A SINKING FEELING FOR MITTERAND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504830001-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 22, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504830001-4
ARTICLE APP'
ON PAGE
DAVID NYHAN
BOSTON GLOBE
22 September 1985
FOCUS ON POLITICS
A sinking feeling
for Mitterrand
When the Rainbow Warrior went down
in a New Zealand harbor, the credibil-
ity of the French government went
with it.
The Greenpeace photographer
killed when the second mine went off in Auckland is
not the only casualty. The Socialist government of
French President Francois Mitterrand is now implicat-
ed in more than the possible murder of an environmen-
talist in another country. It has been forced, to admit
sending teams of spies to New Zealand to infiltrate
Greenpeace and monitor the movement's protest
against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
Revelations in Le Monde and other journals last
week lay bare the Mitterrand government's pathetic at-
tempts to conceal the involvement of top military, intel-
ligence and national security officials. With the kind of
bumbling associated with Peter Sellers' incompetent de-
tective, Inspector Clouseau, the French wind up with
two spies in the dock in New Zealand, a political fire-
storm at home and an image of thuggery and deceit
around the world. Hanging above it all is the stench of
cover-up.
The official inquiry Mitterrand announced to try to
contain the damage is now proven to be a sham. While
Le Monde's and other press accounts fall short of direct
proof, the denials of complicity in murder from French
Defense Minister Charles Hernu, who resigned Friday,
are less than convincing.
The fabled chauvinism of the French was typified by
the Initial my-country-right-or-wrong observation of
Mitterrand's predecessor. Valery Giscard d'Estaing.
France's apparent willingness to go to any length to foil
peaceful protest against nuclear testing on Mururoa
Atoll underscores the fragility of a world closeted with
caches of nuclear weapons. This is not Libya or Iran or
Pakistan we're talking about, but a government that
bills itself as the most civilized on earth.
France's secret plan to unhinge the Greenpeace
campaign represents an incomprehensible escalation of
previous French efforts, which included the boarding of
a Greenpeace vessel by the French Navy and the beat-
ings of crewmen by French sailors.
Why would France go to such lengths? The affair is
being called - what else? - France's under-Watergate.
The massive over-reaction and, incompetent handling
recall Nixon administration decisions to countenance
the invasion of the offices of Daniel Ellsberg's psychia-
trist and the Democratic National Committee.
With too much power, too much money and a dead-
ened sense of right-versus-wrong, the French appear to
have resorted to an elephant gun to kill a mouse, and
are blowing up the government in the bargain. France
has legislative elections early next year, and the pros-
pect is for Mitterrand's Socialists to get clobbered, leav-
ing him a lame-duck president for the final two years of
his term. The French have a deliciously ironic word for
such a condition of impotent government: cohabitation.
By becoming the first government to declare war on
Greenpeace and`inflict a fatality, France has blackened
its reputation around the world. The concept of nation-
al honor, of which the French love to boast, is shredded.
Mitterrand's conservative opposition will goad the
press into further examinations of this sordid business,
and the French electorate will sort out the debris. But
the implications of the underhanded French war on
Greenpeace underscore the reality of a world gone mad
for spying and covert action.
At the same time, France's defense minister has to
call a press conference to declare he is not a murderer,
the espionage activities of other nations are rampant.
The World Court at the Hague heard testimony from
former CIA ana . st avi acmic ae that the Reagan
administration authorized the CIA to invade Nicaragua
with 1,500 Contra troops. Former Contra leader Edgar
Chamorro claimed via affidavit that the CIA paid and
organized the Contras and encouraged them in acts of
brutality. ity. eT n~ States government concetv
created and organized the mercenary forces." charged
Nicaragua's lawyer, Harvard professor Abram Chaves.
In London and Moscow, moving firms did land-office
business as Britain kept expelling alleged spies and the
Soviets kept expelling Britons in retaliation. The West
German government shudders because its chief coun-
terspy and a key secretary in the chancellor's office de-
fected to East Germany.
In Rome, the Pope's would-be assassain, Mehmet Ali
Agca, was back in court as testimony resumed in the
case against the Bulgarian-Turkish plotters Agca has
implicated. In Manila, a lawyer in the Benigno Aquino
murder trial accuses officers of the Philippine Air Force
of plotting to kill the US ambassador.
At home, President Reagan tells reporters "The
Walker case somehow doesn't seem to look as big as it
did a short time ago now with what we've seen happen-
ing in the other countries."
What he didn't say is what needs to be said: The
spying, plotting and conspiracies that governments are
afraid to own up to are out of control and making the
world a less safe place. We can't control other coun-
tries, but we can curb our own dirty operations, and it's
past time we reined them in.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000504830001-4