William Safire: Duelfer Report Catches France Red-Handed

William Safire: Duelfer Report Catches France Red-Handed
William Safire/NYT International Herald Tribune

WASHINGTON Powerful officials and their profiteering friends in France had a reason to try to stop the United States from overthrowing Saddam Hussein: They were pocketing billions in payoffs through a UN oil-for-food front.

That's the import of the Duelfer report. This nonpartisan investigation team found not only documents "giving economic favors to key French diplomats or individuals that have access to key French leaders," but also got Saddam's mouthpiece, Tariq Aziz, to sing about their purpose: "According to Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council."

Charles Duelfer's group put on the public record the name of Charles Pasqua, France's former interior minister and now a senator. Pasqua denied all to the BBC and fingered ex-associates: "Maybe other former ministers are involved."

The former French ambassador to the United Nations., Jean-Bernard Mérimée, is listed as receiving vouchers for 11 million barrels of oil from Saddam, the proceeds from which would beat a diplomat's pay.

Another of President Jacques Chirac's friends receiving Saddam's UN largesse is Patrick Maugein, "whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac," according to the report.

Maugein, 58, whose association with Chirac has occasionally been chronicled by the French journalist Karl Laske, is chairman of Soco, an oil company active in Vietnam. He's down for 13 million barrels. French oil companies Total and Socap got about 200 million barrels.

A name that keeps coming up in my poking around is Marc Rich, the American billionaire who was for many years a fugitive, until blessed with one of Bill Clinton's midnight pardons. Rich's company Trafigura, spun off from the Swiss-based Glencore, and its possible dealings with outfits like Jean-Paul Cayre's Ibex have excited the interest of many of the sleuths I've spoken to.

France's diplomats here are apoplectic, calling the unconfirmed Duelfer reports "unacceptable." They note in high dudgeon that U.S. firms involved in the United Nations corrupt caper are not named by the U.S. team and deride our excuse about "privacy laws." But within 24 hours of the damning report's issuance, Judith Miller and her colleagues had the names of the U.S. companies involved - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco, Bay Oil and one Oscar Wyatt Jr. of Houston, who may have profited by $23 million - on the front page of The New York Times. (Will our runaway anti-press prosecutor try to clap Judy in jail for protecting her confidential government sources on this one, too?)

The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued seven subpoenas and a dozen hard-to-ignore chairman's letters from Senator Norm Coleman to companies in the United States, as well as to multinationals doing business here. I hear the committee has met no legal resistance so far. Ben Pollner, head of Taurus Oil, active in Iraq all through the oil-for-food fiasco, stiffed Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's men. (Pollner tells me his dealings were legal, but he clammed up to investigators because he remembers Martha Stewart.)

What also miffs the French is that Russian officials and oligarchs were able to rip off even more than France's predators. Vladimir Zhirinovsky made out like a bandit when his party had some power; so did "the office of the Russian president" and the Peace and Unity Party, both headed by the unmentionable Putin.

As the hares zoom by, Paul Volcker, the UN investigative tortoise, tells his people to forget the French and Russians and to concentrate on Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Benon Sevan, and Kofi Annan's son's relationship with Cotecna, the United Nations' see-no-evil "monitor." The White House is wringing its hands because it needs the United Nations' blessing on the Iraqi election, and John Kerry no doubt wants nothing to do with the question.

If I were a French reporter and wanted to lose my job at Chirac's Le Figaro in a hurry, I would drop in at 24 Boulevard Princesse Charlotte in Monaco and ask if Patrick Maugein, Rui de Souza or Mario Contini has dropped by to see if Toro Energy and the African Middle East Petroleum company are still there. If that's a blind alley, try the casino.