Spying for Saddam?

last updated 8 January 2015

Paris

Documents found in the wreckage of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry suggest that French officials regularly briefed Saddam Hussein’s regime on their dealings with the U.S., the London Sunday Times reported this week. After nearly every high-level discussion between the NATO allies—between President Bush and President Chirac, for example, or between Secretary of State Colin Powell and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine—French officials gave Iraqi officials updates on U.S. plans and U.S. policy. In one memo dated Sept. 25, 2001, Iraq’s then–foreign minister Naji Sabri said the French ambassador had assured him that the U.S. was “100 percent certain that Osama bin Laden was behind” the 9/11 attacks.