Remember a little over a year ago, when the Justice Department shrouded Lady Justice because her stiff right nipple loomed over Attorney General John Ashcroft’s head during press conferences? Well, it seemed like the JD’s censorious wiles had slithered into United Nations headquarters last week when online " art newspaper " Artdaily.com reported that a tapestry rendering of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica — a black-and-white delineation of bombing atrocities inflicted during the Spanish Civil War — suspended outside the Security Council " has been covered with a curtain. " The New York Observer also noted the concealment of the classic piece during chief weapons inspector Hans Blix’s January 27 Iraq briefing. While Artdaily.com was clearly more misleading than the Observer, the two accounts together made it seem that the UN had indefinitely veiled the antiwar artwork — not only a sneaky denial of the potential horrors of warfare, but a more severe case of philistinism than the Justice Department’s mamma masking.

But according to the UN, the swathing of Guernica wasn’t another boob job. " As soon as the meeting ended, [Guernica] was uncovered, " says UN spokesman Stephan Dujarric. " It was only covered for six hours last week. It’s uncovered now. It is not at all a semi-permanent thing. "

So why was it covered in the first place? Safety, logistics, and camera angles, says Dujarric. When more than 200 journalists are present in the " stakeout area, " television cameras have to be set up in the middle of the corridor instead of their usual side position. And since there’s no depth from that angle, only a small segment of the 22-by-10-foot mural would appear onscreen. " So you don’t see the tapestry, you don’t see that it’s Guernica, you only see strange shapes. "

Of course, it does seem awfully convenient that the only time Guernica disappears is when the whole world is watching. But like any good spokesman, Dujarric insists that there’s no duplicity at work here. " Let me stress that for us, there’s no more appropriate place for Guernica, " he says. And with that, nearly everyone can agree.