The second of the four circles of the national defence perimeter This week, Athéna has chosen to illustrate this point by looking back at true stories of espionage in Paris. This week, Athéna has chosen to illustrate this by looking back at true stories of espionage in Paris.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY : THE "KING'S SECRET OR THE PARALLEL DIPLOMACY OF LOUIS XV
According to specialists, it was in 1746 that France entered the era of modern intelligence. That year, King Louis XV decided to create an entity that history will remember as the "King's Secret", the "first bureaucratic secret service in France", as the German historian Wolfgang Krieger describes it.
The monarch took this decision for a reason: officially allied with Poland in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), he could not get involved in the intrigues aimed at placing the king of his choice on the throne of Warsaw, an elective monarchy. More broadly, the King's Secret aimed to make the French mark in Eastern Europe, in the great game between Prussia, Great Britain, Russia and Austria, in a context soon to be marked by the Seven Years' War (1756-63).
In parallel to the official diplomacy that he conducted with his ministers, Louis XV therefore commissioned, under his direct supervision and with his personal finances, a few trusted men to carry out more "flexible" intelligence and diplomatic missions. "Intelligence was thus explicitly a matter for the sovereign, not the administration", comments historian Olivier Brun in his "Dictionnaire du Renseignement".[1]. "In so doing, the King, who shows a real inclination for secrecy, keeps his ministers under control.
For almost thirty years, until it was dissolved by Louis XVI on his accession to the throne in 1774, the King's Secret operated in the shadows, under the aegis first of the "prince of the blood" Louis-François Bourbon-Conti (himself an unsuccessful candidate for the Polish throne), then of the diplomat Jean-Pierre Tercier, and finally of the Count Broglie. Louis-François de Bourbon-Conti (himself an unsuccessful candidate for the Polish throne), then the diplomat Jean-Pierre Tercier, and finally the Count de Broglie.
Some thirty secret agents served under them, including the playwright and adventurer Beaumarchais, the future Minister of Foreign Affairs Vergennes, and the most colourful, the famous Chevalier d'Eon, who liked to disguise himself as a woman and encouraged the Russians to join the French side in the Seven Years' War. The writer Gilles Perrault fictionalised this story in his fascinating "Le Secret du Roi" (The King's Secret).[2].
WORLD WAR I: MATA HARI, DANCER TURNED LEGENDARY SPY
It would be hard to imagine a more romantic... and tragic... life: By turns an officer's wife in Java, a "cocotte" (an intermediate status between courtesan and prostitute) in Paris during the Belle Époque, a circus rider, an exotic dancer and then a spy, before finally being shot... Such was the fate of Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, born in Holland in 1876, executed in the ditches of Fort de Vincennes in 1917, and passed on to posterity under the name of Mata Hari.
Tall and beautiful, with "oriental" skin and brown hair, the woman first nicknamed "Grietje" captured the hearts of men at an early age: even before she was 18, a relationship with the headmaster of her teachers' school led to both of them being expelled. After an unhappy marriage and the mysterious poisoning of her two children (her daughter survived), she moved to Paris at the turn of the century, where she lived off her sensuality, nurtured by her wealthy lovers.
When the First World War broke out in 1914, she was famous as a "Hindu dancer" under the name Mata Hari ("eye of the day" in Malay), but her success was behind her. She had performed at the Olympia and all over Europe, multiplying her adventures and inventing a past that was as intriguing as it was prestigious, but she was now drowning in debt. Living in the Dutch capital, The Hague, she was approached in 1916 by the German consul, who was interested in the profile of this polyglot woman with connections in the upper echelons of Paris. According to historian Fred Kupferman[3]In exchange for repaying his debts, the diplomat offers her the chance to return to France to gather intelligence. She becomes agent H21.
IN FACT, MATA HARI "NEVER REALLY SPIED".
Back in Paris, living in a palace, she "fiddled" with officers of all nationalities, trying to obtain information under the close surveillance of the French Sureté. In love with a Russian officer wounded in the service of France, she tried to join him in Vittel, where he was being treated. In exchange for a pass and a promise of money, Captain Georges Ladoux of French counter-espionage persuaded her to work for him and sent her to Holland and then Spain. She became a double agent. In Madrid, she met the German military attaché, Major von Kalle, convinced that she could get information for Ladoux. Von Kalle mentioned her explicitly in the encrypted telegrams he sent to Berlin. Intercepted by antennae in the Eiffel Tower, these messages were decrypted by the French.
At dawn on 13 February 1917, Mata Hari was arrested by Commissaire Priolet of the Sureté: "The girl Zelle Marguerite, known as Mata Hari, a resident of the Plaza Palace Hotel, Protestant, born in Holland on 7 August 1876, 1.75 m tall, able to read and write, is charged with espionage and aiding and abetting intelligence with the enemy, with the aim of furthering the enemy's aims". Her trial began on 24 July, and three days later she was sentenced to death. Shot on 15 October in Vincennes by a platoon of twelve Zouaves, she allegedly blew them a last kiss.
According to colonel (ER) and historian Frédéric Guelton, former head of the Land Army department at the Service historique de la défense, who has dedicated a book to him an article in the Revue historique des Armées[4]However, she "never really spied". Even the magistrate André Mornet, the deputy prosecutor at her trial, would later say: "It was nothing to write home about". But in 1917, French propaganda needed to show the public that it was determined to win the war. By condemning the worldly adventuress Mata Hari, it turned her into a legendary spy.
1980S: THE FAREWELL AFFAIR, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE COLD WAR
Paris, 14 July 1981, in the gardens of the Élysée Palace. Marcel Chalet, the head of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST, the forerunner of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure, the DGSI), had to wait until the traditional fête nationale garden party to tell the new President of the Republic, François Mitterrand, a major secret: for several months, a senior member of the KGB, the Soviet secret service, had been passing on major information to French counter-espionage. Chalet called this mole "Farewell". In the midst of the Cold War, his precious information would enable the Socialist President of France, who was viewed with suspicion by his Western allies because he had Communist ministers in his government, to "show them the ropes".
Paris, 16 August 1965. Vladimir Vetrov, an electronics engineer by training, had been working for the KGB for six years before being transferred to the French capital. His mission, under the guise of developing Franco-Soviet trade: to recruit informants in the technological and industrial fields, and to obtain plans for innovative equipment banned from export, in exchange for hard cash.
This is how he met Jacques Prévost, a senior executive at Thomson-CSF, with whom he became friends. Prévost was an "honourable correspondent" of the DST, who was not fooled about Vetrov's real mission. One evening, drunk at the wheel of his official Peugeot, the Russian had an accident in the Val-d'Oise. Knowing that reporting the accident to his superiors could land him in big trouble, he confided in Prévost, who amicably paid for the repairs. Shortly afterwards, in July 1970, Vladimir Vetrov was repatriated to Moscow.
The rest of his career in the Soviet services only brought him disappointment after disappointment. At the end of 1980, when Jacques Prévost, who had become Thomson's sales director in the USSR, was also in Moscow, he let him know that he had information to pass on. Through Xavier Ameil, a Thomson engineer stationed in the USSR who was less closely watched than Prévost, Vladimir 'Farewell' Vetrov passed on information to the USSR. Vetrov passed on a total of almost 3,000 documents to the DST by March 1982, some of which were classified at the highest level, along with the identities of more than 400 KGB agents posted abroad. In July 1981, at the G7 summit in Ottawa, François Mitterrand informed his American counterpart, Ronald Reagan, of the existence of Farewell, and the information was entrusted to the CIA.
Thanks to this information, the United States subsequently expelled more than 200 Soviet agents, and France around fifty. A French engineer from Thomson, who had been passing on documents about the Ariane rocket, was convicted. In the East, 'Farewell' stopped passing on his secrets to the DST at the beginning of 1982: having become paranoid, he allegedly killed a militiaman after a street brawl in Moscow. Imprisoned, his role as a spy was not discovered until a year later, apparently because of a document shown by the French to the Soviets to justify the expulsion of spies. Sentenced to death for high treason, Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Vetrov was executed in Moscow on 23 January 1983.
2022-2023: RUSSIAN SPIES ON LEBONCOIN.FR AND IN A CAR RALLY
On 11 April 2022, the Minister for the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, braid in a tweet praise for the DGSI :
"Remarkable counter-espionage operation. Well done to the DGSI agents who interfered with a network of clandestine Russian agents working against our interests. The agents involved will have to leave France. Behind the scenes, the DGSI is watching over our fundamental interests.
Since Russia attacked Ukraine on 24 February 2022, dozens of Russian spies have already been expelled from the French capital: 44 according to Marianne. In April 2022the magazine recounts a "rare case": the arrest of a spy in flagrante delicto. In early 2020, this Russian diplomat tried to "recruit" a Frenchman. Rather than arresting him, the DGSI decided to shadow him, until his arrest eighteen months later. Five other agents were unmasked at the same time, and the six were given three days to leave French territory. A fine achievement by the DGSI, which has earned the secret service public congratulations from the minister responsible.
October 2022, Le Monde revealed that the DGSI had spotted a rather surprising modus operandi on the part of the SVR, the KGB's successor for Russian foreign espionage: it was targeting profiles of promising young graduates on sites such as Leboncoin.fr! A source at the Ministry of the Interior explained to the daily newspaper: in recent years, "a dozen approaches to French nationals on sites such as Leboncoin.fr by officers dealing with the SVR". were carried out. Each time, there were "tender but high-potential profiles" of young people offering private lessons to supplement their income.
The evening daily explains: "For the SVR, choosing young targets is a long-term investment with many advantages. Their naivety, lack of experience and ignorance of Russian espionage methods make them easy recruits for experienced officers to squeeze. The aim is twofold. The aim is to extract confidential and sensitive information from the source, linked to the field of expertise of the " In both cases, the treating officer is betting on the future career of his contact. In both cases, the treating officer is betting on his contact's future career.
A RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AGENT LIVES WITH HIS FAMILY IN PARIS
When this article was published last autumn, Le Monde reported that the French authorities estimated that "there are nearly 75 Russian secret agents acting in a false diplomatic capacity, which gives them immunity if they are arrested". But sometimes this is not even the case: in April 2023, the same daily revealedfollowing a joint investigation with the German magazine Der Spiegel and the Russian investigative website The Insider, that Bulat Ianborissov was a spy in the service of the Kremlin.
Far from being a diplomat, this Russian living in the chic 17th arrondissement of the capital with his wife and their two children is the boss of a car race, the Silk Way Rally, which since 2009 has been travelling through China, Central Asia and Russia on the model of the Paris-Dakar Rally. Living in Paris, where his company has offices, with a residence permit since 2014, Ianborissov regularly sent reports to the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Choïgou. In them, he praised his rally's ability to support sales by the Russian military-industrial complex, control local arms stocks and increase Russia's military presence in the region.
And that's not all, writes the daily: "At the beginning of 2022, the spy communicated by telephone with General Vladimir Alexeïev, number two in Russian military intelligence (the GRU), more than sixty times. According to telephone data, these calls and text messages, on three different telephone numbers, were concentrated on the first two months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine". And on 22 April 2022 in Moscow, Bulat Ianborissov was awarded the prestigious Order of Alexander Nevksi medal by General Alexeyev.
