From FOXNews:

The integrity of the probe into the Oil-for-Food program is at stake and lives may be in jeopardy if sensitive information regarding details of the investigation is leaked, Paul Volcker said Friday.

Volcker, the man picked by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to lead the investigation, publicly responded to recent congressional efforts to subpoena a former senior investigator on the Independent Inquiry Committee who thinks the panel has been too soft on Annan in its investigation.

That former investigator, Robert Parton, has been called to testify before Congress and this week turned over some investigation documents pertaining to Annan. That evidence includes audiotapes of interviews conducted with Annan, FOX News has learned. Sources had previously said that the evidence shows inconsistencies in the story Annan told investigators about his knowledge of his son Kojo’s work for Cotecna, a company that won a lucrative Oil-for-Food contract.

Volcker said Friday that Congress has to restrain itself from requiring certain acts and information from current or former IIC members as it conducts hearings into Oil-for-Food.

“It is essential that it also protect the integrity and the confidentiality of the independent investigating committee,” Volcker told reporters in New York, saying the probe involved “highly sensitive matters.”

“Lives of certain witnesses are at stake,” he added. “We’re not playing games here, we are dealing, and let me just emphasize this, in some cases, with lives.”

In a later question-and-answer session, Volcker did not elaborate too much on who may be threatened if too much information about who has cooperated is publicized, saying, “I couldn’t tell you specifically who was threatening witnesses.”

But he said: “We have had several amounts of cooperation from Iraq. You might understand there is concern from certain families … I do not limit that concern to Iraqis.”

Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., chairman of the House Government Reform’s Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, issued a subpoena to Parton on Thursday. Parton on Wednesday night handed over documents relating to the investigation after he was issued a subpoena by another panel, the House International Relations Committee, on April 29.

“He [Parton] did decide to leave his work because he didn’t agree with the findings of the report” released by the IIC in March, Shays told FOX News on Friday.

Parton and another IIC investigator, Miranda Duncan, left the panel headed by Paul Volcker in mid-April. They accused the IIC of downplaying Annan’s role in the scandal in an interim report released by the panel last March.

“The whole reason why the Volcker report was taking place was to bring confidence to the U.N. … we would learn the good, the bad and the ugly. The bottom line is, we don’t really have confidence in that report,” Shays said.

Shays is requesting documents and other information relevant to the probe of the $64 billion program and has called on Parton to testify before his committee “to help augment the public record on matters too long shrouded in secrecy.”

[…] Volcker, who is standing by his statement that the former IIC staffers should have diplomatic immunity, on Friday said three things should be done.

One, Parton could be released from his IIC confidentiality obligation limited to the specific purpose of giving a public statement about his views on the part of the report in question which deals with Annan. Two, the congressional committees should withdraw their subpoenas challenging immunities and privileges “inherent” in the United Nations and the IIC.

“Immunity’s long accepted by all member nations of all international institutions, including the United States,” Volcker said.

And third, IIC files that may contain confidential interviews and other information should be “promptly returned to the IIC, which is, in fact, the rightful owner.”

“This is critical to the committee’s work … they [witnesses] have placed their trust in our confidentiality,” Volcker added.

Shays said his panel tried to work with the IIC on ways, short of a subpoena, to evaluate the information Parton can provide about “key pieces of evidence regarding U.N. contracting.” Neither the IIC nor the United Nations should stonewall the effort, he warned.

“I think Mr. Volcker … should just let this gentleman speak to Congress,” Shays told FOX News. “Mr. Volcker believes, basically, all the evidence was presented in the report. They just disagree on the conclusion of that evidence.”

[…] A source close to Parton defended him and told FOX News on Friday: “Mr Parton is a professional and an honorable man who is acting reluctantly under compulsion of a congressional subpoena.”

[…] House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde has directed his own investigators to examine documents given to them by Parton this week.

“It is my hope and expectation that neither the United Nations nor the independent inquiry will attempt to sanction Mr. Parton for complying with a lawful subpoena,” the Illinois Republican said.

The boxes handed over by Parton are believed to contain information damaging to the secretary-general because, as sources told FOX News, they describe inconsistencies in the story Annan told investigators about a conflict of interest involving Kojo Annan and Cotecna, the Swiss company that employed Kojo Annan and which won one of the most lucrative Oil-for-Food contracts.

Volcker wrote a letter to Parton’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, on Thursday as well as to Shays, saying that turning over any investigation-related documents violated confidentiality agreements.

[…] So far, Volcker’s panel has released two interim reports that say the program suffered from mismanagement and raise questions about the role of Kojo Annan. A final report is expected to be released this summer.

I watched a bit of Volcker’s performance this afternoon, and I must say I was stunned by the desperation that permeated the thing.  On the plus side, Volcker made it clear that his investigation had never exonerated Kofi Annan; instead, he maintained that the evidence was not sufficient to prove any willful wrongdoing on Annan’s part.  Which is a bit like the Thornburg/Boccardi report concluding that it couldn’t with certainty pronounce on the authenticity of the infamous Rathergate memos.

Fortunately, nobody but a handful of irredeemably blind partisan apologists believed that nonsense, either.