The New York Times can still deliver the goods sometimes, and here is an excellent, detailed report on the waste, mismanagement, and downright fraud known as the United Nations Oil-for-Food program, which the Saddam regime exploited to live in luxury while the people of Iraq starved and suffered: Hussein’s Regime Skimmed Billions From Aid Program. (Hat tip: Bala Ambati.)

BAGHDAD, Iraq — In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein’s government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions.

Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government’s hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised the skimming operation.

The officials’ accounts were enhanced by a trove of internal Iraqi government documents and financial records provided to The New York Times by members of the Iraqi Governing Council. Among the papers was secret correspondence from Mr. Hussein’s top lieutenants setting up a formal mechanism to siphon cash from Iraq’s business deals, an arrangement that went unnoticed by United Nations monitors.

Under a United Nations program begun in 1997, Iraq was permitted to sell its oil only to buy food and other humanitarian goods. The kickback order went out from Mr. Hussein’s inner circle three years later, when limits on the amount of oil sales were lifted and Iraq’s oil revenues reached $10 billion a year.

In an Aug. 3, 2000, letter marked “urgent and confidential,” the Iraqi vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, informed government ministers that a high-command committee wanted “extra revenues” from the oil-for-food program. To that end, he wrote, all suppliers must be told to inflate their contracts “by the biggest percentage possible” and secretly transfer those amounts to Iraq’s bank accounts in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

“Please acknowledge and certify that this is executed in an accurate and clear way, and under supervision of the specified minister,” Mr. Ramadan wrote.

Iraq’s sanctions-busting has long been an open secret.