From kyiv to the Elysée, via Moscow, Bamako, Ouagadougou, the beautiful Parisian districts, without forgetting the very pressing cyber threat, French spies are struggling to protect our security and our interests. The Express wanted to dig deeper: what do intelligence agents really do in the field? And above all, are they up to the challenges of the moment? The main leaders of French intelligence gave us their opinion, as did some thirty former members of the secret services. The result is an unprecedented dive into the troubled waters of the most confidential French operations. Revelations in three parts on the secrets of French espionage… and worldwide. First part: terrorism.
Chapter 1: Rivalries
Imagine two spymasters eyeing each other in public. The scene takes place on June 22, 2022 in the gardens of the Hôtel des Invalides, during the summer evening of the Association of Defense Journalists. General Christophe Gomart, director of military intelligence (DRM) from 2013 to 2017, comes across Bernard Emié, the boss of the legendary General Directorate of External Security (DGSE). The soldier is considered an adversary of the house since he pleaded, in his work shadow soldier, in 2020, for the abolition of the action department of the DGSE. The meeting is cold. “What are your successes?” pretends to question the officer, to whom the former ambassador reproaches the remarks of his book. “You don’t know anything about it,” replies Emié curtly. The “right to know” principle, popularized by the series The Office of Legends, forbidden to know what exactly the secret services are doing. A rule as immutable as it is frustrating in the event of controversy. And there is no shortage of burning news. In recent months, French spies have been accused of not seeing the war coming in Ukraine, of undermining French influence in Africa, of being unable to deal with Russian disinformation or computer attacks. Are our intelligence services up to the challenge today?
“The President of the Republic does not forgive any deviation on this subject”
On October 20, the director of the DGSE insisted on defending his service on this point, in the company of Nicolas Lerner, the director general of internal security (DGSI). The two senior officials held a joint conference at the Théâtre des Sablons, in Neuilly (Hauts-de-Seine), on the theme of “intelligence from the Second World War to the present day”. “We have one of the best intelligence in the world, we are in any case in the top 3”, advance that evening Bernard Emié. A reference to the declarations of Gina Haspel, ex-director of the CIA, published in Challenges during summer. Interviewed by L’Express, David Petraeus, director of the CIA between 2011 and 2012, would also place the DGSE among the three best agencies: “I completely agree. The French DGSE is an extremely professional and competent agency, with which members of the U.S. intelligence services have long enjoyed a productive and mutually beneficial relationship.” A former head of British intelligence would gladly place the French secret services in the world’s top 5: “The DGSE is highly esteemed by all British intelligence services. There are very few countries like France and Great Britain capable of to operate globally. In a note to be published with the assistance of Alain Chouet, former head of service at the DGSE, Eric Denécé, director of the French Center for Intelligence Research, considers that the tricolor secret services reach the “sixth rank in the world”, behind the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and Israel.
So many pleasantries that say little about these secret wars waged daily by our spies to protect the French, seven years after the attacks of November 13, 2015. Despite the defense secret, a patient investigation makes it possible to obtain details of the operations carried out by the secret services. All under the direct supervision of the President of the Republic, who has made intelligence “the third pillar of his reserved domain, with diplomacy and defence”, as Jérôme Poirot, ex-coordinator-deputy for intelligence, puts it. According to our information, Emmanuel Macron receives every day at the end of the afternoon a summary of the daily production of the secret services, prepared by the national coordinator of intelligence and the fight against terrorism (CNRLT). This key figure in the state apparatus, based at the Elysée, is the only one to receive all the external notes written by the intelligence agencies, between 25 and 40 a day. His role ? Take care to avoid rivalries between services or slag, such as the disaster of the Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray attack in 2016. Three security services had then perceived the terrorist intentions of Adel Kermiche, without always alerting. The coordinator also writes certain thematic summaries, such as the monthly one on Islamic sermons. Once a month, the main spy masters meet at the Elysée under the leadership of the CNRLT, to take stock. The coordinator also attends all the bilateral meetings between the directors of agencies and Emmanuel Macron, with the exception of those with the director of the DGSE who has been able to forge a unique relationship with the president. However, the post has now been vacant for four months, after Laurent Nuñez was appointed Paris police chief at the end of July. The opportunity for the services to resume their preserves? Laurent Nuñez, questioned in July, warned against any attempt of this order: “The President of the Republic does not forgive any deviation on this subject. We have suffered too much from it in the past.”
Chapter 2: Terrorism
Monday, November 29, 2021 in the morning, the DGSI arrested two young men aged 23, in Seine-et-Marne and in Val-de-Marne. The two accomplices planned to commit an Islamist attack during the Christmas period, in order to transform this holiday season into a bloodbath. Their most advanced plan, according to information from L’Express confirmed by someone close to the case? Go to an apartment building and murder the inhabitants, one after the other, with a knife. One of the two suspects, E.-LK, who planned to swear allegiance to Daesh, had already been convicted of terrorist enterprise by the juvenile court in 2019. At the time, he wanted to join Syria, as revealed The Parisian.
The case illustrates a successful surveillance of the radicalized who have served their sentence, six years after the killing perpetrated by Larossi Abballa in Magnanville (Yvelines). This Islamist had served a two and a half year prison sentence for “terrorist criminal association”, before his follow-up on his release, in 2013, proved to be faulty. He had murdered two police officers at their home. An unthinkable mistake today. Since 2017, the DGSI estimates that it has foiled 39 attacks, compared to 30 between 2013 and 2017. Of these 69 attacks prevented, 67 involved “human intelligence”, i.e. an interaction sponsored by an agent, such as a conversation with a suspect. More and more cases involve a part of cyber and a part of human interaction, once the target has been identified because of their actions online. A mode of action supposed to better prevent cases like that of Abdoullakh Anzorov, the assassin of Samuel Paty, radicalized online without the DGSI not detecting it, despite reports on the Pharos platform. In the past five years, 24 people have died in Islamist attacks.
If the main threat concerns this Islamist terrorism, other ideologies can serve as pretexts for taking action. The DGSI reveals that “nine” of the attacks avoided concern the conspiratorial and ultra-right movement. Ultra-left terrorism remains very marginal since French counter-spies have thwarted a single attack under this doctrine. “Between services, we have become accustomed to sharing everything in real time” on terrorism, notes Nicolas Lerner. A climate of trust has been established with the DGSE, which deals with the threat outside the borders. During a press conference on September 16, 2021, Bernard Emié detailed how the DGSE allowed the “neutralization” of Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, the number 1 of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, a month earlier. The drone strike itself was ordered by the French army’s special forces, in collaboration with various French services.
“Beware of northern Syria”
This good understanding constitutes, in the opinion of the entire intelligence community, a major asset for France: reputed to be formidable in the recruitment of sources in the jihadist milieu, particularly in Syria, our secret services, starting with the DGSE , have established themselves as essential information providers for all the main agencies in the world. As early as 2014, French intelligence had helped prevent attacks at the Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, according to a source familiar with the matter. French indiscretions have also prevented Uighur attacks in China. In exchange for these precious tips, foreign powers willingly collaborate with the DGSI and the DGSE on possible actions in France. Thanks to this network and because of the ebb of jihadism in the Sahel, “the exogenous terrorist threat has now dropped a notch, but we must remain very vigilant, especially on movements in northern Syria”, warns Nicolas Lerner.
Five years after the fall of the Islamic State, “ghosts” continue to land on French territory. In 2022, the DGSI was notified by a foreign service of the presence of a Tunisian, having operated in the ranks of Daesh. In the absence of a cross-check that would have allowed a trial to be held – an automatic procedure for certified jihadists present on French soil – the authorities expelled him by matching the measure with a ban on territory. A precaution that will not extinguish the threat, now more anonymous and more sneaky: eight of the last nine perpetrators of attacks in France were completely unknown to the intelligence services.