Word: giscards
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FRANCE. For its size, France has the most ambitious nuclear industry of any nation. It has 32 functioning reactors and is building 27 more. During the heyday of the French nuclear drive under President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the late 1970s, construction started on four or five reactors a year...
...sniffer-planes affair leaped into public attention last month with an article in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine. The Mitterrand government, under fire for its management of the limp French economy, suddenly found itself in a position to lambaste the previous administration, led by Valery Giscard d'Estaing. But even before Mitterrand could capitalize on the disclosure, Giscard went on national television to deny any wrongdoing. He implied that others, notably his Premier, Raymond Barre, were more directly involved. Barre, in response, insisted that the affair had to remain shrouded in secrecy "for defense reasons...
...mess evidently began in 1968, when Aldo Bonassoli, a telephone-company electrician in Ventimiglia, Italy, convinced Count Alain de Villegas, a wealthy private investor, that he could develop a technique for discovering oil from the air. A French intelligence agent learned of the project, and the Giscard government decided that it might be useful for detecting submarines. Villegas signed the first of a number of contracts with Elf-Aquitaine, and payments were made into secret Swiss bank accounts...
...came unraveled in 1978, when an independent expert hired by Elf declared that Delta and Omega were useless. Former Premier Barre approved a secret investigation, and a report was issued. Chief Government Accountant Bernard Beck discreetly shredded his three copies of the report when he retired in 1982; only Giscard and Barre are known to have kept copies, which they took with them into private life...
Barre finally made a copy available to the government (Giscard still has not). At a Jan. 2 news conference, Premier Pierre Mauroy waved the document before the cameras while he accused the Giscard government of being duped and then trying to engineer a coverup. Since then, the war of words has escalated. In another TV broadside, Giscard declaimed: "Francois Mitterrand is no longer qualified to represent the country. The present government came to power through lies. It is trying to maintain itself by lies." Disdaining a reply, Mitterrand has preferred, as the pro-government daily Le Monde...