Vincent was first identified as a participant in the Oil-for-Food Program late last year when he was listed as a recipient of oil "vouchers" granted by Saddam's regime in the lengthy report written by Charles Duelfer, the CIA's chief weapons investigator in Iraq. After the Duelfer report came out, Kemp's organization, FreedomWorks, temporarily removed the press release mentioning Vincent from its Web site, the group's spokesman, Andrew Porter confirmed to NEWSWEEK.

Davis said that Kemp had put Vincent on the Marshall Plan committee because "he seemed to have knowledge about the Middle East and connections with the Iraqi government." Kemp also said that he asked Carlucci, the chairman emeritus of the Carlyle Group, the prominent international investment firm, about Vincent. Carlucci told Kemp that Vincent was a "good guy," said Kemp, who added that Carlucci and Vincent were tennis partners. A spokesman for Carlucci, who served as Defense secretary during President Ronald Reagan's second term, declined to comment on his relationship with Vincent.

One source close to the Vincent investigation said that Kemp and Vincent had discussions in which business dealings were "contemplated" but never consummated. But Kemp adamantly denied there were any such talks--and said his company, Free Market Global, has done no business in Iraq. "Never, never did [Kemp] discuss any business ventures with Vincent," Davis added.

Kemp also serves on the board of a Kuwaiti-based company, Global Investment House, which has been seeking to set up business ventures in Iraq. But Kemp said that it has been unable to establish any such ventures due to the security problems in Iraq and that the Kuwaiti firm had no dealings with Vincent.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Vincent's indictment and guilty pleas, portraying the Iraqi-American businessman as one of a number of "accomplices in corrupting and weakening the international sanctions program imposed" on Saddam Hussein after the first Persian Gulf War.

In a brief court appearance in New York on Tuesday, Vincent told U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin that in the early 1990s, he had become concerned about the effect that sanctions were having on the Iraqi public. He said that between 1992 and 1996, he met with Iraqi officials in New York and Baghdad to discuss the creation of a program under which Iraq would be allowed to sell crude oil under U.N. auspices and use the proceeds for humanitarian supplies. He said that during the course of these discussions, Saddam's regime promised to pay "millions of dollars to me and others" if the U.N. set up an oil-for-food program.