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France's external intelligence agency From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Directorate-General for External Security (French: Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure, DGSE) is France's foreign intelligence agency, equivalent to the British MI6 and the American CIA, established on 2 April 1982.[3] The DGSE safeguards French national security through intelligence gathering and conducting paramilitary and counterintelligence operations abroad, as well as economic espionage.[4] It is headquartered in the 20th arrondissement of Paris.[5]
| Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure | |
 Partout où nécessité fait loi ("Wherever necessity makes law") | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 2 April 1982 |
| Preceding agency | |
| Jurisdiction | Government of France |
| Headquarters | 141 Boulevard Mortier, Paris XX, France 48.8744°N 2.4067°E |
| Employees | 7000 [1] |
| Annual budget | €880 Million (2021)[2] |
| Minister responsible | |
| Agency executive |
|
| Parent agency | Ministry of Armed Forces |
| Website | www |
The DGSE operates under the direction of the French Ministry of Armed Forces and works alongside its domestic counterpart, the DGSI (General Directorate for Internal Security). As with most other intelligence agencies, details of its operations and organization are highly classified and not made public.[6]
The DGSE follows a system which it refers to as LEDA. L for loyalty (loyauté), E for expectations (exigence), D for discretion (discrétion) and A for adaptation (adaptabilité). These are essential components of activities related to ethics and the management of intelligence work and in collaboration with agents, authorities and partners.[7]
The DGSE can trace its roots back to 27 November 1943, when a central external intelligence agency, known as the DGSS (Direction générale des services spéciaux), was founded by politician Jacques Soustelle. The name of the agency was changed on 26 October 1944, to DGER (Direction générale des études et recherches). As the organisation was characterised by numerous cases of nepotism, abuses and political feuds, Soustelle was removed from his position as Director.
Former free-fighter André Dewavrin, aka "Colonel Passy", was tasked to reform the DGER; he fired more than 8,300 of the 10,000 full-time intelligence workers Soustelle had hired, and the agency was renamed SDECE (Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage) on 28 December 1945. The SDECE also brought under one head a variety of separate agencies – some, such as the well-known Deuxième Bureau, aka 2e Bureau, created by the military circa 1871–1873 in the wake of the birth of the French Third Republic. Another was the BRCA (Bureau central de renseignements et d'action), formed during WWII, from July 1940 to November 27, 1943, with André Dewavrin as its head.
On 2 April 1982, the new socialist government of François Mitterrand extensively reformed the SDECE and renamed it DGSE.[8] The SDECE had remained independent until the mid-1960s, when it was discovered to have been involved in the kidnapping and presumed murder of Mehdi Ben Barka, a Moroccan revolutionary living in Paris. Following this scandal, it was announced that the agency was placed under the control of the French Ministry of Defence. In reality, foreign intelligence activities in France have always been supervised by the military since 1871, for political reasons mainly relating to anti-Bonapartism and the rise of Socialism. Exceptions related to telecommunications interception and cyphering and code-breaking, which were also conducted by the police in territorial France, and by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs abroad, and economic and financial intelligence, which were also carried out initially by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, from 1915 onwards, by the Ministry of Commerce until the aftermath of WWII, when the SDECE of the Ministry of Defence took over the specialty in partnership with the Ministry for the Economy and Finance.[9]
In 1992, most of the defence responsibilities of the DGSE, no longer relevant to the post-Cold War context, were transferred to the Military Intelligence Directorate (DRM), a new military agency.[10] Combining the skills and knowledge of five military groups, the DRM was created to close the intelligence gaps of the 1991 Gulf War.[11]
The SDECE and DGSE have been shaken by numerous scandals. In 1968, for example, Philippe Thyraud de Vosjoli, who had been an important officer in the French intelligence system for 20 years, asserted in published memoirs that the SDECE had been deeply penetrated by the Soviet KGB in the 1950s. He also indicated that there had been periods of intense rivalry between the French and U.S. intelligence systems. In the early 1990s a senior French intelligence officer created another major scandal by revealing that the DGSE had conducted economic intelligence operations against American businessmen in France.[12]
A major scandal for the service in the late Cold War was the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985. The Rainbow Warrior was sunk by DGSE operatives, unintentionally killing one of the crew. They had set two time-separated explosive charges to encourage evacuation, but photographer Fernando Pereira stayed inside the boat to rescue his expensive cameras and drowned following the second explosion. (See below in this article for more details). The operation was ordered by the French President, François Mitterrand.[13] New Zealand was outraged that its sovereignty was violated by an ally, as was the Netherlands since the killed Greenpeace activist was a Dutch citizen and the ship had Amsterdam as its port of origin.
The agency was conventionally run by French military personnel until 1999, when former diplomat Jean-Claude Cousseran was appointed its head. Cousseran had served as an ambassador to Turkey and Syria, as well as a strategist in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Cousseran reorganized the agency to improve the flow of information,[14] following a series of reforms drafted by Bruno Joubert, the agency's director of strategy at that time.[15]
This came during a period when the French government was formed as a cohabitation between left and right parties. Cousseran, linked to the Socialist Party, was therefore obliged to appoint Jean-Pierre Pochon of the Gaullist RPR as head of the Intelligence Directorate. Being conscious of the political nature of the appointment, and wanting to steer around Pochon, Cousseron placed one of his friends in a top job under Pochon. Alain Chouet, a specialist in terrorism, especially Algerian and Iranian networks, took over as chief of the Security Intelligence Service. He had been on post in Damascus at a time when Cousseran was France's ambassador to Syria. Chouet began writing reports to Cousseran that bypassed his immediate superior, Pochon.[15]
Politics eventually took precedence over DGSE's intelligence function. Instead of informing the president's staff of reports directly concerning President Chirac, Cousseran informed only Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin, who was going to run against Chirac in the 2002 presidential election. Pochon learned of the maneuvers only in March 2002 and informed Chirac's circle of the episode. He then had a furious argument with Cousseran and was informally told he wasn't wanted around the agency anymore. Pochon nonetheless remained Director of Intelligence, though he no longer turned up for work. He remained "ostracized" until the arrival of a new DGSE director, Pierre Brochand, in August 2002.[15]
Note: The whole section described the DGSE until 2022, the DGSE has been restructured in 2022 and is now organized differently.
The DGSE includes the following services:
In partnership with the Direction du renseignement militaire, DRM (Directorate of Military Intelligence) and with considerable support from the Army in particular, and from the Air Force and the Navy to lesser extent, the DGSE is responsible for electronic spying abroad. Historically the Ministry of Defence in general has always been much interested in telecommunications interception. In the early 1880s a partnership between the Post Office (also in charge of all national telegraphic communications) and the Army gave birth to an important military telegraphy unit of more than 600 men; it settled in the Fort of the Mont Valérien near Paris. In 1888, the military settled the first service of telecommunications interception and deciphering in the Hôtel des Invalides, Paris—where it is still active today as an independent intelligence agency secretly created in 1959 under the name Groupement Interministériel de Contrôle or GIC (Inter-ministerial Control Group).
In 1910, the military unit of the Mont Valérien grew up with the creation of a wireless telecommunication station, and three years later it transformed into a regiment of about 1000 men. Anecdotally, government domestic Internet tapping and its best specialists are still located in the same area today (in underground facilities in Taverny and surroundings), though unofficially and not only. At about the same time, the Army and the Navy created several "listening stations" in the region of the Mediterranean Sea, and they began to intercept the coded wireless communications of the British and Spanish navies. It was the first joint use of wireless telegraphy and Cryptanalysis in the search for intelligence of military interest.
In the 1970s, the SDECE considerably developed its technical capacities in code-breaking, notably with the acquisition of a supercomputer from Cray. In the 1980s, the DGSE heavily invested in satellite telecommunications interception, and created several satellite listening stations in France and overseas. The department of this agency responsible for telecommunications interception was anonymously called Direction Technique (Technical Directorate). But in the early 1990s the DGSE was alarmed by a steady and important decrease of its foreign telecommunication interception and gathering, as telecommunication by submarine cables was supplanting satellites. At that time the DGSE was using Silicon Graphics computers for code-breaking while simultaneously asking Groupe Bull computers to develop French-made supercomputers. Until then, the DGSE had been sheltering its computers and was carrying code-breaking 100 feet underground its headquarters of Boulevard Mortier, lest of foreign electronic spying and possible jamming. But this underground facility quickly became too small and poorly practical. That is why from 1987 to 1990 important works were carried on in the underground of the Taverny Air Base, whose goal was to secretly build a large communication deciphering and computer analysis center then called Centre de Transmission et de Traitement de l'Information, CTTI (Transmission and Information Processing Center). The CTTI was the direct ancestor of the Pôle National de Cryptanalyse et de Décryptement–PNCD (National Branch of Cryptanalysis and Decryption), launched to fit a new policy of intelligence sharing between agencies called Mutualisation du Renseignement (Intelligence Pooling). Once the work was finished, the huge underground of the former Taverny Air base, located in Taverny a few miles northeast of Paris, sheltered the largest Faraday cage in Europe (for protection against leaks of radio electric waves (see also Tempest (codename) for technical explanations) and possible EMP, attacks (see Nuclear electromagnetic pulse for technical explanations), with supercomputers working 24/7 on processing submarine cable telecommunications interception and signal deciphering. The Taverny underground facility also has a sister base located in Mutzig, also settled underground, which officially is sheltering the 44e Régiment de Transmissions, 44e RT (44th Signal Regiment). For today more than ever, signal regiments of the French Army still carries on civilian telecommunication interceptions under the pretense of training and military exercises in electronic warfare in peacetime. The DGSE otherwise enjoys the technical cooperation of the French companies Orange S.A. (which also provides cover activities to the staff of the Technical Directorate of the DGSE), and Alcatel-Lucent for its know-how in optical cable interception.
Allegedly, in 2007–2008 State Councilor Jean-Claude Mallet advised newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy to invest urgently in submarine cable tapping, and in computer capacities to automatically collect and decipher optical data. This was undertaken in the early 2000s. Mallet planned the installation of a new computer system to break codes. Officially, this enormous foreign intelligence program began in 2008, and it was all set in 2013. Its cost would have amounted 700 million euros, and resulted in a first hiring of about 600 new DGSE employees, all highly skilled specialists in related fields. Since then the DGSE is constantly expending its staff of specialists in cryptanalysis, decryption and signal and computer engineers. For in 2018 about 90% of world trade is no longer going through satellites, but submarine fiber-optic cables drawn between continents. And the Technical Directorate of the DGSE mainly targets intelligence of financial and economic natures.
Remarkably, the DGSE, along with the DRM with which it works closely, have established together a partnership in telecommunication interception with its German counterpart the BND (the Technische Aufklärung, or Technical Directorate of this agency more particularly), and with an important support from the French Army with regard to infrastructures and means and staff. Thanks to its close partnership with the DRM, the DGSE also enjoys the service of the large spy ship French ship Dupuy de Lôme (A759), which entered the service of the French Navy in April 2006. The DGSE and the DRM since long also have a special agreement in intelligence with the United Arab Emirates, thanks to which these agencies share with the German BND a COMINT station located in the Al Dhafra Air Base 101. The DGSE also enjoys a partnership in intelligence activities with the National Intelligence Agency (South Africa).
Today the French intelligence community would rank third in the world behind the American National Security Agency and British GCHQ in capacities of telecommunication interceptions worldwide.[16]
The action division (Division Action) is responsible for planning and performing clandestine operations. It also performs other security-related operations such as testing the security of nuclear power plants (as it was revealed in Le Canard Enchaîné in 1990) and military facilities such as the submarine base of the Île Longue, Bretagne. The division's headquarters are located at the fort of Noisy-le-Sec. As the DGSE has a close partnership with the "Commandement des Opérations Spéciales" of the Army or COS (Special Operations Command), the Action Division selects most of its men from regiments of this military organization, the 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine, 1er R.P.I.Ma (1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment) and the 13e Régiment de Dragons Parachutistes, 13e RDP (13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment) in particular. But, in general, a large number of DGSE executives and staff members under military statuses, and also of operatives first enlisted in one of these two last regiments, and also in the past in the 11e régiment parachutiste de choc, 11e RPC (11th Shock Parachute Regiment), colloquially called "11e Choc," and in the 1er Bataillon Parachutiste de Choc, 1er BPC (1st Shock Parachute Battalion), colloquially called "1er Choc."[17]
The DGSE headquarters, codenamed CAT (Centre Administratif des Tourelles), are located at 141 Boulevard Mortier in the 20th arrondissement in Paris, approximately 1 km northeast of the Père Lachaise Cemetery. The building is often referred to as La piscine ("the swimming pool") because of the nearby Piscine des Tourelles of the French Swimming Federation.
A project named "Fort 2000" was supposed to allow the DGSE headquarters to be moved to the fort of Noisy-le-Sec, where the Action Division and the Service Technique d'Appui or "STA" (Technical and Support Service) were already stationed. However, the project was often disturbed and interrupted due to lacking funds, which were not granted until the 1994 and 1995 defence budgets. The allowed budget passed from 2 billion francs to one billion, and as the local workers and inhabitants started opposing the project, it was eventually canceled in 1996. The DGSE instead received additional premises located in front of the Piscine des Tourelles, and a new policy called "Privatisation des Services" (Privatization of the Services) was set. Roughly speaking, the Privatization of the Services consists for the DGSE in creating on the French territory numerous private companies of varied sizes, each being used as cover activity for specialized intelligence cells and units. This policy allows to turn round the problem of heavily investing in the building of large and highly secured facilities, and also of public and parliamentary scrutinies. This method is not entirely new however, since in 1945 the DGER, ancestor of the DGSE, owned 123 anonymous buildings, houses and apartments in addition to the military barracks of Boulevard Mortier serving already as headquarters.[18] And this dispersion of premises began very early at the time of the Deuxième Bureau, and more particularly from the 1910s on, when intelligence activities carried on under the responsibility of the military knew a strong and steady rise in France.[19]
The DGSE's budget is entirely official (it is voted upon and accepted by the French parliament). It generally consists of about €500M, in addition to which are added special funds from the Prime Minister (often used in order to finance certain operations of the Action Division). How these special funds are spent has always been kept secret.
Some known yearly budgets include:
According to Claude Silberzahn, one of its former directors, the agency's budget is divided in the following manner:[citation needed]
As of 18 July 2012 the organisation had inaugurated its current logo. The bird of prey represents the sovereignty, operational capacities, international operational nature, and the efficiency of the DGSE. France is depicted as a sanctuary in the logo. The lines depict the networks utilized by the DGSE.[22]
Various tasks and roles are generally appointed to the DGSE:
| Name(s) | Status and known actions |
|---|---|
| Marc Aubrière | An officer who was kidnapped by Al-Shabaab militia in Somalia in 2009 and managed to escape.[53] |
| Denis Allex | An officer who was kidnapped by Al-Shabaab militia in Somalia in 2009.[54][55] He was killed on January 11, 2013, by the militants during a failed rescue attempt. |
| Guillaume Didier | An officer of the Action Division who disappeared in 2003 following the failure of a DGSE operation in Morocco. |
| Philippe de Dieuleveult | A supposed DGSE agent who mysteriously disappeared during an expedition in Zaire in 1985. |
| Hervé Jaubert | A former French navy officer and DGSE agent who moved to Dubai in 2004 to build recreational submarines. Following allegations of fraud, his passport was confiscated in 2008. Jaubert escaped on a dinghy to India and resurfaced in Florida in the U.S. where he filed a lawsuit against Dubai World.[citation needed] |
| Roland Verge | Chief Petty Officer involved in the Rainbow Warrior operation, arrested in Australia, escaped by French submarine |
| Gérard Andries | Petty Officer involved in the Rainbow Warrior operation, arrested in Australia, escaped by French submarine |
| Michel Bartelo | Petty Officer involved in the Rainbow Warrior operation, arrested in Australia, escaped by French submarine |
| Louis-Pierre Dillais | Commander of the Rainbow Warrior operation, as acknowledged on New Zealand television |
| Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur | Two DGSE officers who took part to the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and who were subsequently arrested by New Zealand police. |
| Xavier Maniguet | A former DGSE agent who also took part in the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. |
| Pierre Martinet | A former DGSE agent, who retired after having his cover blown while watching Islamist militants in London.[56] Martinet later wrote a book uncovering details of how the DGSE planned its assassination of political targets. He was subsequently sentenced to six months in prison for divulging defence secrets. |
| Bernard Nut | A French Army officer and DGSE agent responsible for actions conducted in the Côte d'Azur and Middle East regions, and whose assassination in 1985 made headlines in French media. |
| Philippe Rondot | A retired French army general and former councilor in charge of coordinating foreign intelligence for the French ministry of defence. |
| Gérard Royal | A former DGSE agent accused of being a Rainbow Warrior bomber and brother of French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal.[57] |
| Alain Juillet | A former five year parachutist officer of the Service Action (SA) in the 1960s who from 2002 to 2009 lead a reorganization of DGSE as second to DGSE chief Pierre Brochant, lead as director of intelligence DGSE for one year, and was a senior official of economic intelligence in DGSE. He is a very pro-Kremlin and very pro-Vladimir Putin supporter with his own show "La Source", which began airing in March 2020, on RT France which is France's version of the Russian state controlled RT.[58][59][60][61] |
The DGSE has been referenced in the following media:
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