Franco-American Horse Hassle

...SPYWORKS AND HEROIN Franco- American Horse Hassle BY ARY AlAN Even Frenchmen who dislike the Fifth Republic concede that it is marvelously entertaining In its 12 sizzling years, it has regaled the nation with more political drama, suspense, affaues, and scandals than the Third and Fourth Republics together, and it goes from strength to strength During the last few weeks a highly professional cast of slippery financiers, anxious politicians, confident dope-traders, semi-retired strong-arm men, colonels who are not colonels, no-longer-secret agents, and their feuding patrons have been acting out no less than three interwoven chffhangers whose ingredients include dope, tax frauds, dubious scrap-metal deals, espionage, counterespionage, counterfeit dollars, and evaporated francs...

...The theory that the sdece??or a faction within the service??shipped the heroin and wanted Delouette caught is nonsense Secret services have been known to plant dope on employes they wish to have safely locked away, but not $12 million worth One pro-sdece theory goes like this President Pompidou is genuinely concerned about the drug traffic He feels the humiliation of France's status as the world's biggest exporter of heroin, and his advisers fear that it U S defenses against heroin smug-lers continue to be more successful than French measures against the Marseilles laboratories, the drug will stay in France and be sold to French kids Last water, therefore, the President asked the "special services" to cooperate m the antidope drive instead of observing their usual complacent neutrality There is a distinct ex-barbouze element in the French dope industry (not all former barbouzes wanted, or could be given, official employment) The sdece has money, it is plugged into the barbouze old-boy network, it is much less inhibited than the police and customs, and it has what it calls "correspondents" in every significant port and airport in the Mediterranean area and Near East Although it is not supposed to carry out operations inside France, it has occasionally done so It might have produced interesting results on the dope front, given firm direction, now, it is too demoralized to do so...

...Factional fighting in and around the sdece has reached a dangerous level Critics of President Pompidou and de Marenches, bmbouze elements, and apologists for de Gaulle are sniping hard, and there are clans within every faction General Billotte, for example, is annoyed with Pompidou and de Marenches for refusing to give him a say in the reorganization of the sdece , he is almost certainly Colonel Barberot's main informant Billotte has now called for the dissolution of the sdece, arguing that it has gone so far beyond the pale of republican legality as to be irrecoverable Meanwhile, Roger Delouette and his 96 pounds of herom have slipped into the baokground We shall probably never know who really supplied the stuff, just as we still don't know (for publication) who murdered Ben Barka in 1965 and Markovitch m 1969 The sdece appeared to be on the side of the baddies in those affairs, but it may be a victim now...

...During the 1960s the ranks of the adventurers were swollen by an influx of mercenaries, well-connected racketeers, strong-arm men, and intriguers who had served in the Gaul-list 'civil action' service, parallel police' networks, and other secret or merely semiofficial groups fostered m the first years of the Fifth Republic by Jacques Foccart, General de Gaulle's personal adviser on undercover activities, and Prime Minister Michel Debre These barbouzes had helped the Gaulhsts intimidate the Left at home and rout their former friends in Algeria, and it was natural that the ones with a talent for secret work should be rewarded with sdece employment...

...Fournier's real name is Ferrer The highest military rank he ever attained was set gent-chef (senior sergeant) But he is a member of the Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionnage (sdece), about four ranks from the top De-louette's status is less clear He was recruited by the sdece (the acronym is pronounced Sdeck) and given its three-month beginners' course in secret work in 1969 sdece officers say his contract was terminated in 1970, but this means very little, secret services usually disown agents who make unauthorized headlines...

...Shortly after taking office, President Pompidou asked General Pierre Billotte, a former minister, to take a close look at the sdece and advise him how to sort it out Just over a year ago, acting on Billotte's report, Pompidou fired the service's military director-general and named m his place Alexandre de Marenches, a pro-nato businessman During the last year of de Gaulle's Presidency, three sdece officers had been associated with a campaign to discredit M and Mme Pompidou, understandably, de Marenches soon dispensed with their services Before too much more time passed, he dismissed a dozen senior or middle-grade officers and persuaded several to resign One was Jacques Beaumont, also known as M Bertrand...

...Ray Alan is author of a forthcoming book on Mediteiranean spying...

...Beaumont's first postwar job had been m the Air Mimstry, then under Communist control, from there he went to Yugoslavia as military attached, next he joined the sdece He climbed its hierarchy to occupy two of its three most important posts, those of director of research and assistant director-general For six months he was m charge of intelligence operations in Eastern Europe Toward the end of November, Beaumont was accused of "high treason" by a former intelligence officer and ex-diplomat named Roger Barberot Colonel Barberot now heads the BDPA, an arm of the Foieign Ministry whose overt role is to supply agricultural advisers to developing countries, it once employed Roger Delouette Barberot is a friend of General Billotte and if Beaumont sues him for slander, as he has threatened to do, the court hearing should be sensational...

...But a year ago, this pro-sdece theory concludes, the dope barons probably took the organization seriously The recruitment of Delouette??with the aim, whether he succeeded or failed, of implicating the sdece ??may well have been their reply to Pompidou's reported initiative Delouette was caught, but he said what was expected of him, and losses are budgeted for The sdece and all other special services' will have got the message...

...The sdece's headquarters are tucked away m a drab working-class quarter of northeast Pans, where all the neighbors can see is 14-foot spiked walls??Black, except where daubed with a Trotskyist slogan of an Anarchist symbol??slate roofs, a radio mast, and a few pigeons (non-operational) Inside the walls is a big courtyard shaded by two double rows of chestnut trees and dominated by an old clock On three sides of the courtyard are modest four-story specimens of 1900-style public-works architectuie, and to the north, a modern communications center...

...The most piquant of these serials is a Franco-American co-production Its success was insured when Herbert Stern, U S attorney for New Jersey, revealed that the French authorities were refusing to allow him to question 'Colonel' Paul Fourmer, a secret-service officer he suspects was involved in a recent attempt to smuggle 96 pounds of heroin into America The caught smuggler, an agronomist named Roger Delouette, said Fourmer planned the operation...

...Despite its name, the sdece is not primarily a counterespionage service (as most American papers I have seen report) It is the nearest French equivalent to the CIA—but with neither the global outlook nor the administrative prestige of Richard Helms' organization, and only a thirtieth of its manpower and a fi action of its electronics The official operational budget for 1972 is 54 million francs ($10 3 million), little more than half that of the equivalent British secret service and only one-fortieth of the CIA's annual expenditure That figure, however, does not include 20 5 million francs ($4 million) for the purchase of new telecommunications and data-control equipment and other capital expenditure, plus secret funds For what it has to do, the sdece is not short of money It has been unable, though, to attract either broadly educated all-rounders or analytical thinkers and planners of the kind one meets in France's economic ministries and the more efficient nationalized industries It has relied too heavily on military men, seconded from, and often eager to return to, normal' units, and adventurers recommended, for services rendered, by senior politicians of the regime...