] On 25 May 2001, ICANN and VeriSign, Inc., entered into an
] Unsponsored Registry Agreement under which VeriSign
] operates the .com top-level domain. The agreement and its
] appendices may be viewed by following the links below.

Alright ... here it is ... I haven't had time to read it yet. The agreement was between verisign and ICANN and "overseen" by the Dept. of Commerce which apparently had some veto power in the matter.

ICANN | .com Registry Agreement