Intelligence to go under scrutiny

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 1

Intelligence to go under scrutiny

NZPA-Reuter Paris French Intelligence agencies will be put under unprecedented public spotlight since the pledge by President Francois Mitterrand to uncover the truth about their possible involvement in the sinking of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior, Mr Mitterrand said in a letter to the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr Lange, that there could be a link between French services and a couple charged in New Zealand with the attack on the vessel. The converted trawler, due to lead a protest fleet to France’s nuclear test site in the Pacific, was sunk in Auckland Harbour on July 10 in a bomb blast which killed a Portuguese photographer. The French Government yesterday set up its own investigation into the affair, headed by Mr Bernard Tricot, once a close aide to the late President de Gaulle.

The choice of Mr Tricot, who was secretary-general of the Elysee Palace from 1967 to 1969, was expected to defuse possible criticism of Mr Mitterrand’s bold move from the Right-wing Opposition. Political commentators said that with Parliamentary elections due next year, the President had chosen to nip any suggestion of a Watergate-style cover-up m the bud. Mr Tricot’s report will be made public, focusing an unusual glare of publicity on the shadowy world of French Intelligence. Paris news magazines have speculated that the attack on the Rainbow Warrior might have been the work of present or former agents of the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (D.G.S.E.), France’s foreign Intelligence and counter-intelli-gence agency. Relations between Mr Mitterrand and France’s spy agency have not always run

smoothly, a legacy of a socialist electoral pledge in the early 1970 s to abolish the agency. Soon after his election victory in 1981, Mr Mitterrand appointed Mr Pierre Marion, a technocrat from ” Air France, to reorganise the Intelligence service from top to bottom. But after little more than a year of upheavals Mr Marion was sacked, to be replaced by the agency’s present chief, Admiral Pierre Lacoste, once commander of the French Mediterranean Fleet. Repeated upheavals and purges have left a large pool of former Intelligence officers, strong-arm men and undercover operatives , known as “barbouzes.” French press commentators have speculated that the team responsible for the attack on the Rainbow Warrior might have been recruited from this circle.