[The following are excerpts from an article published in the August 22-28 issue of Rouge. weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
[Flor years the intelligence services have been working to sabotage initiatives hostile to the French bomb. Back in 1972, the SDECE (as the DGSE* was called until 1982) had mined a ship, the Boy Roel, that had been chartered by the New Zealand Peace Media movement to prevent the resumption of nuclear tests at Mururoa.
Bernard Stasi, former minister in [President Georges] Pompidou's government, has himself recently confirmed that other sabotage attempts had been envisaged in 1973 against embarkations by Greenpeace. It also appears that since 1982 the Action Service lof the DGSE] organized at least nine attempted attacks on antinuclear activists...
Since 1947, through decolonialization, and especially with the actions of the governments of the Fifth Republic, the history of the DGSE is rich in scandals. We could cite the establishment of the "Red Hand" to liquidate proindependence leaders in [the then-French colonies of] North Africa, the kidnapping of [Moroccan leftist] Mehdi Ben Barka, Operation Barracuda to overthrow [Jean-Bedel] Bokassa [of the Central African Republic], the establishment of a secret-police state in Gabon, the coup d'etat in the Comoro Islands, the intervention in the Western Sahara, the attempted landing in Benin, the establishment of guerrillas in Algeria at the time of [President
*SDECE - Foreign Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Service: DGSE - General Directorate for External Security. - IP
Houari| Boumedienne's death, and so on.
Nor should we forget the activities aimed against "the domestic enemy," which resulted, for example, in SDECE files on nearly 3 million French citizens.
The Socialist Party and Communist Party were totally conscious of this situation [before coming into officel when they wrote in the Common Program: "The parallel police forces will be dissolved. The SDECE will be abolished."
These fine intentions, however, very quickly disappeared [after the establishment of an SP-CP coalition government in 1981] as the left wanted to demonstrate its aptitude for loyally managing the affairs of the ruling class.
In 1982, the decree changing the name of the secret services specified: "The mission of the DGSE, for the benefit of the government and in liaison with the other organizations concerned, is to seek and exploit intelligence of interest to the security of France, as well as to detect and impede espionage activities outside the national territory that are aimed against French interests in order to prevent their consequences." What goes around, comes around.
Under cover of the reorganization, the secret agents sought to strengthen their role and their resources, particularly in the struggle against the East European countries. The corollary of that is that most of the key men of French espionage were kept in their posts. Acts of indiscipline, such as the destruction of the archives of the Action Service shortly after [President François Mitterrand's election on] May 10, 1981, were ignored.
And there was a resumption of "offensive missions," the most prominent of which were the series of attempts against various Syrian figures in 1982, the organization of mercenary commandos in Chad the following year, and the aid given to the reactionary guerrillas in Angola. The blowing up of the Rainbow Warrior obviously fits in with this pattern.