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The French Connection Kenneth Timmerman reports on deep and tight Chirac-Saddam ties. NRO Mar 22, 2004 Kathryn Lopez Posted on 03/22/2004 2:21:43 PM PST by neverdem Kenneth Timmerman, a New York Times best-selling author, lived and worked as an investigative reporter in France for 18 years. His latest book, The French Betrayal of America, was released last week from Crown Forum. NRO: It seems cool these days for right-of-center Americans to French-bash: Hasnt it gone a little too far? Arent you just adding to the lifespan of freedom fries with a book about a betrayal? Timmerman: Its a serious matter when the leaders of a country such as France show by their actions that they are willing to jettison a friendship with America that goes back 225 years in favor of a dictator such as Saddam Hussein, whose claim to fame includes the massacre of some 300,000 of his own people. And yet, that is precisely what French president Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin have done. They have shown that they were willing to exchange exclusive oil deals with Saddam, and political payoffs, for the French alliance with America. NRO: Did Chirac actually lie to President Bush before the Iraq war? To demonstrate his intentions, he said, he was sending one of his top generals to Tampa, Florida, to work out the details with United States Central Command leaders for integrating French troops into a Coalition force to oust Saddam. Chiracs assurances are what gave the president the confidence to keep sending Colin Powell back to the United States, one source who was privy to Chiracs phone call to Bush told me. They also explain why the administration has been going after the French so aggressively ever since. One of my favorite stories is the bullfight Chirac hosted for Saddam in the southern France resort town les Baux-de-Provence in September 1975, where Saddam bet $600,000 on the bulls. During that first trip Saddam made to France, Chirac stuck to him like glue. He also arranged to sell Saddam a nuclear-research reactor, which Saddam himself called a nuclear-bomb plant. If the Israelis hadnt taken it out in a daring air strike in June 1981, there is no doubt that Saddam would have had the ability to make a nuclear weapon by 1985 at the latest. NRO: How much of a friend would France be losing if the people of Iran were to topple the mullahs? Timmerman: The people of Iran will remember who befriended them in their time of need, and who helped the mullahs retain power by legitimating them, apologizing for them, and letting them literally get away with murder. Iranian hit teams operated in Europe with virtual impunity throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, murdering Iranian dissidents, while the Europeans carried out a policy they called constructive engagement. The only constructive thing about it was the number of chemical plants and missile-design centers they built for the mullahs. While Germany certainly led the way, France was never far behind and continues to send trade delegations to Tehran and to defend Iran as it hides its nuclear-weapons program from the IAEA. NRO: You accuse France of actually encouraging genocide it seems like an outrageous charge. Timmerman: Its a very specific charge, made by Hoshyar Zebari, who is now the Iraqi foreign minister. Zebari was referring to the massacre of the Marsh Arabs who used to live in the Howeiza marshes along the southern border between Iran and Iraq. In the mid-1990s, at the urging of the French, who worried about sending their oil engineers into the area, Saddam drained the marshes an area the size of the state of Delaware turning the rich, fertile homeland of this ancient people into a dust bowl. Then he sent in the Republican Guards, massacring thousands of civilians. To make the area safe for French oil engineers and French oil workers. NRO: You say in your new book that the Iraq war was, in fact, all about oil. Timmerman: The war in Iraq was indeed a war for oil waged by the French, not the United States. The Chirac government was desperate to maintain its exclusive and outrageously exploitative oil contracts with Saddams regime, which would have earned the French an estimated $100 billion during the first seven years of operations, according to experts I interviewed for my book. My worry today is that a Kerry administration would back the French, who continue to assert that these contracts are legally binding on the new Iraqi government. That would be a travesty and a dishonor to all those Iraqis who died under Saddam. NRO: What are French motivations when dealing with these regimes purely economic?
When French businessmen go abroad, they often travel in delegations led by the prime minister, or the foreign minister, or some other top official. The French government gets involved not just in opening doors, but in negotiating contracts. Often, these contracts have involved substantial kickbacks to French political parties. Even today, French companies can declare as an expense on their income-tax declaration the bribes and commissions they pay to foreign agents. This was banned in the United States in the 1970s under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This is one of the reasons the French like to do business with dictators. Timmerman: Over the past 15 years, I have had the privilege to become close to the top French counterterrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, arguably the worlds top expert on al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks. I went back to meet him at his Paris office in October 2001, and he was grinning like a cat that had swallowed a canary. He had new information, he told me, that would be of tremendous use to United States prosecutors on Zacharias Moussaoui, and couldnt wait to turn it over. Then the politicians got wind of what he wanted to do, and came down on him like a ton of bricks. They ordered him not to turn over evidence that could be used in a United States court unless the United States promised not to seek the death penalty against Moussaoui. He knew all about his trips to Afghanistan, his operational ties to Afghanistan, and exactly how he fit into the al Qaeda spiders web. And while he privately briefed United States prosecutors on this information, none of it can be used in court because of the French governments ban. Had Bruguiere been allowed to present this evidence, Moussaouis trial would have been over long ago. NRO: And meanwhile, we deal with France on a nuclear level-sharing technologies, you write. Will they pay, in terms of the closing of communication doors with the United States for their Iraq position past and present? Timmerman: I was quite surprised, as I was investigating the extensive nuclear-weapons cooperation between the United States and France, to discover that top Bush-administration officials were not aware that our national nuclear labs were still helping the French. Even today, United States taxpayers are subsidizing the French nuclear-weapons establishment. I think it is time for Congress to hold hearings on the United States-French nuclear relationship, to shed some daylight on a very murky subject and to open a much-needed debate on whether France can still be trusted with our nuclear secrets. NRO: Is there any negotiating with France getting her to see our view of the world? That certainly didnt happen pre-Iraq liberation, but could it come post or do things just get worse, as France continues to help Iran and who else?
I suggested that perhaps if the French wanted better relations with the United States they might start by putting a new face on their diplomacy. I see no reason why any United States administration should take Mr. De Villepin seriously or take his word on anything, given his track record of deceit and open lies. NRO: Did the Madrid attacks shake France any, being as it was so close to home? Timmerman: Al Qaeda has now threatened France because of a new French law banning so-called Muslim head scarves in the French public schools. I happen to think they were, because the radical Islamists were using the headscarf as a means of increasing their political power and of terrorizing Muslim girls into submission. Whats clea...
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