France helped Iraqis escape

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The French government secretly supplied fleeing Iraqi officials with passports in Syria that allowed them to escape to Europe, The Washington Times has learned. Top Stories

An unknown number of Iraqis who worked for Saddam Hussein's government were given passports by French officials in Syria, U.S. intelligence officials said.

The passports are regarded as documents of the European Union, because of France's membership in the union, and have helped the Iraqis avoid capture, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.

The French support, which was revealed through sensitive intelligence-gathering means, angered Pentagon, State Department and intelligence officials in Washington because it undermined the search for senior aides to Saddam, who fled Iraq in large numbers after the fall of Baghdad on April 9.

"It made it very difficult to track these people," one official said.

A second Bush administration official said, "It's like Raoul Wallenberg in reverse," a reference to the Swedish diplomat who supplied travel documents to help Jews escape Nazi Germany in World War II. "Now you have the French helping the bad guys escape from us."

Asked about the passports, Nathalie Loiseau, a spokeswoman for the French Embassy, said French authorities have not issued any visas to officials of the former Iraqi regime since the beginning of the war in Iraq, either in Syria or elsewhere.

"France formally denies this type of allegation, which is not only contrary to reality but is intended to discredit our nation," she said. "It is certainly time for rumors of this type — totally unfounded and a dishonor to those who spread them — to stop."

The French passports allow the wanted Iraqis to move freely among 12 EU countries that are part of the Schengen agreement on unrestricted travel. Britain, Denmark and Ireland are not part of the Schengen pact.

The intelligence on the French passports came after reports indicated that a French company covertly sold military spare parts to Iraq in the weeks before the war.

Other intelligence reports indicated that a French oil company was working with a Russian oil firm to conclude a deal with Saddam's government in the days before military action began March 19.

The French government also denied U.S. intelligence indicating that a Chinese chemical company used French and Syrian brokers to circumvent U.N. sanctions in providing Iraq with chemicals used in making missile fuel.

Regarding the French passports for fleeing Iraqis, Pentagon officials have expressed frustration that few of the most senior leaders identified on the list of top 55 officials of the Saddam regime have been captured.

The capture yesterday of an Iraqi biological weapons scientist, Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, brings to 19 the number of senior Iraqi leaders who have been caught. One has been reported killed.

Only one of the captives is ranked in the top 10.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Sunday that he did not know how many Iraqi officials had been given haven in Syria.

"Some have been made available to us," Mr. Powell said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"Let me put it that way: Who we knew were there are no longer there," he said. "They've been made available to us, and they will be before the bar of justice of the Iraqi people."

Mr. Powell said other wanted Iraqis have been identified to the Syrian government "to see whether they can be located."

"But my sense from President Bashar al-Assad is that he has no interest in serving as a haven for any of these individuals," Mr. Powell said. "So I think if we can give him information and give him specific names and anything else we can say about these people, I think he would try to respond."

It could not be learned whether Mr. Powell and the Syrian president discussed Iraqis who might have transited through Syria to other nations.

Mr. Powell said Syria has been "helpful" in the past two years in dealing with the war on terrorism, primarily through U.S. and Syrian intelligence liaison.

The secretary also told Mr. Assad that "there may be people in Syria that we don't know about but you know about" who should be turned over to U.S. forces.

"This is the time for you to locate these individuals and turn them over to Iraqi justice and not allow Syria to become a haven for materials that might be coming out of Iraq still, or came out of Iraq or individuals who are trying to seek haven," he said.

Under pressure from the United States, Syria in the past several weeks expelled more than 30 Iraqis, many who came from Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.

After first granting sanctuary to former Iraqi intelligence official Farouk Hijazi, Syria turned him over to U.S. officials in Iraq.

Congress is considering legislation that would impose economic sanctions on Syria for its support of terrorism and to pressure it to withdraw its forces from Lebanon and stop building ballistic missiles.

I'm sure the Iraqi people are happy about all this.

Search for Iraqis focuses on Europe
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

U.S. intelligence agencies are intensifying the search in Europe for officials of Saddam Hussein's government who fled Iraq with the help of French passports, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The search efforts were strengthened after intelligence sources reported that France's government secretly provided fleeing Iraqi officials with European Union travel documents in Syria that allowed them to escape to other countries, said U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Washington Times first reported yesterday that U.S. intelligence officials said the French government provided an unknown number of Iraqis in Syria with passports that allowed them to travel to Western Europe in late March and early April.

Several U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said yesterday that they could not confirm the report, but the matter would be further investigated. Mr. Powell told reporters, "It's one press report, and I have just started my day, and I have not looked into it. I don't know the source. I don't know if it's accurate or not." He said he had not talked to French officials and would look into the allegations.

Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "I think the French will have to explain what they did or did not do."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said he was not aware of the intelligence reports on which The Times story was based. He said the State Department accepts the French government denial that it provided passports to fleeing Iraqis.

"I think, first of all, the French government has spoken about this — I believe will speak again — and says it's not true," Mr. Boucher said. "We have nothing that would lead us to doubt that at this point. At this point, we're not able to corroborate the reports."

Other U.S. officials said the French passports had made it difficult to track down fleeing Iraqis because they had allowed Saddam's officials to travel freely in 12 EU countries.

Defense and intelligence officials said they have been frustrated by the failure to capture senior Iraqi leaders since the fall of Baghdad on April 9.

Officials said they do not know yet whether the failure to capture high-ranking Iraqis is linked to the issuance of the French passports.

The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies are increasing their focus on Western Europe as a location for former Iraqi regime officials who are now in hiding, the officials said.

So far, 19 Iraqis on a list of 55 most-wanted officials have been captured by coalition forces.

Only one of the captured officials is regarded as among the most-wanted 10.

The French Embassy in Washington denied the report again yesterday, calling the allegations of U.S. intelligence sources "totally false and scandalous."

Said spokeswoman Nathalie Loiseau: "There's no basis to it. There is not one Iraqi official in Europe thanks to France."

Just to be fair I posted the followup column from today.

Intelligence team finds French passports in Iraq

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A U.S. military intelligence team in Iraq has uncovered a dozen French passports, and defense officials believe other French passports from the same batch were used by Iraqis to flee the country.
Defense officials are still investigating whether the passports were provided covertly by the French government, or were stolen or forged by Saddam Hussein's regime, said defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
France's government has denied that it provided any passports to fleeing Iraqi officials and called news reports of French collaboration with Saddam's regime U.S. "disinformation."
Disclosure of the passports comes as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is in Paris attempting to repair Washington's strained ties with France over its opposition to U.S. military action in Iraq.
Mr. Powell said yesterday that ties between the two allies are "excellent" but that differences over Iraq remain. "We're not going to paper over it and pretend it didn't occur," he said. "It did occur. But we're going to work through that."
Mr. Powell told France's TF1 television that the Bush administration is disappointed with French opposition to the war in Iraq. He said Washington is reviewing its relations with France to see whether changes are needed.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security this week concluded an intelligence investigation that said that reports of France's role in providing passports to former Iraqi officials could not be confirmed.
According to the defense officials, the French passports found in Iraq were obtained by U.S. military teams in the country within the past several weeks.
The teams are searching for weapons of mass destruction and gathering intelligence on Iraq's arms programs.
"There were about a dozen French passports recovered that we know of," one defense official said. No other details were provided.
The official said the passports themselves do not mean that France provided the documents and that the passports may have been looted from the French Embassy.
"And if embassies are looted, blank passports would be a great commodity in the right hands," the official said. "The French had a lot of business interests in Iraq through the [U.N.] oil-for-food program."
According to numerous U.S. press accounts from Iraq, however, the French Embassy in Baghdad was not looted.
The French Embassy was protected by armed guards and barbed wire in the days after the fall of Baghdad to coalition forces.
A French cultural center in Baghdad was sacked by looters, but officials said it is unlikely that the center had blank passports.
Embassies normally have spare passports for their nationals in case passports are lost or stolen.
France would have had blank passports in its embassy for any French nationals who might have been doing business with Saddam's government under the U.N. oil-for-food program.
A second defense official said he believes that the French passports found in Iraq were part of a batch used by some former Iraqi officials to flee the country to avoid being captured by coalition forces.
The Washington Times first reported on May 6 that U.S. intelligence agencies had uncovered information that the French government provided Iraqi officials from Saddam's government with passports that allowed them to escape the country.
U.S. intelligence officials were upset by the passport assistance because the French documents gave the fleeing Iraqis free travel within 12 European Union countries, making it harder to find and capture the officials.
Coalition forces in Iraq have captured about half of the 55 Iraqi officials listed as the most-wanted members of Saddam's regime.
The failure to capture most of the high-ranking officials has been a source of frustration, defense officials said.
Reports of France providing passports to Iraqis led to an investigation of the matter by the Department of Homeland Security.
The probe was requested two weeks ago by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, based on the report in The Times, which quoted U.S. intelligence officials.
Raj Bharwani, a spokesman for Mr. Sensenbrenner, said in an interview that the Judiciary Committee was notified Tuesday by the Homeland Security Department that there was "no indication that France supplied passports to Iraqis" fleeing from coalition forces.
A Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the investigation involved checking with "our intelligence sources" about the matter.
"All of our sources indicated that the allegations were incorrect," the official said.
Asked whether the department knew about the French passports found in Iraq, the official referred questions to the CIA.
A CIA spokesman had no comment. But a U.S. official said, "We don't have any information on that."
The official suggested that if the Iraqis had French passports, the documents may have been forged. "The Iraqis are adept at forging passports," the official said.
Defense officials said the CIA had no report about the French passports and was instrumental in the Homeland Security Department probe coming up empty.
A State Department official said the French provision of passports to the Iraqis was like "Raoul Wallenberg in reverse" — a reference to the Swedish diplomat who helped Jews escape Nazi Germany during World War II.
In Iraq, "the French were helping the bad guys escape," the official said.
French government officials have denied that they in any way assisted fleeing Iraqis.
France's government strongly opposed U.S. military action in Iraq. French President Jacques Chirac stated two days before the start of the war that Saddam was not a threat that warranted military action.
Other intelligence reports in recent months showed covert French collaboration with Saddam's government.
A defense intelligence report in early March showed that French oil companies were working with Russian oil firms to conclude deals with Saddam's regime that both companies hoped would be honored by any successor government.
Iraq also succeeded in obtaining spare parts for its Mirage jets and Gazelle helicopters in January from a French company working through a firm in the United Arab Emirates.
A French broker also helped a Chinese chemical manufacturer ship a chemical used in making solid missile fuel to Iraq, according to intelligence officials.

No different I imagine. Considering Great Britain and Russia did it as well guess we're all evil.