US Secrets and the UN Food-for-Oil Scandal

It's widely known that UN funds were illegally siphoned out of the Food-for-Oil program. More recent allegations from Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi Finance Department (how did a convicted fraudster get ut in charge of finance?) said Saddam had used the funds to pay bribes to international contacts. But who exactly was he paying off, and for what?

Chalabi hired an old friend from KPMG accountants, Mr. HANKES-DRIELSMA, to investigate where the funds went. Hankes-Drielsma told US senators that he had uncovered very serious and damaging evidence and that he would give the UN access to all his documents, but he never did.

Instead, Chalabi's offices were raided by US forces and the US declared him an Iranian spy. The Telegraph reports that "on the same day as the raid, computer files belonging to the British consultant investigating the oil-for-food scandal [i.e. Hankes-Drielsma] were destroyed by hackers and a back-up databank in his Baghdad office wiped out. "

Hankes-Drielsma said:

"This report would have been even more damning than anticipated. This would not sit comfortably with the political agenda in Washington or London.

"I believe that what Washington wants is to keep the lid on things until after the presidential election. The White House believes that the report will be detrimental to President Bush's re-election campaign."

Did the CIA turn on Chalabi and destroy files which would have shown Saddam colluding with Bush White House insiders? Who was Saddam paying off? If Bush's people were getting the stolen UN bribe money, what were they doing with it (secret funds usually have a secret purpose, as Iran-Contra showed)?

Or was this just another big Chalabi fantasy? The information gathered by Hankes-Drielsma is still sitting in bank records around the world, so we can hope that the truth MAY come out eventually (after the next election, no doubt). Or it may have been buried for good.

P.S. Thanks again to Talking Points Memo for the background on this story. I'll be a regular reader from now on...