ON SEPTEMBER 7, PAUL Volcker's inquiry into the Oil-for-Food program issued its "definitive report" on the biggest relief program--also the biggest scandal--in the history of the United Nations. The investigation alone cost $34 million, took over 16 months, and employed some 75 staff from 28 countries. Running to four volumes and totaling 847 pages, the report is hefty. But definitive it is not.

Volcker's report is at best a beginning, and a skewed and incomplete one at that. To be fair, credit is due to some of the investigators on Volcker's staff, who have conducted many interviews and toiled down many byways of the U.N. paper trail to produce such items as footnote 64, page 27, Volume III. Here we find that "kickbacks were levied on all or nearly all contracts" among the thousands of U.N.-approved deals done by Saddam Hussein, as the program, during its final years, hit its full multibillion annual stride. The investigators have also painstakingly documented such findings as the one on page 124 of Volume III. Here we find that, during Oil-for-Food, Secretary General Kofi Annan, his deputy secretary-general, Louise Fréchette, and his chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, "were all informed of the issue of kickbacks, but remained passive."

But somewhere between the Volcker committee's labors on the ground and the conclusions of the three commissioners at the top--former Fed chairman Volcker, South African justice Richard Goldstone, and Swiss lawyer Mark Pieth--a fog descends. Despite the load of detail, illuminating and deeply damning to the United Nations, the

Not that getting to the bottom of Oil-for-Food could ever be easy. The program was vast. From 1996 to 2003, it was supposed to ensure that more than $110 billion worth of oil sales and relief purchases contracted by Saddam's regime were honest, and that the proceeds were fairly distributed to ease the suffering of more than 24 million people in U.N.-sanctioned Iraq. But, under cover of U.N. secrecy, with the United Nations' approval, and while the international body assured the public that Oil-for-Food was one of its most efficient programs ever, Saddam, by Volcker's estimate, skimmed and smuggled his way to $12.8 billion in illicit income. And this is a conservative estimate that omits some rather obvious scams. By more complete estimates, Saddam swiped as much as $17 billion or upwards. There is abundant evidence--turned up by Congress, Treasury, the CIA, private investigators, and the media--that these illicit billions went not only to build palaces, but also to fortify Saddam's Baathist dictatorship, restock at least his conventional arsenal, bribe politicians, pay off accomplices worldwide, and fill secret bank accounts that may have funded terrorists during Saddam's reign--and may still be funding them today. This picture of where the money went is vital to grasping the full implications of the United Nations' corruption and dereliction in running Oil-for-Food. But Volcker has deferred almost all discussion of it to an "additional report," due out with a lot less fanfare next month.