Jacques Chirac, the former French president who died last week at age 86, was a staunch opponent of the US-led war in Iraq — but that’s because he was secretly on Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s payroll, a new report reveals.
Chirac was bribed millions to publicly oppose the war, Sir Richard Dearlove, who headed Britain’s MI6 spy agency at the time, told the Daily Mail.
Intelligence agencies with both the UK and the US were on to the payoffs, Dearlove said.
“There were strong indications in the US and UK [intelligence services],” he said, that Chirac pocketed some $6 million from the Iraqi tyrant, money the French leader used for his presidential elections in 1995 and 2002.
“His recent obituaries are saying that Chirac got it right [on Iran] and the rest of us got it wrong. But I am saying that Chirac’s motive for getting it right may not appear to be what it was.”
Chirac had joined the leadership of Germany and Russia in opposing plans by the US and Britain to invade Iraq in 2003 on the ultimately mistaken belief that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
Chirac’s anti-war stance prompted The Post to deride the French as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys–” a taunt that persisted for years.
