The concealment efforts that long thwarted investigators are over.

The report says that Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, is among a handful of officials close to Mr. Hussein who devised and still run the concealment effort.

A report by the nuclear agency's director, Mohamed ElBaradei, in November 2004 said that the destruction of the site raised "the possibility of a concealment effort" by Iran to hide uranium-enrichment activities.

"We know that the Iraqi government has chemical weapons and is involved in a very elaborate concealment effort," he said.

The commission has recently received information from multiple sources identifying organizations that direct and implement the Iraqi concealment effort.

"This was the beginning of the concealment effort."

The information it gathered was used to help break Saddam's concealment effort, and the information was passed on to United Nations Security Council members.

"Better," was all that the gray wizard had said about my concealment efforts, and that admission had seemed grudging enough.

It added that "Baghdad's vigorous concealment efforts" had left information on many aspects of its weapons on mass destruction programs uncovered.

He also reported on "extensive concealment efforts" and "a systematic sanitation of documentary and computer laboratories" intended to hide what he called "clandestine on-going research and development activities" in chemical and biological weapons.