PARIS SPIES: SHADY PAST OF AGENCY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000503860006-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: September 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ARTICLE APPEAR
ON PA6~"
Paris Spies:
S~iady Past
~Of Agency
- ~~ \``~rstn 11.EiI3
-~:~ayl eot~ tw. Yat rrsn
GVA, ~e Green-
peaoa- scandal Ltl~p Ltest of
magil ~ttat have shaken French
secret servias since the end of WWoor~ld ,
wai!~: embarrassing ~eed~,
and Ieadhrs to mass ousters o[
sorbet' end other attempts to tighten
political control over the agcy
T1leTieneral Directorate for F.zter-
dominated_
~y French offl-
ct conce a it has cerned a reputa-
tion for strong-arm tactics.
The Prime Minister's aclatowl-
edgementtodaythat the secret sevice
had indeed beat involved in the at-?
tact[ mesas the Greenpeace scandal
could - eclipse in gravity the well-
known $en Barka affair of 19866.
Then. suspicion that its agents had
helped kidnap and kill the Moroccan
opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka
while he was in Parts, brought the full
wrath of Charles deGaulle down on
the troubled service. Denouncing it as
'.vulgar and subaltern" rte dismissed
its director, Gen. Paul Jacquier, dis-
solved the covert operations division
and put the whole organization under
direct control of the Deten,,e Mirtis-
try. .
The Greenpeace scandal has
erupted at a time when President
Francois Mitterrand's Government
has been making vigor~ats efforts to
change the secret service and estab-
lish tighter political control over it.
The Socialists, who have tradition-
ally been suspicious of the agency as
being a rightist organization with a
taste form in domestic poli-
tics, movede~ to purge and
overhaul the Service for External
Documentation aM Counterespion-
age, as it was then called, when they
came to power in 1981.
Count Alexandre de Marenches,
who had run the service for a decade
and had some sucxeas at taking it in
hand, was replaced try Pierre Marion,
a friend of Defense Minister Charles
Hernu and a fellow freemason who
had no intelligence experience.
NEW YORK TIMES
23 September 1985
Mr. Mari immediptely em-
barked on a urge of top officers sus-
pected of being tmnympathetic to the
left, removing at least 50, according
to a new study of the seiavice by Roger
Faligot and Pascal Krop titled "La
Piscine,'. the niclmame gives to the
secret service's barracks-like Paris
headquarters on Boulevard Monier
close to a public swimming pool.
At the same time, he reorganised
the service along more centralised
tines. limiting the independence of its
divisions.
The shakeup alienated many staff
members, and French reports assert
that as marry as 500 of the service's
3,000 employes at its headquarters
left, as well as~-marly of the foreign
agents, who are traditionally called
"ttonorsble correspaodents." Aa
cording to a recent survey of the serv-
ice by L'Express magazine, "whole
spy rings collapsed...
Agency morale suffered and effi-
ciency declined. The Faligot-Krop
book reports that Mr. Mitterr~artd was
inlttriated in October 1981 when the
agency could not assess a wire serv-
ice report saying Libya had invaded
Chad because its agents were out of
contact. In 1982, agency officers were
reportedly involved, against orders,
in a falled coup in the Central African
Republic.
Offidal discontent with the serv-
ice's work increased. In 1982 the So-
cialists changed its name to the cur-
rent one end gave it a new charter.
Like the Central Intelli ence
it was o era on
mesttc so an is to ~ or ea were .
e as ens ra ,
a er ecoaomtc m e ence
~~ng terrorism.
Late year Gen. Jeannou La-
caze, the French Chief of Staff, again
complained about the agency's poor
performance, forcing Defense Minis-
ter Hernu to replace Mr. Marion with
Adm. Pierre Lacoste. At ttis swear-
ing-in ceremony, according to the
Faligot-1{rop study, Mr. Hernu
stressed that as a military man Ad-
miral Lacoste was expected to take
orders only from trim.
"The hierarchy must and will be rre-
spected, ' Mr. Hernu said. "To obey
and be accountable, those are the pil-
lars of your service."
Despite this strengthening of politi-
cal control, some French intelligence
experts are attributing the Green-
peace fiasco to the Socialists'
changes, which they say weakened
the agency.
In a recent interview, Jean Rochet,
head of the Directorate for Terri-
torial Surveillance, France's e~mter-
espionage organization, said: "I
know the departure of de Marenches
was followed by a purge because of
fears of infiltration by the extreme
right. But I wonder if the purge sim-
ply got rid of people who knew how to
do their lob."
The French secret service appears
to owe its reputation for roughness
and its taste for political intrigue to
close links with the military, a lack of
funds and deep involvement in
France's internally divisive struggle
over Vietnam and Algeria.
's bud?et
has been published, the French secret
ce cert v m s er
Mr. an says t no computers
until he arrived. Tfie Faligot-ICr+op
book says a major handicap is the
agency's difficulty in recruiting good
civilian stafb, which forces it to rely
on military personnel.
Not i.ilte ?tha Aoglo-SaiQOm'
"The chronic problem of the
French secret service,'. they say, "is
that, unlike the Anglo-Saxces. it has
been unable to recruit scientists,
per.? and linguists on cam
In the 1960's, the service's action
branch was built up into a formidable
force operating
rta tiogneariliast guerrillas in Viet-
The list o~ strong-arm operations
widely attributed to the French secret
service since then includes these:
9The sinking of at least 14 ships
carrying arms to the Algerian rebels
by an organization calling itself the
..Main Rouge" or "Red Hand" - as
well as the slayings of two prominent
German arms dealers, George Pu-
chert in Frankfurt in 1952 and Marcel
Ldopold in Geneva in 195?.
9The poisoning of Faux Moumia, a
Cameroonian opposition leader, in
Geneva in 1980.
9The capture of Ahmed Ben Bella
and other Algerian revolutionary
leaders after the plane they were on,
which belonged to Sultan Mohammed
V of Morocco, was forced down while
in flight in 1956. The episode led to the
resignation of Prime Minister Guy
Moilet.
9The sabotaging of the motor of the ,
Trident, an ecological group's ship, in
1966 when it was trying to disrupt a ~
French weapons test in the atmos-
phere above the Pacific, sad the de
tention of the same vessel the next
year on health grounds by the Cook
Island authorities after a crew mem-
ber suddenly developed a contagious
disease.
9A tailed army carp against Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan
leader, in August 1980. which was fol-
lowed by the resignation of several
top French secret service officers.
The service was built up after
World War II by veterans of the
struggle against the Nazi occupation,
which had known few rules. In 1946 its
first director, Ands Dewavrin, a
Resistance hero, was removed after
being accused of stealing secret
funds.
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11 :CIA-RDP9O-009658000503860006-7