THE SPY FRENCH SCANDEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70B00338R000200170118-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2004
• Sequence Number: 118
• Publication Date: April 26, 1968
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

1 -1
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FRENCH
SPY SCANDAL
The former chief of French Intelligence in the U.S. reveals the fantastic story
of Soviet espionage that penetrated De Gaulle's official family
25X1
- 'Martel,' the key Russian agent
- Repercussions that caught Kim Philby
-- J.F.K.'s secret letter to De Gaulle
Philippe Thyru!1311
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The former chief of French intelligence in
the U.S. tells a startling story: a KGB
agent came over to the West. His disclosures
unmasked Soviet spies in many countries.
They revealed that De Gaulle's official
family was penetrated by Russian espionage-
which may still be operating there.
Inside this man's head, for six years, has re-
posed an extraordinary accumulation of
knowledge-a set of facts that has touched
the most sensitive nerve ends of a half-
dozen nations and is now about to confront
the government of France's President de
Gaulle with an epic spy scandal. Even a fore-
cast--made public in Paris last week that
LIFE would publish these facts brought hair-
triggered denial and counterattack from
French officials.
This man is Philippe de Vosjoli, who for
20 of his 47 years was a highly placed in-
telligence officer in his country's service. He
tells his story-in full for the first time-on
the following pages. This account is ampli-
fied by John Barry of the London Sunday
Times (pp. 38-39).
Both accounts deal with the repercussions
of disclosures by a very high-ranking officer
of the KGB, the Russian state security organi-
zation, who went over to the West in late
1961. This agent, to whom French investiga-
tors gave the code name "Martel," now
lives in the U.S. as a virtual fugitive; all that
may be revealed about him is that he is a
Red army veteran, was university trained in
intelligence techniques by the KGB, rose to
that body's prestigious First Directorate, pos-
sesses an encyclopedic memory, and left his
post and the U.S.S.R. because he feared the
warmongering policies of Khrushchev. He
has been described as a man now in middle
age, of middle height, on the chubby side,
with jet-black hair, close-set eyes, lips he
tends to keep compressed. His English is vol-
uble but heavily accented. Published ref-
erences have given his name as Dolnytsin,
which is not correct.
As revealed in De Vosjoli's account, Mar-
tel's description of the extent of the KGB's
spy network stabbed not only at his own
country but at several Western nations and
into the very heart of France. Directly or indi-
rectly, he blew the "covers" of 200 KGB
agents, including Britain's notorious H.A.R.
"Kim" Philby and an American Army ser-
geant who killed himself. He demonstrated
that NATO headquarters in France were so
deeply penetrated that NATO secrets were
deliverable to Moscow in 48 hours. Most se-
rious of all, he had information pointing to
the existence of a KGB spy 'among De
Gaulle's closest, most intimate advisers. This
moved President Kennedy to take extraordi-
nary measures to warn De Gaulle of traitors
close to him-a warning that De Gaulle, al-
ways suspicious of America, refused to heed.
Philippe de Vosjoli possesses impeccable
credentials for his evaluation of the Martel
affair. At the time Martel was being interro-
gated-mostly in Washington by Western
emissaries-De Vosjoli was head of all
French intelligence services in the U.S. It
was a post he held for a long time-nearly
13 years-until French orders to establish a
scientific and military spy ring against the
U.S. moved him to resign.
Several years later, Leon Uris--a friend
of De Vosjoli-published the best-selling
novel Topaz, a highly fictionalized parallel
to De Vosjoli's own story, embellished by
some horrendous complications and a
steamy romance. Since partial disclosure
of the Martel case, De Gaulle's spokes-
men have been dismissing De Vosjoli as
"comic" or describing him as "a defec-
tor to the CIA." Nevertheless, mere dis-
paragement is not enough to dispose of
the questions that De Vosjoli raises or the
valuable clues Martel brought with him
when he decided to abandon the Soviets.
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by PHILIPPE THYRAUD de VOSJOLI
My first clear proof of the ex-
istence and special importance of
the man we came to know as Mar-
tel arrived, so to speak, through
the back door. It all started six
years ago, in the late spring of
1962, no later, certainly, than the
first days of June. One morning at
5 o'clock the telephone rang in
my bedroom, in the house I used
to have on Wilson Lane, in Bethes-
da, just outside of Washington.
"M. de Vosjoli?" a voice asked.
"Yes," I said, "if my senses are to
be trusted at this hour." "Pardon,
this is ---," the voice went on in
French, giving the last name of a
man well known to me as one of
the senior officers of the French
secret intelligence organization
known as SDECE (standing for Ser-
vice de Documentation Exterieure
et de Contre-Espionage), of which
I too was an officer. "I have just
landed at Washington airport with
five colleagues. Ask no questions,
please, but I would be much
obliged if you would send out a
car to pick us up and arrange for
a convenient place for us to stay
for several days." As the ranking
intelligence officer attached to the
French embassy, I could readily
command such services, and I as-
sured my colleague-[ will call
him "X"-that his needs would
be attended to. "X" with five com-
panions descending on Washing-
ton unannounced, in the middle
of the night? Something urgent
must be afoot, of the utmost grav-
ity, in Paris.
Just before noon, "X" entered
my office on the second floor of
the French consulate at 2129 Wy-
oming Avenue-a wonderful,
roomy old building, encircled by
tall white columns. Closing the
door, he strode across the room
to my desk, sat down facing me,
and drove immediately to the
point. "The director general,"
he began, "has instructed me
to explain to you in the fullest de-
tail why I am here, and how I
and the others propose to proceed.
I beg you not to take offense
over the failure to give you ad-
vance notice of our arrival. The
truth is that we are no longer sure
of the security of our communi-
cations. We are not even sure
our codes are safe. In fact, we
can't be sure of who is getting
our reports." From this ominous
preface, "X" launched into the
following extraordinary account:
Some weeks before, a special
courier had arrived in Paris from
Washington, bearing a personal
letter from President Kennedy to
President de Gaulle. The letter in-
formed De Gaulle that a source
in which Kennedy had confidence
had stated that the French intelli-
gence services, and even De
Gaulle's own cabinet, had been
penetrated by Soviet agents. Be-
cause of the obvious implications
of such a security breakdown, the
American President had chosen to
employ a personal courier to trans-
mit the warning, rather than de-
pend upon possibly vulnerable,
more formal channels. Kennedy
further assured De Gaulle that he
would provide his representatives
with whatever means or contacts
they might desire in verifying the
value of this information for
themselves.
To make a preliminary recon-
naissance, "X" continued, De
Gaulle had picked General de
Rougemont, an officer with ex-
cellent connections in Washing-
ton. De Rougemont was attached
to the prime minister's office as di-
rector of the Second Division of
the National Defense staff and had
the responsibility of coordinating
the various branches of the mil-
itary intelligence.
About a week after Kennedy's
letter reached De Gaulle's hand,
De Rougemont had slipped into
Washington-avoiding completely
all his French friends, including
me--and made contact directly
with the American authorities. The
source of President Kennedy's in-
formation, he was told, was a Rus-
sian who had been a high-ranking
officer in the KGB, the huge state
security apparatus through which
the Soviet Union conducts its for-
eign espionage. De Rougemont
was taken to the man, to ask such
questions as he wished. He was
later to say that he had begun the
questioning half-convinced that
the whole thing was some sort of
trick by which the Americans were
trying to dupe De Gaulle. But af-
ter he had put the Russian through
three or four days of intensive
questioning, it was De Rougemont
who came out shaken by the ap-
pallingly detailed information the
man had on the innermost work-
ings of the French government and
its security and intelligence sys-
tems. The general flew back to
Paris to make his report directly
to De Gaulle's trusted assistant,
M. Etienne Burin des Roziers, sec-
retary-general of the Elysee Palace
and, as such, the aide who man-
ages De Gaulle's staff and organ-
izes the presidential business.
Manifestly on De Gaulle's com-
mand, Burin des Roziers sum-
moned the heads of the two main
French intelligence establishments
-General Paul Jacquier, an air of-
ficer who had been put in charge
of SDECE only a few months be-
fore, and Daniel Doustin, who ran
the equally powerful DST (Direc-
tion de la SOcurite du Territoire),
the counterintelligence division,
the French equivalent of the FBI.
The gist of De Rougemont's re-
port was that the KGB man was
authentic, that he was indeed as
important as the Americans
claimed him to be, and that his as-
sertions about the KGB's infiltra-
tion of French services demanded
further and much more exhaustive
questioning of the Russian by
French counterintelligence experts,
together with a complete checkout
of the evidence which he stood
ready to give. The two services-
SDECE and DST-quickly assem-
bled from their own staffs sep-
arate and expert interrogation
teams, each made up of three
men. These were the men with
whom "X" had arrived in Wash-
ington during the night. After tell-
ing me all this, "X" said: "Our
only business here is to question
the source. We have a number to
call and the meetings with him
are to be arranged by our friends.
I expect that we shall be at this
for some time."
I was not, as a matter of fact, al-
together surprised to learn that
such a figure as the Russian exist-
ed. The intelligence community of
Washington is a freely circulating
body of professional military of-
ficers and civil servants inside the
diplomatic community who are
permitted to present themselves
openly but not blatantly as intelli-
gence officers. A certain amount
Evidence of his service
De Vosjoli was forced out of the
French secret service four and a
half years ago by pressure from
Gaullist officials, but he has cre-
dentials attesting to his work for
De Gaulle in earlier days. The
scroll below, in De Gaulle's hand-
writing, was sent to all the "good
companions" of the Free French
Forces. Those at the right pertain
to a mission De Vosjoli undertook
in 1944. His mission order directs
him to fly "as quickly as possible"
to Calcutta and Chunking and to
make liaison with French forces
there. His passport is at the far
right. De Vosjoli's job, with the
end of the war in sight, was to or-
ganize French resistance to the
Japanese in French Indochina and
help prepare the way for the
reentry of French forces there.
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of informal and more or less hon-
est brokerage goes on among the
members, and in the winter of
1961-62 I had picked up some
strong clues that the Americans
had recruited, or otherwise gained
custody of, two and possibly three
defectors from beyond the Iron
Curtain, and that one of them in
particular had brought very im-
portant information out with him.
Naturally, I had sought out the
Americans I knew who were in
the business and asked about the
reports. In every quarter but one I
was put off with either a profes-
sion of ignorance or a bland smile.
The closest I came to the truth
was a guarded disclosure by an
American friend that a Russian had
conic over who exhibited an
"amazing knowledge of the inner
workings" of Western security net-
works, including the French, but
the man was being difficult in re-
gard to his future prospects and
well-being. This meager informa-
tion I passed on to SDECE in Paris
ble agent-whose mission was to
disrupt relations between my
country and the U.S. Beyond that,
I was unhappy at the way the
Americans had broached the af-
fair to my government, however
urgent their concern. There were
at that time any number of career
intelligence officers high in the
SDECE and the DST known by their
American counterparts to be trust-
worthy beyond question. The
grave implications raised by the
Russian could and should have
been first made known at that pro-
fessional level. Instead, by being
passed over everyone's head to
De Gaulle, Kennedy's letter un-
necessarily and unfairly impugned
everyone in both services and cre-
ated almost impossible tensions
and suspicions everywhere.
The questioning of Martel-the
code name given the Russian
by "X" and his colleagues-be-
gan forthwith. I was kept fully
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and for some weeks thereafter I re-
ceived daily cables pressing me to
find out who the man was, where
the Americans were hiding him,
and what he was telling them.
Now I met a blank wall. Then,
abruptly, there arrived a jarring
order from Paris: I was to cease
my efforts to track down the man
and to stop asking questions about
him. The reason for that peremp-
tory, almost insulting directive was
now made clear by what "X" had
told me. It must have been that
Kennedy's letter had reached De
Gaulle, a decision had been taken
to send De Rougemont secret-
ly to Washington to assess the
reliability of the source, and
it was thought best to order me
off the scent, lest I complicate
matters.
At this juncture-before the in-
terrogation teams had begun their
work-I remained somewhat skep-
tical of the Russian's real value. It
still seemed possible to me that
he might be a clever plant-a dou-
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abreast of what he was saying.
One of his early and most dis-
turbing assertions was that French
KGB agents in NATO headquarters
in Paris were so strategically
placed and so facile in their meth-
ods that they could produce on
two or three days' demand any
NATO document Moscow asked
for. A whole library of secret NATO
documents, Martel insisted, was
available for reference in Moscow.
Indeed the KGB's familiarity with
supposedly super-secret NATO ma-
terial was so intimate that its offi-
cers, in ordering fresh material
from its sources in Paris, freely
used the same numbering system
for documents as NATO did itself.
Thinking to trap the Russian, my
colleagues asked him if he had
himself ever seen NATO docu-
ments. "Oh, yes," was the confi-
dent answer. "Many." At a later
meeting, a collection of some
scores of classified NATO docu-
ments, dealing with different sub-
jects, was presented to him. Most
Hransi suirC
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r
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CONTINUED
of the papers were authentic; a
number, however, had been fabri-
cated in Paris for the occasion. The
whole lot was put down before the
Russian and he was asked to pick
out those he had read in Moscow.
Ile did not identify all of the pa-
pers, but every paper that he
claimed to have read in Moscow
was authentic, and among the pa-
pers he put aside were all the
bogus ones. It was, for the French
teams, an unnerving experience.
Martel gave the French interro-
gators another turn with an ex-
hibition of an all but encyclopedic
knowledge of the secret workings
of the French intelligence services.
He described, for example, in rath-
er precise detail how a thorough-
going reorganization of the SDECE
had been carried out in the be-
ginning of 1958. He further knew
how and why specific intelligence
functions and objectives had been
shifted from one section to an-
other, even the names of certain
officers who were running certain
intelligence operations-details of
a nature that could have come
only from a source or sources at
or close to the heart of the French
intelligence organizations. Martel
did not know everything. In some
areas, lie had only bits and pieces
of intelligence to offer. He would
tell his questioners, for instance,
that in a certain city in the south
of France, a member of the mu-
nicipal council who had made a
name in the Resistance was really
a Soviet citizen-an "illegal," as
we say in the trade-who had ac-
quired a false French identity and
was under KGB discipline. But lie
did not know the man's name--
only how he fitted in. Martel knew
that a French scientist of Asiatic or-
igins, who had attended a certain
international meeting of scientists
in London, had been recruited
there by the KGB under particular
circumstances. Again, no name--
only a whiff of a treasonable as-
sociation. He knew that an intelli-
gence officer who had been post-
ed to certain Iron Curtain coun-
tries during certain periods
(periods which he did know) and
who was then attached to a spe-
cific section in a certain security
service had been a KGB agent for
a certain number of years. It was
not in the least surprising that Mar-
tel did not know the names of
these agents. He was not person-
ally running the KGB networks for
whom these people worked, and
for purposes of evaluating the in-
telligence they supplied it was
quite sufficient for him to know
only in a general way where they
were placed. Martel's work in
Moscow had required him to sit
in on many KGB staff meetings
which reviewed or directed Soviet
intelligence operations in a num-
ber of countries, including France,
and he additionally was more di-
rectly involved in other operations.
It was from his memory of these
operations that he drew the links
to France and supplied the leads
which could be checked out there.
the Russian afresh. They would
present a name to Martel-the
name of someone who was
thought to fit a certain lead he
had supplied. Martel would be
given certain particulars about the
man's work, his position, his trav-
els, and then would come the
hard question: Could this man
be the one who was working for
the KGB inside NATO or in the po-
litical area at, say, the ministerial
level? In his careful way, Martel
would answer, "He looks to be,"
or "Yes, he could be," or "No,
there's a discrepancy."
In the course of these interro-
gations, Martel would open other
avenues for investigation:
10, The Ministry of the Interior,
which has responsibility for inter-
nal security; the French represen-
tation in the NATO organization;
the Ministry of Defense, and the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs were
all penetrated in the higher eche-
lons by KGB agents.
01- An official who appeared to be
presently a member of the De
Gaulle cabinet and who had min-
isterial or near-ministerial rank in
1944 in De Gaulle's first govern-
ment had been identified in KGB
discussions as a KGB agent.
Ill A network with the code name
Sapphire, consisting of more than
half a dozen French intelligence
officers, all of whom had been re-
cruited by the KGB, was operating
inside the SDECE itself.
r A new section for collecting sci-
entific intelligence had been, or
was being, created inside SDECE
with the specific mission of spy-
ing out U.S. nuclear and other
technological advances, eventually
in the Soviet interest.
I myself had no way of assess-
ing the accuracy of Martel's leads,
but there was no mistaking the im-
pact lie had on my colleagues.
His familiarity with France's sup-
posedly most secret affairs first as-
tonished, then depressed them, as
it did me. I could no longer doubt
that Martel was the genuine arti-
cle, although I still was not con-
vinced that everything he said was
true. His assertion that French in-
telligence had a scheme for spy-
ing out American scientific secrets
found hard to accept at the out-
set. Yet the Russians had been
most specific on this point. In July
'1959, lie insisted, he heard Gen-
eral Sakharovsky, in charge of the
KGB's covert operations, analyze
for his senior staff officers the im-
plications of the reorganization of
the French intelligence services.
In the course of the lecture, Sa-
kharovsky mentioned the plan for
the proposed intelligence section,
with its targets in the U.S., and
noted with satisfaction that the
KGB expected to receive any re-
ports within a day or two after
SDECE got them. All this was sup-
The French counterintelligence
teams were thorough. They sat
down with the Russian day after
long day. They pressed him hard.
Everything he said was caught on
tapes. The tapes were run back
at the end of the day, the leads
were separated out, and every
night a long coded summary went
out to SDECE headquarters in
Paris. In the interests of security
the teams had brought special
codes with them and did their
own encoding. At the end of a
fortnight the teams returned to
France, taking with them all the
tapes and hundreds of pages of
transcript. Investigations were
started on the basis of the leads
Martel had supplied; and then,
after further questions developed,
the teams flew back to Washington
to pick and test the memory of
posed to have happened nearly
three years and a half before.
When Martel's account was relat-
ed to me, in my office, one of
the DST men asked his SDECE
counterpart, "Really, are you peo-
ple doing this sort of thing?" None
of us had ever heard of the
scheme.
As the questioning of Martel
went on through the summer, the
procedures being used by our peo-
ple to follow up Martel's leads
began to create an increasingly dif-
ficult situation for me in my own
work. Our teams would do some
preliminary work at home and re-
turn to Washington with a num-
ber of names, any one of which
might fit into the necessarily mea-
ger framework of facts Martel had
offered. But Martel could never
answer with absolute assurance ei-
ther "yes" or "no" about any of
them. The problem in this for me
--and, in fact, for the whole
French intelligence system--lay in
the fact that each session with
Martel was also attended by Amer-
ican representatives, and each time
our people dropped a name in
front of Martel, that person au-
tomatically became suspect to the
Americans. Small wonder, but as
the list of clouded reputations
lengthened, my professional con-
tacts with the Americans (and with
other Western nations) began per-
ceptibly to dry up, even on rou-
tine matters. The word seemed to
be out not to take any chances
with the French.
What should have happened in
this situation-and what I expect-
ed would happen--did not hap-
pen. The French secret services
should have pursued Martel's leads
vigorously to a straightforward
finding, for or against. They then
should have been able to say,
"We have investigated and found
something wrong with this one
and this one. But the other peo-
ple are clear." Instead the services
remained silent. In truth, nothing
at all seemed to happen.
I must here depart from the story
of Martel for a moment to de-
scribe an episode having to do
with Cuba. As will be seen, it did
eventually have a connection with
Martel and with the whole direc-
tion of French policy toward the
rest of the West.
Among my responsibilities in
the middle of 1962 was the direc-
tion of a French intelligence ef-
fort in Cuba. Basically, I may say,
as an intelligence operation, the
Cuba one was really more like
the gossipy exchange of confi-
dences in a love affair than a
relentless pursuit of state secrets.
But it was prolific, to say the least,
and for all of its informality it was
by far the best source of informa-
34
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Investigation but little action
French officials reacted quickly to
the news of Martel's disclosures.
General Jean-Louis de Rougemont
was sent to Washington to examine
Martel. When he reported his con-
clusions, Etienne Burin des Roziers,
one of De Gaulle's top aides, or-
dered an extensive investigation,
part of which was directed by De
Vosjoli's boss, General Paul Jac-
quier, chief of the SDECE. But,
strangely, although months were
spent little action was taken on
the leads that Martel supplied.
Lion then left to the West, the CIA
apparatus having been all but an-
nihilated by Castro in the bloody
aftermath of the Bay of Pigs. Cas-
tro's Communist allegiance was
treated by the Kennedy adminis-
tration more as an annoyance than
a threat until the summer of 1962,
when a sinister question attached
itself to the expanding Soviet mil-
itary presence in Cuba. The Soviet
military collaboration with Castro
had begun openly enough with
the dispatch of small groups of ad-
visers and instructors. Then, for
no clear reason, service troops and
other types of Soviet technicians
emerged in considerable numbers
in and around Havana. The in-
crease could be partially account-
ed for by the explanation that the
Russians were equipping the Cu-
bans with antiaircraft missiles in
the SAM class, along with other de-
fensive weapons. Even so, one
wondered what Castro possessed
that he was so anxious to hide,
and that summer unverifiable re-
ports began to circulate in Wash-
ington that the Russians were also
bringing in batteries of offensive
missiles, the so-called medium-
range ballistic nuclear missiles-
MRBMs-which would most cer-
tainly be a thrust of the gravest
consequence for all the West. My
voluble sources in Cuba were pro-
ducing no definite or "hard" in-
telligence to support such a con-
clusion, and neither, so far as I
could gather, were the American
sources. Then, at the end of July,
reliable intelligence from the is-
land reported that the port of Mar-
iel, on the northern coast of Cuba,
was filling with Soviet ships. I de-
cided to fly to Havana and check
up on things for myself. I had the
opportunity to discuss the situation
with the director of the CIA, John
McCone. There is no longer any
need to be silent about this. At
the time I believed that French
and American interests in the sit-
uation were identical. Further-
more, my general instructions stip-
ulated that I should not only
keep my government informed
about Communist activities in the
Caribbean and Central America,
but that I should work closely with
the Americans in this particular.
In any event, when I left Wash-
ington for Havana in August, I had
a very good idea of what to look
for, and the operation I organized
produced an enormous amount of
information-as many as 50 or 100
separate reports a day. Naturally
enough, not all of the intelligence
was of the same quality, but most
of the evidence pointed in the
same direction. The most compel-
ling single report came from a for-
mer noncommissioned French offi-
cer who had served with the
American Army in Germany. This
man knew the difference be-
tween a SAM antiaircraft rocket
and an MRBM. He had seen on
a road huge, multiwheeled trac-
tors transporting Russian rockets
under canvas covers. They were,
he swore, "bigger, much bigger"
than anything the Americans had
in Germany.
What I learned I passed on to
Paris and shared with the American
intelligence authorities. I do not
wish to suggest that my con-
tribution to the outcome of the
crisis which followed in October
was in any way crucial. But I
am
certain
it helped. I have had
the
thanks,
in private, of John
Mc-
C
one.
My
superior, General Jacquier,
arrived
in Washington on Oct. 5
for the purpose of getting ac-
quainted with the American intelli-
gence authorities. A suspenseful-
ness hung over the first encounter
with the American intelligence
people. Nearly six months had
elapsed since the Kennedy letter,
and nothing had changed in
France. The Americans were con-
cerned not only about the penetra-
tion of our intelligence services
but specifically over the apparent
invulnerability of a certain official
close to De Gaulle around whom
Martel had seemed to close a ring
of evidence. I had in fact been im-
pelled as early as May to warn Jac-
quier that rumors were circulating
in Washington that this same man
was already marked as a possible
Soviet agent. A month before Jac-
quier's arrival in Washington, the
British arrested Vassall, and other
actions were imminent; the ab-
sence of action in France was dis-
quieting. At an otherwise agree-
able dinner in Jacquier's honor
one evening at the elegant 1925-F
Street Club, which was attended
by the most senior American intel-
ligence officials, Jacquier was
quietly but emphatically put on
notice that American patience was
running thin. An American intelli-
gence officer who knew what the
Russian had told the investigators
said bluntly to Jacquier, "Your ser-
vice is infiltrated. We know that
you are not at fault, because you
are new in your job and new at
this business. But you must take
the right measures." There was a
plain warning in this that American
cooperation in intelligence matters
would stop unless the suspected
spy was removed from the line of
communications.
acquier and I spent hours to-
gether. In our long discussions, he
referred several times to the Ken-
nedy letter and the steps being
taken by the SDECE to pursue and
weigh the leads supplied by the
Russians. When I saw him off to
Paris, he carried under his arm a
briefcase stuffed with memoranda
which I had helped to prepare.
But I doubt that Jacquier took any
of this seriously.
Early in December, he called
me to Paris for a meeting on ur-
gent business. The SDECE head-
quarters on the Boulevard Mortier,
close to the Porte des Lilas, oc-
cupied what used to be an army
barracks, a gloomy, gray com-
pound surrounding a spacious
courtyard. Jacquier's office was on
the second floor. His greeting was
disconcertingly cold. First, he said,
I was to see Colonel Mareuil,
whose office was on the floor be-
low. Mareuil was in charge of
coordinating SDECE's liaison with
foreign intelligence. He put to me
two extraordinary propositions.
First, I was to supply a certain of-
ficer with the names of my prin-
cipal sources in Cuba. Second, I
was to organize a clandestine in-
telligence network in the U.S. for
the specific purpose of collecting
information about U.S. military in-
stallations and U.S. scientific re-
search. "The Americans," Mareuil
said, "have refused to help us with
our force de frappe. We must find
how to proceed on our own. Gen-
eral de Gaulle is adamant."
The first suggestion I rejected in-
dignantly and out of hand. If there
is one inviolable rule in the in-
telligence business, it is that one
never discloses the identity of a
source. It is a matter of common
sense.
As to the second proposition, I
could not believe my ears. This
was the very scheme Martel had
revealed to his French interroga-
tors months before. I told Mareuil
that the idea would be difficult-
impossible technically-and that
it would most certainly invite the
rupture of relations with America
if ever it was uncovered. I doubt-
ed, in any case, that I was the
man for the work. "No matter,"
Mareuil said smoothly. "The ad-
justment can be made. The mat-
ter is to be discussed at length
tomorrow."
I was confident that Jacquier
would put matters to rights. But I
was to discover that suddenly he
seemed to be overshadowed by his
staff. At a meeting next morning
with the senior members of the
SDECE staff, I unexpectedly and
unaccountably found myself hav-
ing to defend my actions with re-
spect to Cuba. Out of the blue, I
was accused across the table by
my colleagues of having acted
without instructions in supplying
French-gathered intelligence to the
Americans. This accusation was
followed by a worse one: I had
misled President de Gaulle into
supporting the Americans, with
spurious evidence that the Rus-
sians had introduced offensive
missiles into Cuba. It had since
been established to French satis-
faction, they argued, that the mis-
siles were merely defensive weap-
ons of the Russian SAM type-I
had been duped by the Americans.
And France, consequently, had
been unwittingly put into a diffi-
cult . position with the Soviet
Union.
It was crazy. But the dreadful ar-
gument went on past noon. When
it was over, I burst into Jacquier's
office. "Look," I cried, "what is
going on? What does this mean?
You knew that I was authorized
to work on Cuba. You gave me
written orders. You wrote that you
were pleased with what I did." Jac-
quier was flustered and embar-
rassed. His response was a lame
one-something to the effect that
my reporting from Cuba had left
De Gaulle no choice but to sup-
CONTINUED
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CONTINUED
port the Americans against the So-
viet Union and that was a mis-
take, a misunderstanding, that
"we all have to clear up."
An unspeakable lunch followed
in Jacquier's private dining room.
The pressure on me never abated.
I felt as if I were being put on
trial. In another private session
with Jacquier, the explanation for
the hostility finally emerged. It was
a bad time for relations between
France and America. President
Kennedy had met with the British
in Nassau and concluded an agree-
ment with them concerning nu-
clear forces and nuclear sharing
that reaffirmed the special "Anglo-
Saxon" relationship that De Gaulle
detested. France was outraged and
word flashed through the govern-
ment that De Gaulle was through
with the Americans. My mistake, I
was told, was in continuing to
work with them when I should
have caught the signals of the
sharp shift in course. Jacquier
finally went to the heart of the
matter. "Until now," he said, "you
have been working in liaison with
the Americans. That is all behind
you, because we no longer con-
sider America our ally, our friend.
On the contrary, France must go
it alone. France has no friends.
You will get fresh orders and, re-
member, you will follow them.
Do not challenge them, please.
Just obey them, that's all."
The day before I was to take
the plane back to Washington, I
was summoned to Colonel Ma-
reuil's office to receive my new
instructions. A new officer was
about to be attached to the em-
bassy staff in Washington, under
my control. He was to collect in-
formation relating to American
military and scientific organization.
"Good God," I said, "you are
not really going through with
this?"
"You are," he said.
"But surely," I said, "you've read
the reports from Martel?"
"Martel?" Mareuil demanded.
"Who is Martel? What does he
have to do with this?"
Did Mareuil really not know?
Had the Martel interrogations
been kept from him? Perhaps.
They were being held very close-
ly. I said no more.
Mareuil read aloud to me from
three closely typewritten pages the
operational requirements for the
research against the Americans.
The instructions included, among
other things, a requirement for
certain military particulars, such as
the U.S. deployment of ICBMs,
that had nothing to do with sci-
entific developments.
"France has no need for this
kind of information," I said. "It
would be useful only to the Rus-
sians."
"The instructions are clear," was
the comment.
I said it was all wrong. It
wouldn't work. There would be
great risk for all concerned. The
answer was that the risks had to
be taken and, should I fail, ample
protection would be forthcoming.
I asked for a written copy of the
orders. Mareuil replied that since
their mere existence constituted a
danger, the copy in his hand was
to be destroyed. It so happened
that a new deputy for intelligence
was about to be assigned to me
in Washington, and at my insis-
tence Mareuil read the orders
aloud to me in that man's pres-
ence. My parting word with him
was that if anyone attempted to
carry out the plan, and if it mis-
carried, France would have to be
prepared to sacrifice the long
American friendship.
Jacquier being unavailable, I ap-
pealed to his principal assistant.
"This business gets crazier and cra-
zier," I said. "You know about
the Martel affair. Somebody is out
of his mind." The deputy answered
that it was Martel who was out of
his mind. "The Americans," he
went on, "have thrown the apple
of discord in OLI service. Because
of them, everybody is suspicious
of everybody else. We can no
longer worry about the niceties.
The orders, for your information,
came from the highest authority,
from the Elysee."
I returned to Washington very
much disturbed, and worried
about the future relations of
France and America. As late as Jan-
uary "1963 I made an appeal to
SDECE's chief of counterintelli-
gence, who had come to Wash-
ington to measure Martel for him-
self, to abandon the spying en-
terprise altogether. He shared my
misgivings but argued that it was
too late now to cork the bottle.
Praise for a job which was later condemned
Right after the Cuban missile cri-
sis, when missile-carrying Russian
freighters (like the one at right,
flanked by a U.S. destroyer) had
turned for home, De Vosjoli got a
letter from his boss, General Jac-
quier, saying that he was "very
satisfied with the intelligence that
you have been able to communi-
cate to the crA"-a reference to
his work establishing the presence
of missiles in Cuba. Less than a
month later, lie was raked over
the coals in Paris for having given
the information to the Americans.
L OI PR oTEU
"We can pray," he said, "that
SDECE's shortage of resources will
keep the plan from ever being
mounted."
I had asked Jacquier, when lie
was in the U.S., why the govern-
ment had not moved faster on
the Martel evidence. He replied
that the government could not
stand a scandal at the time, with
the nation still just getting over
the giving up of Algeria. It was a
ready answer, given the place and
time, but after all the other things
I had heard and witnessed in Par-
is I was persuaded that other, pos-
sibly sinister forces were the real
reason for the inaction. There was
no mistaking the suspiciousness,
the mistrust, even the hatred for
American policies which had come
to permeate the thinking of the
men closest to De Gaulle.
Events in my own jurisdiction
deepened my suspicions. About
two months after the Paris ep-
isode, at the beginning of Feb-
ruary, there reached me from Cuba
a long and detailed report on the
Soviet order of battle in Cuba af-
ter the withdrawal of the missiles.
I passed the information on to
SDECE and was astonished to re-
ceive a peremptory order to name
the source of the report. I re-
fused. Then Jacquier himself com-
manded me to give the name.
One of my assistants, who worked
with me on Cuba matters, begged
me to comply. "You are in trou-
ble enough now," he said. "After
all, Jacquier does have the author-
ity to ask." After considerable
soul-searching, I finally sent for-
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ward the name to Paris. Not long
afterward, word came from Cuba
that the source had been arrested.
The French ambassador advised
me in a separate message to be
discreet when next I returned to
Cuba. "You have a difficult name
to pronounce in Spanish," he said.
"But friends who have attended
espionage trials here believe they
have heard your name mentioned
several times." I never went back.
A little later I was ordered from
Paris to cease working on Cuba al-
together. My inquiry as to who
would take over there went un-
answered. The network of faithful
people who had served the West
so well in the missile ordeal died
on the vine. It was becoming ob-
vious that my superiors in Paris
wanted me out.
Then a very senior American in-
telligence officer passed on to me,
as being of particular interest to
French military intelligence, two
documents which between them
supplied a rationale of certain
highly intricate administrative
structures inside the Soviet defense
establishment. The American
warned me to be exceptionally
careful in handling them. I sent
them on, with special security pre-
cautions, to Jacquier. Some time
later, there arrived at the con-
sulate by ordinary diplomatic
pouch, innocent of classification,
a general staff critique stating that
the reports were quite worthless-
nothing more than extracts from
the Soviet press. One day my
American friend asked me what re-
action I had received from Paris. I
told him, and he exploded. The
papers, he shouted, were among
the last pieces of intelligence to
reach the West from the famous
Colonel Penkovsky, who had been
run down, tried and shot only a
short time before. My friend add-
ed: "That information was first-
class intelligence. Because the KGB
was able to prove that Penkovsky
had passed this information on to
us, the Soviet defense establish-
ment was obliged to make certain
drastic changes in its military plan-
ning. Now you might ask your
colleagues if they still need fur-
ther proof that your service has
been penetrated?"
I was miserable. I was now iso-
lated from the Americans, as well
as from my own service. If I had
retained any hopes, they were dis-
pelled by a strange incident aris-
ing from the arrest in June of the
Swedish Colonel Wennerstrom as
a Soviet spy. Wennerstrom, from
long service in Washington as the
Swedish air attache, knew a great
deal about NATO defense plans.
He also had a strong reputation as
a fun-loving partygoer, and I re-
called now that he had been a fre-
quent social associate of several
French officers then stationed in
Washington. I naturally moved at
once to have these relationships
examined, only to be ordered by
Paris, in peremptory tones, to
cease my investigations.
All that I had worked for in 121/2
years of NATO collaboration was
dissolving. In July, that last sum-
mer in Washington, I was notified
of a promotion. It arrived with
the warm congratulations of Jac-
quier himself. But I knew it was
intended to silence me. And I let
it be known that I would not be si-
lenced. Over the years I had a
good working relationship with
my ambassador, Herve Alphand,
a highly experienced diplomat.
Knowing that he was returning to
France in August for a holiday, I
decided to take him into my con-
fidence. He had not been aware
of Martel's existence until I told
him what was going on. My point
to him was that France's relations
with the U.S. were being imper-
iled by the government's dilatori-
ness in facing up to Martel's as-
sertions and would be ruined if
the SDECE persisted in the scheme
for mounting an intelligence op-
eration against the United States.
Alphand was upset. He promised
to take up the matter at the Quai
d'Orsay. In a little while word
came back to me, through my pri-
vate channels, that the Foreign Of-
fice had also been wholly igno-
rant of the existence and meaning
of Martel until Alphand started to
ask questions, and that there was
fury in several quarters over my in-
discretion in divulging so sensitive
a topic.
In August Georges Paques was
arrested in Paris. He was a senior
NATO official and undoubtedlyone
of the KGB's men there. But mani-
festly he was not the only one.
On 16 September a cable was
laid on my desk. My mission in
the U.S. was to end on 18 Oc-
tober. My relief would arrive in
Washington in a fortnight. I would
have two weeks to brief him on
his duties. And then I was to re-
port without further delay to head-
quarters in Paris. After all my
years in Washington, I was being
commanded to wind up all my af-
fairs and pull up my roots in
just one month.
I stayed on in my post to the
last hour permitted me in my or-
ders. On the morning of 18 Oc-
tober, at the desk in the con-
sulate which I yielded in the af-
ternoon to my successor, I com-
posed a letter to Jacquier. In it I
summed up the disquieting mat-
ters and concerns which I have
described here. I ended it all this
way:
Considering that the questioning
I was subjected to on Cuba proves
that some members of the service
were worried over the efficiency
of my work against the Soviets;
Considering that by demanding
to know the identity of my sources
(although you have been informed
by American intelligence services
of the presence of infiltrated So-
viet agents in your organization),
you committed an imprudence
which could only serve the agents
of a foreign power;
Considering that your order to
collect intelligence on the United
States, even at the price of a rup-
ture of diplomatic relations be-
tween the two countries, could
only benefit the Soviets;
Considering that the cancella-
tion of my mission on Cuba, al-
though the results obtained were
outstanding enough to bring the
Americans to thank you, was of
benefit to the Soviets;
Considering that the contemp-
tuous criticism of the Penkovsky
reports can only serve the Soviets;
Considering that the lack of sup-
port showed by the service in an
inquiry on the French contacts of
Wennerstrom can only protect So-
viet agents;
Considering that the orders I re-
ceived were technically unrealiz-
able or could only bring a crisis
beneficial to the Soviets;
Considering that the vexations I
received during the past nine
months do not leave any doubt as
to your determination to harass
me and to neutralize the repre-
sentative of French intelligence in
Washington, whose knowledge is
considered embarrassing;
Considering that the reports re-
ceived from American intelligence
on the presence of Communist in-
filtration agents inside the service
and inside the French government,
have been corroborated by the
Paques Affair;
Considering that for all reasons
mentioned above, it is impossible
for me to cooperate in any way
with the SDECE;
I have the honor to submit my
resignation as of today, October
18th, 1963, reserving all my rights
for future legal action.
P. L. Thyraud de Vosjoli
It was a harsh letter but I do
not regret having written it. For
the truth was in it. Six years
have now passed and they have
been hard ones for me. The de-
terioration of Franco-American
friendship is now a fact which can-
not be denied. The Martel evi-
dence has still not been given
the attention it deserves. One man
-Paques-was caught about a
month before I left the service,
and that is all. One arrest-and
so much more that has been put
out of sight under the rug.
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Broad impact of 'Martell
everywhere but France
The author is a member of a spe-
cial team of the London Sunday
Times, which for the last three
months has been conducting its
own investigation of the Russian
agent known as Martel. The inqui-
ry verifies many startling conse-
quences of the Russian's informa-
tion and draws conclusions about
why the French may have handled
the Martel case as they did. Here
is his summary of their report:
by JOHN
BARRY
Everyone grilled Martel. The Amer-
icans and British, next the Ger-
mans, then the French; finally
even small non-NATO intelligence
services like the Swedes' beat a
path to Washington throughout
1962. Even when Martel, in a
state of mental exhaustion, elect-
ed in the spring of '1963 to move
to Britain for six months, the ques-
tioning continued. His knowledge
of KGB operations was so com-
plete and explicit that, as one
:source put it, "He killed a whole
generation of KGB men-not phys-
ically, you understand, but as in-
telligence operatives."
The crucial fact in evaluating
the consequences of Martel was
that he compartmentalized his ex-
traordinary information: each in-
telligence service that interrogated
him learned, broadly, only what af-
fected its own vital interests. No-
body except the CIA and possibly
the British SIS (Secret Intelligence
Service) knew Martel's full disclo-
sures. Other countries could only
examine with dismay their own
gleanings, and wonder uneasily
what was wrong elsewhere in
NATO that they did not know
about.
The acrimonious political de-
bate in Western Europe at the
time about the scheme for nu-
clear sharing through a multilateral
naval force had already damaged
NATO. Martel's accusations made
things even worse: nobody trust-
ed anyone. The result was the vir-
tual halt of military information
flow through NATO. For almost a
year, beginning in the autumn of
1962, only the most fundamental
information needed to keep NATO
functioning was circulated. This
situation almost persuaded a num-
ber of intelligence men that Mar-
tel was a Russian plant The KGB
might be losing agents, they ar-
gued, but most of those Martel
betrayed were past their peak;
and, in return, Russia was gaining
a catastrophic political advantage.
"If NATO does finally break up,
the public reasons will probably
include De Gaulle, the legacy of
Adenauer and the thaw in the
East," one politician in Britain said.
"But one of the private reasons
will be the distrust engendered by
that damned defector."
Yet the suspicion that Martel
might he serving Soviet ends van-
ished, for most intelligence peo-
ple, in the recognition of how
many Soviet agents were identified
in the swift and scandal-ridden se-
ries of treason trials for which Mar-
tel was directly responsible. They
indicate both Martel's consum-
mate importance, and also the
scale of the political problems that
such trials caused for the govern-
ments concerned-political prob-
lems that, in the case of France,
were to prove insuperable.
Britain had the first public whiff
of trouble. Although NATO naval
matters were not Martel's special-
ty, he possessed a few almost triv-
ial details about policy decisions
on Anglo-American naval exercises
that could only have come from
inside the Admiralty in London. It
took a British counterintelligence
team six months to track down
the spy, an insignificant Admiralty
clerk, a homosexual named Wil-
liam John Christopher Vassall, the
38-year-old son of a London cu-
rate. In September 1962, Vassall
confessed; he had spied for the
KGB for six years. The resulting
scandal forced a minister to re-
sign and led to an angry govern-
mental inquiry into the press.
Then on June 25, 1963, bigger
game was flushed out by the in-
formation provided by Martel. The
Swedish government disclosed the
arrest of a senior military dip-
lomat, Colonel Stig Wennerstrom.
First as Swedish air attache in
Washington, later as chief of the
Swedish military purchasing mis-
sion there, and finally back in
Stockholm as chief of the air sec-
tion of the joint services liaison
staff in the Ministry of Defense-
in all, during 15 years at the
sensitive heart of Sweden's de-
fense system-Wennerstrom had
spied for the KGB. In effect,
NATO's northern flank defense
plans were useless.
Barely a week after Wenner-
strom was exposed, it was Brit-
ain's turn again. Edward Heath,
Foreign Office spokesman in the
I louse of Commons, rose to make
an embarrassing admission. It con-
cerned H.A.R. "Kim" Philby. Ever
since 1951, Philby had been sus-
pected as the "Third Man" who
had tipped off the British diplo-
mats Burgess and Maclean to flee
to Russia. But in 1955 Foreign
Minister Macmillan had publicly
cleared Philby. Now, eight years
later, Heath had the painful task
of confessing that Philby had in-
deed "worked for the Soviet au-
thorities before 1946. . . ." The
uproar this caused did much to tar-
nish the Conservative government
defeated in the elections next year.
Martel betrayed Philby, as he
betrayed Vassall, Wennerstrom
and other KGB agents, indirecth.
The details Martel could reveal of
SIS structure, personnel and histo-
ry, and the amount he knew about
joint CIA-British operations frori
the late 1940s on, were so precise
that only Philby--the officir.l
groomed to be head of the ser-
vice one day, the organizer of the
SIS's first anti-Soviet section bac'c
in 1944 and later the key liaison
man in Washington between the
SIS and the infant CIA, the man
who advised the CIA how to set
up its own anti-Soviet network--
could have known so much about
so many operations. Warned of
Martel, Philby fled to Russia be-
fore the SIS could catch him.
West Germany had its Philby
too. One week after the scandal
erupted in Britain, the espionage
trial began in Karlsruhe of Heinz
Fclfe, ex-head of the "East Divi-
sion" of West Germany's Federal
Intelligence Agency, responsible
for all the agency's operations in
Eastern Europe. For 10 years, Felfe
and a colleague named Clemens
had systematically blown the agen-
cy, passing 15,000 documents to
the KGB, betraying-according to
one estimate-95 agents. For those
picking up the pieces, there was
the suspicion that Felfe and Clem-
ens were not the only spies inside
the FIA. Clemens was incautious
enough to tell his interrogators
that the KGB had asked him to
change departments in the FIA be-
cause, they said, they were sur-
feited with information from the
one he was in.
Nor did the U.S. escape. Mar-
lei's value for American counter-
Spies of four countries who were flushed out
The chain reaction of espionage
trials, confessions and suicides in-
directly set off by Martel included
William Vassall, British Admiralty
civil servant who said he was
blackmailed into passing secrets to
Soviet agents; Swedish Defense
Ministry official Stig Wennerstrom,
who sold data to the Russians that
compromised the NATO defenses;
WENNERSTROM
Heinz Felfe, who betrayed West
Germany's Federal Intelligence
Agency; U.S. Army Sgt. Jack Dun-
lap, a suicide after he was exposed
as a $30,000-a-year spy for Russia.
38
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 espionage lay in two broad areas
of information. The first was his
emphasis on the role in Russian es-
pionage in America being played
by "illegals"-longtime residents
like Colonel Abel. Though the in-
formation was later credited to
another agent, it was actually Mar-
tel who told the CIA of the Soviet
military intelligence communica-
tions center where radio operators,
working three to a shift, listened
around the clock for "illegals"
transmitting from inside the U.S.
Again the arrests came in July
1963. Two Soviet couples living in
the U.S. were charged with pass-
ing intelligence on American rock-
et sites and nuclear weapons ship-
ments to Europe.
Another vital lead in Martel's in-
formation for American intelli-
gence was his insistence that the
KGB, after a late start, was moving
rapidly into the technological age
of espionage. It was concentrating,
like the CIA, less on human agents
and more on mechanical devices
such as long-range monitors to
pick up diplomatic wireless trans-
missions and even certain kinds
of cross-country telephone and ca-
ble traffic. This type of espionage
needs computers, which the KGB
was getting, plus considerable ex-
pertise in code-breaking. Thus the
National Security Agency at Ft.
Meade, Md., the coding and ci-
phering service of the U.S. gov-
ernment, was the prime KGB
target.
By June 1963, counterintelli-
gence had uncovered a leak in-
side the agency. He was Sgt. 1/C
Jack Edward Dunlap. The KGB, it
transpired, had paid him $30,000
in his first year, and the KGB pays
that scale of largesse only to its
most useful informers. The ser-
geant managed to kill himself after
interrogation, and the affair was
kept under wraps for three
months. When the story broke, in
October 1963, the sergeant was
described as "just a driver." It has
never been explained why a driv-
er would be worth $30,000 a year
to the KGB.
In France, the reception of Mar-
tel's information-and the baffling
consequences of it-might be at-
tributed to De Gaulle's own at-
titude toward intelligence. De
Gaulle has all the brave soldier's
contempt for men playing at spies
-an attitude Britain's Macmillan
so fatally shared. And when Ken-
nedy's letter reached him in the
spring of 1962, De Gaulle was
without an experienced intelli-
gence adviser to lean on. General
Paul Jacquier, head of SDECE, had
been in his job for only two
months after a lifetime in the air
force. And Daniel Doustin, head
of DST, was scarcely more expert;
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he had been at his post less than
a year. Simple incompetence by
the French probably played a large
part in their handling of the Mar-
tel case.
The most suspicious point, for
the French, in Martel's information
was his insistence that General
Aleksandr Sakharovsky, boss of the
KGB First Directorate, had an-
nounced in 1959 that the French
were planning a new department
for scientific intelligence. This
seemed inexplicable, because this
new venture was not even planned
until 1960. Martel, it seemed, was
injecting into his 1959 memories
information he could only have
picked up later. Perhaps, the
French investigators ventured, the
word had come from the CIA.
Because by the middle of 1962
there was a plan to set up a sci-
entific intelligence network. It was
the brainchild of Louis Joxe, who
at the start of the French nuclear
force de frappe had been chosen
by De Gaulle to overlord this proj-
ect upon which France's prestige
was staked. By 1960, it had be-
come apparent that France could
not afford these technologies. If
America would not give her the
know-how, France decided to steal
every prime minister in the Fourth
Republic. There was no postwar
government in France in which
Piques did not hold a sensitive
post-and he confessed he had
spied for the KGB since 1944.
So the French took stock.
Piques could have accounted for
most, if not all, of the political
leakage Martel revealed. But he
could not have provided all the
NATO material, so there had to
be another military spy still at
large. And Piques could not have
provided Martel's information on
SDECE, so the French intelligence
officers working for the KGB, un-
der the code name Sapphire, were
still in business. Piques's ca-
reer certainly did not fit the pat-
tern of clues that Martel had
given to the identity of the high
KGB agent.
What was De Gaulle to do now?
With the settlement of the bitter
Algerian war just concluded, he
was not about to risk a scandal
that would set off a right-wing
coup d'etat. He took a decision
subtle and typically Gaullist. He
decided to ignore the rest of Mar-
tel's political information.
It occurred to the SDECE in-
vestigators that perhaps the CIA
had got wind of this plan to gath-
er intelligence for nuclear and
space technology. SDECE had long
suspected that there was a CIA
agent on the personal staff of one
senior French minister. Perhaps,
the team thought, the CIA was
seeking to warn off the French by
demonstrating their power to em-
barrass De Gaulle.
One of the most senior men in
SDECE at the time put the Gaullist
case this way: "We could never
be sure whether it was Martel talk-
ing or the CIA. We accepted that
there was a French spy in NATO.
We decided to track him down.
But none of our men got more
than vague hints from Martel that
there was anyone beyond this
man. All the talk of someone in
high places came via the CIA.
"I assure you," he went on,
"that although we treated that in-
formation with some circumspec-
tion-because of our suspicions
of the CIA, you see-we made
every effort to find such a man.
But we were never given any spe-
cific leads."
This Gaullist explanation does
not account for the fact that the
search for an agent in high place
was called off by personal orders
from De Gaulle. His long-standing
fear of an American "hegemony"
over Europe was, in this case,
deepened by the uneasy relation-
ship that had existed between
French and American intelligence
operations over the years.
After the immediate post-World
War II crisis in France-in which
American activists, semiofficial and
approved by the French govern-
ments of the time, had fought
Communism in France-the U.S.
continued to maintain a large in-
telligence network working out
of Paris. That network was con-
cerned not only with espionage
against the Eastern bloc, which
scarcely helped De Gaulle's Rus-
sian policy, but also with keep-
ing an eye on the French po-
litical scene. It would be surpris-
ing if America had not done
this. As De Gaulle himself has
said: "Great powers do what they
must." America could hardly be
oblivious to events in the coun-
try housing NATO headquarters.
But at the time Martel was tell-
ing his story, De Gaulle was
trying to break American-and
also British-intelligence in France.
(Among his suspicions about the
CIA was the irrational belief that
the agency had financed the
French colonialist terrorist move-
ment, the OAS.) He anticipated a
CIA reprisal to his move, and
Martel's story of a leak from the
level of his own cabinet fitted
all too neatly.
As a first step, in January 1962,
De Gaulle ordered SDECE and
the DST to concentrate on West-
ern agents in France as much as
Eastern ones. Those who protested
were threatened with purges. As
the culmination of his program,
the real purpose of Jacquier's de-
layed protocol visit to Washington
in October 1962 was to inform
the CIA, politely but irrevocably,
that the French secret service
would go it alone. In future, Jac-
quier warned the Americans,
France would operate indepen-
dently: SDECE would cover the
world-West as well as East.
Meanwhile, the SDECE team in-
vestigating Martel plodded on,
checking as their first priority the
military secrets leaking from NATO.
It took them rather over a year to
clinch their inquiry. On Sept. 23,
1963, the arrest was announced of
the "deputy information officer"
of NATO, Georges Piques. He was
Martel's NATO spy. But his job
title and the carefully vague cur-
riculum vitae produced in court
deliberately misled everyone as to
his real importance.
For Piques could also fit Mar-
tel's specifications for the high-
ranking political spy. He was, in
fact, one of the most respected
civil servants in France: it was said
that he had written speeches for
SDECE headquarters in Paris, a
former army barracks, is topped
by a huge communications tower.
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