Oil-for-Food Scandal Key to CIA Report

NEW YORK – The U.N. Oil-for-Food program — already the subject of federal, congressional and United Nations financial abuse probes — took a fresh hit with an explosive new report that said Saddam Hussein was using the program to fund his ambitions.

The report by Charles Duelfer — the special CIA adviser looking into whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — found that Saddam was able to "subvert" the $60 billion U.N. program to generate an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue outside U.N. control from 1997-2003.

In light of the report, FOX News presents another hour-long special investigating the biggest financial scam in modern history.

Learn more about the Duelfer report by reading it for yourself through the links below:

• Click here to read the report's key findings (pdf).

• Click here to read Vol. 1 of the report (pdf).

• Click here to read Vol. 2 (pdf).

• Click here to read Vol. 3 (pdf).

For details about how the program operated as well as the investigations taking place to determine what happened to the money, read through this series of recent FOXNews.com articles.

Click on the highlighted headlines below to read the full stories.

Oil-for-Food Scandal Draws Scrutiny to U.N.

The roots of the Oil-for-Food scandal date back to 1991, when a U.N.-backed and U.S.-led coalition expelled Saddam from Kuwait following his hostile takeover of the neighboring country. Although Saddam lost the war, he walked away with important victories — he got to stay in power in Iraq and he ultimately got to pocket millions, if not billions, of dollars.

The United Nations first tried a series of sanctions to make Saddam bend to its will following the successful 1991 war to oust him from Kuwait. Then it attempted to find a way for Iraqi citizens to get needed medicine and other supplies through the sale of Iraqi oil — an approach that failed.

Buried in some of the United Nations' own confidential documents are clues that a link could have existed between Saddam and the Al Qaeda terror group — clues leading to a locked door in a Swiss lakeside resort.

U.S. Treasury officials have already identified 11 front companies and nearly 200 Iraqi-controlled firms that they suspect were part of Saddam's secret and illegal network. They say that's only the tip of the iceberg.

In the Saddam era, Baghdad's Al Rashid Hotel was the main stop on the Oil-for-Food tour. Regime-friendly types would stay there when visiting Baghdad. They'd stop and say hello to Saddam or a crony, snag a voucher good for a load of Iraqi crude and, conveniently enough, there were oil traders in the lobby of that hotel who could turn those vouchers into cash.

Read more here.

Watching the U.N. Oil-for-Food Watchdog

The Al Mada weekly in Iraq published a list of the names of some 270 people and organizations that purportedly received Oil-for-Food vouchers from Saddam. One of those names was the same as the last name of the U.N. official who ran the Oil-for-Food program.

Read more here.

Some of the above stories were originally seen on FOX News' "Breaking Point."

Fox News First