The American media Politico nicknamed him “Macron’s pal”: Macron’s friend. For six and a half years, he was one of the five most powerful men in the Republic, much more influential than most ministers, say those who knew him. The keeper of the most sensitive state secrets and the occult advisor to the president. The head of clandestine diplomacy and the hub of defense advice at the Elysée. The man behind hidden missions in Lebanon, Algeria, Turkey, Belarus… The friend of William Burns, the director of the CIA, and the attraction of Le Siècle, the Parisian private club of which he is a member. On January 9, Bernard Emié will leave his post as director of the DGSE. Fired after being revered. It was time to tell his story, and that of his years at the head of a special service that he transformed.
EPISODE 1 – DGSE, the fall of a master spy: Bernard Emié, the story of an extraordinary rise
EPISODE 2 – DGSE, the fall of a master spy: Bernard Emié, strategist and manager of secret agents
Episode 3: The President’s Secret Negotiator
On August 26, 2022, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune invites Emmanuel Macron to lunch, on an official visit to Algiers. In the photo taken at lunch at the presidential residence of Zeralda, we see the Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, Thierry Burkhard… and Bernard Emié. The incongruous presence of the head of clandestine diplomacy in an official photo, here to celebrate the security understanding between the two countries.
It is extremely rare for a director of the secret services to accompany the President of the Republic during a trip abroad. But Bernard Emié was able to carve out a unique role for himself; that of special envoy of the president to the Arab world, this area that he knows so well having been ambassador there three times. Emmanuel Macron appreciates this rigorous diplomat, who does not hesitate to shake up unanimity in meetings. “Macron’s pal”, Macron’s friend, once nicknamed him the American media Politico. “What do you think, Bernard?” often says the head of state after an advisor’s presentation.
At the end of the defense councils, the two men spoke for a moment, standing, in the corridor of PC Jupiter at the Elysée, says a participant. A classified top secret defense exchange during which the spymaster can propose clandestine operations. “The president knows that Bernard Emié knows how to keep a secret. He will never vent to anyone. It’s precious,” says prefect Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, intelligence coordinator from 2017 to 2020.
Lukashenko under pressure
When time is running out, the director of the DGSE calls the head of state directly on his secure telephone from a room on Boulevard Mortier, or goes through his personal chief of staff. This scenario occurs approximately once a month, a former director of the DGSE tells us. The light is then often orange: Emmanuel Macron turns out to be much less fond of clandestine maneuvers than François Hollande, sponsor of around fifty anti-terrorist operations between 2013 and 2017. He still endorsed Bernard Emié’s trip to Belarus, the March 24, 2023, known as Operation Alisia. The spymaster goes to President Lukashenko’s security entourage to warn them in detail of France’s response in the event of his country’s involvement in Ukraine. The leader finally gives up sending troops.
The French president also visited Boulevard Mortier three times, notably in November 2019, to inaugurate the DGSE war memorial there. He was able to discover the general director’s office, filled with personal photos, notably with Jacques Chirac and Queen Elisabeth II.
Minister of the Arab world
A bit like he delegated the monitoring of Libya to Paul Soler, a special forces soldier, Emmanuel Macron likes to involve his director of the DGSE in his foreign policy, in the secrecy of their one-on-one meetings at the Elysée, which the intelligence coordinator does not attend. “The president likes to dig up information and opinions everywhere. Among those he listens to, there is Bernard,” explains MEP Nathalie Loiseau. Hence appreciable room for maneuver in the Middle East. In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made the spymaster his direct interlocutor. In January 2018, then in March 2021, he received him in his presidential palace. The opportunity to discuss cooperation against terrorism but also regional geopolitics, as one would with a Minister of Foreign Affairs. “In a certain number of countries, we prefer to receive the director of the secret services than the minister. It is more prestigious,” observes Pierre Servent, friend of thirty years of Bernard Emié.
With foreign dignitaries, the boss of the secret services knows how to play successively on the two most distant registers, seduction and aggressiveness. “He sometimes discharges buckshot, but calculated discharges,” recalls one of his former deputies at the DGSE, about his interviews with his foreign counterparts. “It’s between diplomacy and manipulation,” says another of his former advisers within the secret service. Even the director of the CIA, William Burns, his friend of twenty-five years since they rubbed shoulders as ambassadors to Jordan, from 1998 to 2001, would have been entitled to a cold explanation after the mic-mac of the Aukus contract, this order for French nuclear submarines denounced by Australia in September 2021, for the benefit of the United States and the United Kingdom. A setback all the more irritating for Bernard Emié as he had dinner with Mathias Cormann, Australia’s Minister of Finance from 2013 to 2020 and senior executive of the ruling coalition, in June 2021.
In Turkey, he maintains the best relations with Hakan Fidan, head of the secret service from 2015 to 2023 and now Minister of Foreign Affairs. He knew the senior official when he was diplomatic advisor to Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Cooperation between the two directions would have produced “incredible results”, praises Bernard Emié during a conference in Neuilly, October 20, 2021. Despite the Metin Ozdemir affair, named after a former security guard at the French consulate in Istanbul convicted of spying for the benefit of the DGSE, in 2020. “When no one talks to each other, the only ones who talk to each other are the secret services,” smiles General Palasset.
“Lebanese cell”
But it is undoubtedly in Lebanon that Bernard Emié devotes the most time. The Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, is a friend of twenty years. From the explosion of the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, an astonishing “Lebanese cell” was set up, between the Elysée and Boulevard Mortier, to the point of marginalizing the official special envoy, Pierre Duquesne. Emié teams up with Emmanuel Bonne, the diplomatic advisor in qualities Of the president. The two men were ambassadors to Beirut, they already worked together at the Quai d’Orsay, from 2002 to 2004, with the master spy in the role of hierarchical superior and mentor.
Within the duo, the director of the DGSE is the most active with the Lebanese leaders. He argued at length for the ultimately aborted appointment of Moustapha Adib as Prime Minister. In Paris, he received Walid Jumblatt, Gebran Bassil or Saad Hariri, sometimes in the Haussmannian residence reserved for guests of the DGSE, in the Tour-Maubourg district. On September 3, 2020, the height of surprise when the Reuters agency headlined in one of its dispatches that “Bernard Emié provides support for the reforms” of Lebanon. Probably unheard of for a spy.
Little by little, however, the mechanics seize up. France is failing to guide the Lebanese presidential election, which has been unsuccessful since September 2022. The French are also unable to appoint a government or a president of the Central Bank close to their views. The name of the banker Samir Assaf, close friend of Bernard Emié, has often been mentioned, in vain. On June 7, 2023, Emmanuel Macron decided to appoint Jean-Yves Le Drian as “personal envoy for Lebanon”. The Elysée-Mortier “cell” is dismantled. “In Beirut, everyone understood the arrival of Le Drian as a disavowal for the Emié-Bonne duo,” indicates Joseph Bahout. The end of an era.
To be continued this Friday, January 5 at 6 p.m. – Episode 4: the disgrace of the master spy.
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