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The long anticipated report from the Volcker Commission on the United Nation's Oil for Food scam, scheduled for release later this week is, instead, coming out tomorrow. Come to think of it, I thought it was supposed to be out last June. But, that's neither here nor there because it's not worth the paper it's printed on.

Not that the U.N. is paying for it you understand. The Iraqi people are.

The U.N. got a cut from the proceeds of Saddam's oil sales to administer the Oil for Food Program. The program was corrupt as hell with the UN in the center of it. The U.N. investigates its own corruption, and funds it with the fees it charged for administering a corrupt program.

Meanwhile, paperwork is turning up that Kofi Annan's son was being paid by one of the program's contractors not do do anything.

Meanwhile, (meanwhile?) Kofi Annan's personal assisant is shredding paperwork. When it's found out the assistant supposedly retires BUT keeps showing up at work a couple of times a week to continue shredding documents.

Benon Sevon, who oversaw the program, retires to gawd-only-knows-where so nobody is able to talk to him, but HE's kept on the payroll for $1 a year as an "advisor."

Sevon had been explaining the lifestyle he's maintained saying the money that paid for it was bequeathed to him by an elderly aunt, who as it turns out in reality didn't have much more than a pot to piss in. Oh, and she's not around anymore because when the oatmeal started hitting the fan, she fell down an empty elevator shaft in her apartment building.

(Has anyone throught about trying to turn this whole thing into a screenplay, or is it all too farfetched?)

It's leaked by the Commission that Sevon is a really rotten creep who was corrupt as hell because of the billions missing, HE'S responsible for $160,000 of it. (Huh?)

From the start the United Nations and its Volcker Commission has been cooperating with outside investigations with complete and total transparency:

The United Nations did not disclose the names of the contractors, the price, quantity, or quality of goods. The U.N. provided no public accounting for the billions in bank balances, the interest collected, the letters of credit amended or even the $1.4 billion cut of Saddam's oil sales collected by Annan's secretariat to run the program (from which the Volcker inquiry is now drawing its $34 million budget, for which there has also been no public accounting).

In the spirit of full disclosure:

Instead of an easily searchable spreadsheet (which one must hope the 65 staffers of the $34 million Volcker inquiry have managed to put together over the past year), Volcker released a locked pdf file, in type so small it could better serve as an eye test. There are no addresses, there are no contract details; there columns of sums paid out, but still no mention of the details one might assume a former Fed chairman would know are basic to evaluating a contract, such as quantity. -- Claudia Rosett.

I have complete and total confidence in the report that's being released by the Volcker Commission tomorrow.

I know you will, too.