The timing of the container's removal is significant. If the container was removed immediately before being deposited in Saddam City, that would mean 1996, when the U.N. inspectors had already been working on the site for several years, inspecting the facilities and destroying chemicals that could be used in the production of chemical weapons. The fact that a canister could disappear would raise questions about UNSCOM's ability to account for all of Iraq's chemical weapons-related material. In fact, one former U.N. inspector who headed a team at the time, Ron Manley, says "Given the state of the site and the size of the site, it is not unlikely that one cylinder could have gone amiss."

If, on the other hand, the container had already been counted by the inspectors, it could explain the later actions of apparent compliance on the part of the Iraqis once they retrieved the container: It would help them maybe fill a tiny gap in their declaration.

But all this is speculative: It is impossible to determine the date of the container's disappearance from Al-Muthanna. It could even have been taken out in 1991, after the Gulf War and before the inspectors arrived.

As for why the canister was smuggled out of Al-Muthanna, the most likely explanation is that whoever did it intended to sell it on the black market -- which is, of course, exactly what happened.

Another critical -- and ambiguous -- factor in assessing the story is the actual substance in the canister. Despite the talk on the videotape about the deadly gas VX, our investigation confirmed that the canister contained something much less deadly: the dual-use chemical hydrogen fluoride, or HF. Dual-use chemicals are internationally controlled substances that can be used in the production of chemical weapons but that also have legitimate applications. Even under sanctions, the U.N. allowed Iraq to import HF for use in its chemical industry, although the end-use was supervised and the facilities inspected to see that none of the material went missing. HF is used as a catalyst in various industrial processes, including the production of detergents, as well as in the manufacturing of the nerve gas sarin and the enrichment of uranium to make nuclear weapons.

The amount of HF in the canister is hardly significant for military purposes and by itself, without the presence of known chemical-weapons precursors, it seems to say very little about Iraq's chemical weapons program. But the fact that this particular cylinder, and others like it that we found later on, were manufactured in Al-Muthanna indicates that it was more than likely destined to be used in the production of sarin. Iraq produced large quantities of this nerve agent in the 1980s, using it against Iran and possibly in the infamous 1988 gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja.

Of course, it was Iraq's failure to account for the difference between its known stocks of chemical weapons and "precursors" (chemicals that can be used to make WMD) and its later declaration that it had none that the U.S. cited as one of the reasons for the invasion.

The obvious question this affair poses for those who maintain that Saddam still had an active chemical weapons program after 1991 is: Why did they turn the canister over to the monitoring agency? With no U.N. inspectors around in 2000, the Mukhabarat could if it chose have used the retrieved cylinder for some nefarious purpose. If Iraq still in fact had a covert program to produce sarin, as the U.S. claimed, it could have used the container, despite the small amount of HF it contained, to produce "terrorist quantities" rather than military quantities of the nerve agent. Or it could have been used to train scientists, in preparation for a renewed program.

Then there is the nuclear-weapons connection. In the now infamous British dossier, the U.K. government claims that Iraq was seeking HF to use in uranium enrichment. The cylinder's amount in this context is totally insignificant, but if the government of Saddam Hussein was indeed looking for ways to import or skim off HF from legitimate purposes, would it not also have used even the smallest amount?

None of these things apparently happened.

It is of course possible that Iraq did have covert WMD programs, and that it did not need such a small amount because it had set up separate routes of supply. Indeed, transferring the retrieved cylinder to such programs might have carried a risk of exposure by providing a trail. Also, if such programs existed very few people probably knew about it. Finally, it cannot be ruled out that the cylinder did not end up at the Arab Cleaning Company, even though that was the destination discussed on the videotape.

For any conclusions at all to be reached, the story must be airtight -- and it is. Apart from the evidence on the videotape, we managed over the course of several weeks to track down and interview some of the major players in the affair, including the informer himself, one of the people who was involved in selling the container of chemicals on the black market and one of his family members. Our investigation confirmed the main facts on the tape.

This much is known. After leaving Al-Muthanna under unknown circumstances, the container was acquired by an engineer, who apparently bought the phone-booth-sized canister at a scrap auction in 1996, intending to resell it. This engineer stored it in a backyard in the impoverished Shiite Baghdad neighborhood of Saddam City for at least four years. In 2000, some two years after UNSCOM had withdrawn its inspectors from Iraq, he decided to try to sell it. He brought in a friend, Majed al-Ezzi, who in turn called a family member, Abed Nasser -- who turned out, of course, to be an informer for the secret service.

Abed Nasser immediately betrayed Majed -- but by doing so he put himself in a delicate position. Majed was his wife's cousin, and Majed's powerful clan, the al-Ezzis, would be sure to demand vengeance if his role became known. Here begins the Keystone Kops element of the tale. The hapless Abed Nasser made a major mistake: To convince the other people arrested in the sting operation that he was also a victim rather than an informer, he was supposed to spend time in jail with them. But Abed Nasser, perhaps too confident after years of working for the Mukhabarat, overreached: He made only a brief and unconvincing stay behind bars before checking himself into a luxurious hotel, the Babylon on the river Tigris -- a favorite haunt of Saddam Hussein's hedonistic son Uday. Unfortunately for Abed Nasser, his family somehow found out that he had checked into the posh hotel, rather than travelling to the northern city of Mosul which had been his cover story.

On the tape, Abed Nasser tells his bosses his family may have suspected he was seeing another woman.

Habbush, not surprisingly, is irritated by this screw-up, and berates his subordinates: "If you would have told me that you were going to send him to a hotel I would have said not to. At least you should have spent two or three days with those who were arrested."

But Abed Nasser's real problem is not suspicions of infidelity, but the fact that his wife's family, the al-Ezzi clan, found out that he was responsible for the arrest of Majed. Majed, who used to be an engineer at Iraq's Nuclear Energy Council, was a middleman in the sale of the cylinder, which was initiated by one of his colleagues. Apparently the al-Ezzis received the news of Majed's arrest from a family member, Walid al-Ezzi, who was an officer in the Mukhabarat.

On the tape, Abed Nasser tells his bosses that the al-Ezzis have threatened to kill him if he doesn't get Majed out of jail. Habbush finally agrees to let Majed go -- after some deft footwork to make sure Abed Nasser gets credit -- and then orders the arrest of the leak in his organization, Walid al-Ezzi. With one phone call, he tells an officer to put Walid in an isolation cell. For a few moments things look decidedly bleak for this al-Ezzi, until Abdel Wahab reminds Habbush of the rather obvious point that arresting Walid will also get Abed Nasser into trouble. With one simple phone call from Habbush the arrest order is cancelled.

Recent Stories