Oil-For-Food: France's 'Ambassador for Life' Admits Role
From the NY Sun,

The Frenchman, who holds the title "ambassador for life," told authorities that he regretted taking payments amounting to $156,000 in 2002.

The money was used to renovate a holiday home he owned in southern Morocco. At the time, Mr. Merimee was a special adviser to Secretary-General Annan. According to yesterday's Le Figaro, he told judge Philippe Courroye during an interview on October 12: "I should not have done what I did. I regret it."

No wonder Michael Ledeen's been chanelling James Jesus Angleton from the far beyond,

JJA: Think like a counterintelligence analyst for once. It's an old-fashioned sting operation. You're Jacques Chirac, okay? You want to embarrass the Americans and protect your buddy Saddam Hussein, right? The Americans are running around trying to find evidence of a covert Iraqi nuclear program. So, first you feed them some crappy information along those lines, hoping that they'll buy it, and then you arrange — through Rocco in Italy — to have these documents surface. The documents "confirm" the disinformation and of course also what the Americans want to believe anyway. The Americans launch their accusations, then it turns out that the documents are forgeries, and bad forgeries at that, and so the Americans look like idiots and the causus belli disappears. In one move, you've helped your friend Saddam and hurt the Americans. Terrific. Chapeau, and all that.

At this rate, maybe it'll take a psychic to find out where they parked the car.

(technorati tag Oil-For-Food)