The ex-secret agent is more used to obtaining information than giving it. This is also his first interview. For nearly two hours, in the Parisian premises of Mareuil Editions, its publisher, Jean-François Lhuillier, a clear baritone voice and the slender physique of a sportsman in his sixties, nevertheless answered all our questions without wavering. He looks back at length on his missions as head of the DGSE post in Libya, from 2009 to 2012. Rise in popular anger, fall of Gaddafi, various poisonings, attempts to recruit people close to power, including ministers… spy saw everything, maneuvered a lot. He tells it transparently. Its only limit? “Do not betray secrets or put the French flag in default”. The oath of a lifetime.
L’Express: It is rare for former DGSE agents to speak out. Why publish this book today?
Jean-Francois Lhuillier: I want to explain how the DGSE, one of the best secret services in the world, works. This tool is exceptional, and I think that telling how it happens is pampering. Today, people know the DGSE through series, but which distort reality a little.
The head of the post is a spy known to the local authorities, isn’t this counterproductive to obtaining secret information?
This obviously complicates clandestine research missions, in a country that was then a bit like North Korea in the Maghreb, and knowing that the recruitment of completely secret sources is irreplaceable. But the fact of being known to power provides other advantages. I used it to gain access to ruling circles, notably Abdallah Senoussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law. This is not pure espionage, but influence.
We also have the impression that the authorities seek your contact more than that of the ambassador. How to explain it?
Intelligence is a game of chess. If the Libyans accept me on their territory, it is because they have an interest there. For them, behind us, there is the President of the Republic. In this case, they wanted to see what they could get from us in terms of counterterrorism. There is another more personal aspect, which is that I think that Abdallah Senoussi, convicted in the UTA flight bombing case, was trying to curry favor with France. When Erard Corbin de Mangoux, the director of the DGSE, came to Tripoli in January 2011, they had an hour-long interview in Senoussi’s car. But I don’t know what they said to each other.
When you evacuate the French embassy, you leave equipment in a safe and you leave the keys to the Russians. Do you know what happened to this material?
No. When we come back, six months later, the walls are broken, everything is gone. We had destroyed all the documents of the DGSE, it was therefore, we thought, material of little importance. But there is this business of boxes which then worries the technical direction, with this meeting where the possibility of an operation of the Action service is evoked. So I think it was serious.
“Jasmin was blown up internally”
Regarding your source, Jasmin, recruited by your predecessor and extolled by the DGSE, despite your reluctance, did you know if it was ultimately a Libyan agent?
I have not had formal confirmation, but it is a certainty. Beyond all the suspicious aspects of his profile, his attitude to the liberation of Tripoli is telling. We meet and he does not try to contact me again. Logic would have him do it, out of francophilia, or even simply for money.
How to explain that the DGSE refused to take into account your reservations, concerning a classic manipulation – the intoxication of a secret agent by a false source?
In my opinion, Jasmin, presented as the spy of the century, was made a point of defending the interests of the head of the post at the time. It is a matter of internal coteries, of rivalries. The head of post was a civil servant from the “research service” of the intelligence directorate, challenged by agents from counterintelligence.
Even within the DGSE, professional judgments can therefore be polluted by career logic…
Yes. This corresponds to a very specific era of the DGSE. The command was perhaps less clear and some took advantage of it. More generally, the reorganizations of the Box have not always had beneficial effects. I am thinking in particular of the “demilitarization” of the service from 1990, which was harmful. Leadership positions were reserved for civilians. The workforce then increased sharply, with more and more civilians, often from Sciences Po. However, I am convinced that the complementarity between civilians and soldiers at the DGSE is essential. In particular because the military bring their culture of work together.
During your first eighteen months in Libya, did you feel the revolution brewing?
No. I recognize it with humility, I saw nothing. But no one saw it coming. There were some late revolts, but no popular movement like in Tunisia. My impression as an observer is that the influence of a channel like Al-Jazeera, owned by Qatar, has been significant. This media blew on the embers, even misinformed sometimes.
The Italian daily Corriere della Sera relayed, in October 2012, comments by Libyan and Western officials accusing “the French secret services” of having assassinated Muammar Gaddafi. What should we think ?
How absurd. This is why I restore the scene of his death in my book, to cut it short. All this is a matter of rivalry between states. The Italians had difficulty adhering to NATO’s intervention.