Quotes of the Day

There's nothing like topping off a national celebration with some vindictive settling of scores. Within hours of the Dec. 21 release of two French journalists who had been held hostage in Iraq for four months, politicians, security officials — and even former abductees Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot themselves — were trading accusations over the efforts to free them from their captors. The main target: conservative legislator Didier Julia and his team of dilettante sleuths, who sought to bypass official attempts to secure the pair's freedom by dealing with shadowy Middle Eastern contacts of their own. Their media-hyped campaign went belly-up in early October after Julia's minions claimed they'd not only seen the hostages but secured their impending release. Once freed, Malbrunot refuted those claims, and confirmed French intelligence accusations that the bungled initiative had angered the pair's captors. Malbrunot said he was "scandalized" by Julia and his sidekicks, who "played with the lives of compatriots."

Last week French justice officials placed two Julia aides, Philippe Brett and Philippe Evanno, under investigation for intelligence work "undermining the fundamental interests of the nation" in their purported contacts with Syrian secret services and Iraqi insurgents. The officials will question Julia himself later this month — and may even ask legislators to lift his parliamentary immunity so he can be placed under formal investigation. "If the vote were today, the immunity would not only be lifted, but Julia would be excluded from our party," warns an official in the ruling conservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Why turn on a fellow rightist?

In part due to Julia's attack on the government during the hostage affair: he accused it of negligence, of using him as "a scapegoat," and said Foreign Minister Michel Barnier had been "completely useless" in a crisis "that should have been resolved in four days, not four months." Julia says he's happy to answer questions, but is also demanding a parliamentary inquiry so he can go public with what he says is proof his initiative had official backing. "If Julia were smart, he'd shut up and play along until the storm calms down," says the ump official. "He won't take anyone down but himself this way."

• BRUCE CRUMLEY
• Hostage "negotiators" find themselves in the spotlight