Talk about timing. Secretary General Annan is about to visit Tehran, over American objections, for a photo opportunity with Iran’s nuclear-bomb-building, Holocaust-denier president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Weekly Standard just published the stunning news that, during the war between Israel and the Iranian proxy in Lebanon, the U.N. had been disclosing sensitive details about Israeli troop movements in real time on its Web site. Mr. Annan’s no. 2, Mark Malloch Brown, just said of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, “It’s not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism.” Federal prosecutors just indicted a U.N. mailroom employee for being part of a drug ring that used diplomatic pouches to help smuggle 25 tons of contraband into New York. The U.N.’s newly “reformed” Human Rights Council has devoted much of its energy to issuing one-sided denunciations of Israel. This is the moment Senator Schumer chose yesterday to hold a press conference urging the American taxpayers to move forward quickly to help pay for an “immediate” renovation of the United Nations’ headquarters at Turtle Bay.

To hear Mr. Schumer tell it, he’s less concerned with the accommodation of U.N. bureaucrats and more concerned with the threat that the asbestos-packed building poses to nearby New Yorkers and to firefighters who might respond in an emergency. The project will cost an estimated $1.9 billion, though Donald Trump testified before Congress last year that it should cost more like $700 million, and that costs above that were because of U.N. foolishness. America would be expected to pay about 22% of the cost of the project. Mr. Schumer’s concern about the risks to the safety of New Yorkers that are posed by the U.N. headquarters may be more prescient than he realizes, but there has to be a way to abate this risk other than handing over more hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to the same U.N.leaders who are posing the threat to begin with. They can be expected to waste it, steal it, and squander it, and what is left over will go for plusher headquarters in the heart of our city for the United Nations leadership to luxuriate in while operating against New York, America, and the Jewish state.