30 April 2006 Blog Home : April 2006 : Permalink
The judicial inquiry into the smear campaign was initiated after an investigation revealed that Sarkozy and the others were not guilty of the allegations. However, that raised the question of who sent the list and why.
Several French newspapers and the author of a controversial book about Clearstream, Denis Roberts, have suggested that the man who compiled the list and sent it to the magistrate was a 40-year-old Franco-Lebanese computer whiz named Imad Lahoud.
Lahoud is related to the pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and, through his father-in-law, reportedly has close ties to French President Jacques Chirac.
More significantly, he once worked for the French intelligence service DSGC and also collaborated with one of France's most successful spies, General Philippe Rondot.
As with Watergate it seems like the crime may be less damaging that the spin and coverup. Just about the day the original accusations first broke there were guesses that this was an attempt by Vile Pin and l'Escroc to discredit their rivals and as the investigation has progressed the evidence mounts that Vile Pin, and possibly l'Escroc, were indeed involved. In the last couple of days Vile Pin has managed to do the ultimate faux pas and make public statements that were proven to be "economical with the actualité" almost immediately afterwards:In an interview published Friday in the daily Le Figaro, Villepin said he was 'deeply shocked, as prime minister, by certain associations and allegations concerning the state and its services.' [...]
He told the newspaper that on January 9, 2004, he asked Rondot to look into rumours that French politicians and businessmen had received large payoffs in the sale of six Lafayette-type frigates to Taiwan by the French state-owned concern Thomson.
Nothing came of that investigation, Villepin said, and declared that he knew nothing about Sarkozy's name on any list.
However, the ink was scarcely dry on the Le Figaro interview when Villepin's version of the facts was contradicted in the daily Le Monde (which is published several hours after Le Figaro) by Rondot himself.
The newspaper divulged what it described as extracts from Rondot's testimony on March 28 to the magistrates investigating the libel case.
[...] Rondot said he was summoned by Villepin to a meeting on January 9 at which Gergorin was also present.
Rondot said that at this meeting Villepin, then foreign minister, 'informed me of instructions he had received on the subject of the Clearstream list from Jacques Chirac.'
Villepin then told him to go beyond the original instructions and investigate the politicians on the list.
'Mr Sarkozy's name was mentioned,' Rondot was reported to have told the magistrates, clearly contradicting Villepin's public statements.
More than that, notes Rondot made during the meeting suggested that Villepin was obsessed with Sarkozy.
'Political stakes,' Rondot's notes read. 'N Sarkozy. Fixation on N Sarkozy /re J Chirac/N Sarkozy feud.'
On Friday, both Chirac and Villepin categorically denied having asked for an investigation of Sarkozy.
Needless to say all sorts of people are rather unimpressed with subsequent Vile Pin excuses (google translation) - such as Jean-Louis Bourlanges who calls Vile Pin's defense "abysmal idiocy" (google translation). He also notes the problem for l'Escroc, if he has to dump Vile Pin after less than a year on the job who can he replace him with? Since l'Escroc hates Sarko (and vice versa) he clearly won't choose him but the governing party is rather short on competant people who are also loyal to l'Escroc - about the only choice I can think of is the defense minister Michele Alliot-Marie but she may well also be involved in the Clearstream affair. Ségolène Royal, the most likely socialist candidate for next year's presidential election, also pulls no punches:L'affaire Clearstream est "une confirmation de plus de la décomposition du régime chiraquien. La fin d'un règne sans éthique, l'explosion d'un système qui fait la part belle aux méthodes occultes, aux coups bas et aux manoeuvres de déstabilisation. Il est temps d'en finir", a-t-elle déclaré.
The Clearstream affair is "a further confirmation of the decomposition of the Chirac regime. The end of a reign without ethids, the explosion of a of a system that works for the most part in occult ways with low blows and destabilizing maneovers. It is time to end it" she said.
Sarko himself, has made it very clear, that he intends to both get to the bottom of the scandal and destroy those who attempted to frame him, as the Torygraph reports:Mr Sarkozy is said to have told Mr Chirac that his accuser, once exposed, would "end up on a meat hook" and promised an ally this week: "When I shoot, I shoot to kill, not to wound. The end to this is close."
I'm fairly sure that Vile Pin will be dumped in the near future as l'Escroc attempts to do the slopey shoulders trick and blame his underlings for what happened. Vile Pin, it always seemed to me, was a man promoted beyond his level of competance solely because of his ability to suck up to l'Escroc, and when threatened l'Escroc has thrown far better men to the wolves so, unless Vile Pin has some sort of a hold on l'Escroc - which I doubt - the question is not whether he is fired but when. L'Escroc deliberately kept his predecessor on until after the EU referendum to give himself a scapegoat and I'm fairly sure that he is running a similar calculation this time.Update: The Charles Bremner of the Wapping Liar has an excellent post at his blog
Update 2: More thoughts in this post and (update on May 11) this one, this one and this one