GALLIC GOTHIC: BUREAUCRAT'S NOTE BECOMES 'GREENPEACE AFFAIR'

Document Type: 
Collection: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630018-4
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RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
January 20, 2012
Sequence Number: 
18
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
September 2, 1985
Content Type: 
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630018-4.pdf124.13 KB
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Sl Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630018-4 ARTICLE ON PMGE WASHINGTON POST 2 September 1985 Gallic Gothic: Bureaucrat's Note Becomes By Michael Dobbs W*?Ithwon Part rorcign Serace PARIS-Like many ood espionage mys- teries, France's 'Greenpeace affair" began with a sim reaucratic note. The note was' written six months ago-on March 1-by the head of the French nuclear testing center at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pa- cific, Adm. Henri Fages. France, the admiral ur ed, should step u its intelligence-gathering efforts to anticipate a planned protest campaign by the reenpeace environmental organization against French nu. clear tests. - siggnificance of the verb anticiper, under. lined twice- in the memo, lies at the heart of the most embarrassing political scandal yet faced by President Francois Mitterrand's Socialist gov- ernment. Was the choice of the word, which carries a vague connotation in French of "acting to fore. stall," insignificant, as Fages now maintains? Or was it a deliberately ambiguous instruction that set in motion a disastrous chain of events culmi- nating in the sinking of a Greenpeace ship and the death of a Portuguese-born Dutch photo- grapher on the other side of the world? . , The answer to these questions must be sought in a series of tantalizing clues that have turned up after the sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior in the New Zealand port of Auckland July 10. Alternative solutions have been offered to the mystery. `Greenpeace Affair' Could the "swimming pool" really have bungled so badly? Adm. Fages had every reason to be angry about . the Greenpeace plans, which reportedly included the idea of escorting boatloads of French Polynesian separatists to- ward Mururoa. The French military long had regarded the environmental organ- ization with suspicion, even loath- ing, believing it to be infiltrated by Communists and Soviet spies op- posed to France's independent nu- clear. deterrent, known as the Jbxt ds frapp+. It was partly in response to a previous Greenpeace campaign that French nuclear tests were moved.' underground in 1975, a much more expensive and cumber. some procedure than holding them any question of authorizing direct action against the Rainbow Warrior. He does not explain in his report, however, why four of the six French agents later sent to New Zealand belonged not to the direc. torate's "research" division, but to its "action division," the "fames Bond" wing of !a pixie The government has refused to reveal bow -much the Greenpeace operation cost,,tut it has been un-. officially calculated' at around 3 mil- lion francs, or $400,000. This was more than the directorate's budget could bear. financial approval for the operation, according to Tricot, had to be obtained from Gen. Jejn Saulnier, President Mitterrand's Z chief military aide. The official French investigator, ?Lt.m lYChriisttinee Caabbon, atmembberofof Bernard Tricot, has conceded -that the directorate's research staff. news of the resumption of Green- Before leaving France, she had peace protests provoked consider- joined the ecological organization, able "irritation" in Paris. But he has the Friends of the Earth. Posing as cited government documents indi- Frederique Bonlieu, a geologist op. cating that plans for dealing with posed to French nuclear tests in the the organization this time were ex- Pacific, she infiltrated the Auckland actly the same as in previous years, branch of Greenpeace. namely deploying the Navy to pre- Cabon left Auckland on May, 24, vent the protesters from entering her mission apparently ac ;om- French territorial waters -- - is One is the le al case laborious) bein " ` ce 8 Y g put to- idea of sabotaging a Greenpeace gether by New Zealand police, who have ar- ship had been considered by some rested two officers of the French secret service French military officers in the past. and charged them with murder, arson and con- According to Bernard Stasi, a for- spiracy. The other is an official re- mer minister for France's overseas tigator acknowledging that agents of the General Directorate for Ex- ternal Security (DGSE) were in New Zealand to spy on Greenpeace but clearing them of the crime against the Rainbow Warrior. Ironically, one of the principal arguments in favor of the innocence of the men from Ia piscine (the swimming pool), as the General Di- rectorate is known here, is the Wealth of incriminating evidence against them. So Gallic is the trail, observed a directorate source sar- castically, that the only missing clues are a baguette bread loaf, a black beret and a bottle of Beau- jolais. ceeded in getting such a plan ap- proved in 1973 but was overruled by the politicians. The Fages memorandum was followed by a meeting between De- fense Minister Charles Hernu and the head of the secret service, Adm. Pierre Lacoste. Hernu now says he merely instructed the ser- vice to "observe" and "infiltrate" Greenpeace. As Lacoste remem- bers the conversation, the defense minister also agreed to let the agents."reflect on ways and means to counteract" Greenpeace initia. tives. Tricot, on the basis of the testi- mony of senior secret service offi- cials, insisted that there was never Nwcu. vxiut mnormauon coat she supplied to the directorate included a map of Auckland harbor later found in possession of one of the agents. She was last heard of at an archeological dig in Israel in mid. July, from which she sent a postcard to her old "friends" at Greenpeace deploring the sinking of the Rain. bow Warrior. Back in France, meanwhile, two more teams of agents were prepar- ing to be sent to New Zealand. Each was headed by a trained. combat frogman and member of the direc- torate's action division: Maj. Alain Mafart and Master Sgt. Roland Verge. Senior directorate officers inter viewed by Tricot insisted that the two teams had entirely different missions in New Zealand and were unaware of each other's existence. O" Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630018-4