“French Spied On U.S.”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31660, 22 April 1968, Page 11

“French Spied On U.S.”

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, April 21. A former French intelligence colonel claimed in a newspaper article today that the French Secret Service was ordered by President de Gaulle to start spying on the United States at the end of 1962. Colonel Philippe de Vosjoli wrote in the “Sunday Times” that their intelligence targets were to include details of American missiles and their launching sites. But, he claimed in a threepage copyright article headed “The Soviet Agent Close to de Gaulle” the Russian Sec--1 ret Service K.G.B. had already

penetrated French intelligence.

Philippe de Vosjoli, former French Secret Service liaison man based on Washington for 13 years, said that according to a top K.G.B. defector who arrived in the United States in 1962, Moscow already knew of these French plans and was confident of learning everything that French intelligence gathered in America. The defector had a covername Anatoly Dolnytsin and was given the code name of “Martel” by the French Secret Service which with other major Western intelligence services interrogated him. “Under Carpet” De Vosjoli resigned from the French Secret Service in 1963 because, he claimed, he had become convinced that French authorities had “swept under the carpet” the Russian defector’s information on the

alleged K.G.B. penetration of the French Government circles. Another London Sunday paper, the “Observer,” published an article from a Paris correspondent discussing the claim that General de Gaulle's Government had been penetrated at the highest level by a Soviet agent. The “Observer” said: “The damaging implication is that de Gaulle’s thinking and foreign policy have been shaped by ‘misinformation’ fed to him by K.G.B. “Western intelligence chiefs completely discount the importance of de Vosjoli’s story. To them, at least, it is stale, threadbare, semi-fiction-al stuff, containing no surprises.

“Six years of investigation have convinced them of the total implausibility of de Vosjoli’s thesis—de Gaulle has not been manipulated.”