nations peace-keeping and humanitarian missions, nor does it include millions of dollars in unpaid parking tickets owed to New York City.

With a better understanding of what they are funding, informed taxpayers might wonder why the United States continues to pay for a corrupt bureaucracy with waning international credibility and shrinking effectiveness that routinely thumbs its nose at U.S. interests and the interests of democracy.