French Warned Of American Spies

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 19

French Warned Of American Spies

<N.Z.P..A.-Reuter—Copi/rioht>

PARIS, August 5.

A struggle is in progress on French soil between American intelligence men and French counter-espionage, according to the Left-wing weekly “Le Nouvel Observateur” yesterday.

Security services in France have been told not to confine their attention to spies from Eastern Europe. They now know of more than 60 United States central intelligence agency agents, the paper said. Certain French industries, including electronics, have been warned against employing trainees, it said. After referring to the recent flight over the Pierrelatte nuclear venture by an American military aircraft, “Le Nouvel Observateur” claimed that American intelligence was interested not only in French nuclear factories, but in the progress of the strike force, the development of operational bases supplied with Mirage four planes and their atomic bombs, the value of French defence of Its own air space, and French defence plans and concepts. The military plant at Cadarache, in the Rhone delta, southern France, where the French nuclear engine for her atomic submarines is being constructed, also attracts the interest of American agents, according to “Le Nouvel Observateur.” Smaller A.Rnmh

The French engine is said to be better than the American equivalent for the Polaris submarines. The French efforts to make the French Abomb smaller are also the subject of American agents’ attention, it said. The Gaullist weekly “Nouvel Candide" voices the theory that the photographing of Pierrelatte plant was part of an American plan to draw up a map of all places in Europe to be bombed if the Americans should be driven off the Continent in an East-West conflict. It ascribes this interpretation to General de Gaulle, but without giving any source of justification for this assertion. It comments: “The seriousness of the Pierrelatte affair lies in the renewed revelation of the difference in the strat-

egic conception of de Gaulle and the American command. “The latter sticks to the doctrine of the escalated response. The French consider this strategy inevitably implies the abandonment of Europe in the first phase. The Pierrelatte affair provides a fresh argument for repeating that France has no business to be in N.A.T.0.”