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, .
Intelligence agencies w൩ith 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 an🌞d 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–” .