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French Pilot and Security Service Double Agent Malgré Lui François Grosjean

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French Pilot and Security Service Double Agent Malgré Lui François Grosjean This article was downloaded by: [Grosjean, Francois] On: 25 February 2010 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 919527613] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713723134 FIDO: French Pilot and Security Service Double Agent Malgré Lui François Grosjean Online publication date: 25 February 2010 To cite this Article Grosjean, François(2010) 'FIDO: French Pilot and Security Service Double Agent Malgré Lui', International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 23: 2, 337 — 352 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/08850600903348879 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08850600903348879 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 23: 337–352, 2010 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0885-0607 print=1521-0561 online DOI: 10.1080/08850600903348879 FRANC¸ OIS GROSJEAN FIDO: French Pilot and Security Service Double Agent Malgre´ Lui Very few World War II double agents remain to be discovered. But one, FIDO (Roger Grosjean),1 is little known and receives hardly any mention in the literature on double agents.2 For example, John C. Masterman had only this to say about him: Other recruits of 1943 included FIDO, who arrived in July, a French air force pilot whose primary mission was to steal an airplane in this country and fly back to the Germans. In addition, he was to send information on aviation, concentration of troops and aircraft, and technical matters. He could write secret letters but had no method of receiving messages or instructions.3 FIDO’s file has not yet been released by the United Kingdom’s Security Service (MI5). When I wrote to them in 2004 to enquire about Roger Grosjean, my father,4 Ireceivedacrypticreplystating,‘‘Wearenotina position to say whether we hold a record for your father. Any record we might have would be unlikely to be releasable in the foreseeable future.’’ Downloaded By: [Grosjean, Francois] At: 17:24 25 February 2010 Dr. Francois Grosjean is Emeritus Professor of Psycholinguistics at Neuchaˆtel University, Switzerland, where he has taught since 1987. He has also held positions at the University of Paris, Northeastern University in Boston, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Founder and Director of the Language and Speech Processing Laboratory at Neuchaˆtel University, he has written numerous articles and book chapters in the domain of language and cognition, as well as four books on the subject, most notably Life With Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982) and Studying Bilinguals (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008). Professor Grosjean is also the founding editor of the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.He earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Paris. AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE VOLUME 23, NUMBER 2 337 338 FRANC° OIS GROSJEAN Further efforts through the British Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, and the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on National Records and Archives, not to mention a letter to then–Prime Minister Tony Blair, were to no avail. Why is FIDO’s case interesting? Several reasons come to mind. The first is that the story of double agents is always fascinating, not only because of their activities but also because they manipulate others and are in turn manipulated by them. This was true of Grosjean, who wanted to go to England to continue the war against the Germans but who, upon accepting to work for the Security Service, relinquished active combat duties. The second reason is that there were very few French double agents controlled by MI5 during the war. Intelligence historian Nigel West writes that only two French double agents were run by B1(a) so as to avoid run-ins with the French, as well as to prevent revealing something of ‘‘B’’ Division’s activities, something the British clearly did not want to do.5 Finally, the reasons that FIDO’s file has still not been released more than thirty years after his death, and why MI5 is unwilling to acknowledge it even has it, are interesting to conjecture. This may be for political reasons (keeping the Entente Cordiale as cordial as possible, even for events so far away) or simply because some of the people involved are still alive, such as the ‘‘English girl’’ Grosjean was engaged to in May 1944, as Guy Liddell reported in his diary.6 THE FRENCH FIGHTER PILOT Roger Grosjean was born in Chalon-sur-Saoˆne on 25 July 1920, the son of Joseph Grosjean, a judge, and of Henriette Boudet-Cauquil. He spent his early years in the north of France, changing cities as his father changed postings (e.g., Lune´ville, Briey, Lille, even Paris for a few years). From 1934 to 1938, he attended a well-known Catholic school, the Colle`ge de Marcq en Baroeul, near Lille. Clearly more interested in sports than in his studies, he excelled in Downloaded By: [Grosjean, Francois] At: 17:24 25 February 2010 rugby and track and field. In the latter, he was a youth French record-holder in the discus. He passed the first part of his baccalaure´at (the end of high school exam) but then veered off toward becoming a pilot. Accepted into the French Air Force pilot school in 1939, he was trained in Clermont-Ferrand and Ambe´rieu. After having obtained his pilot’s license, he went on to specialize as a fighter pilot in Etampes,whereheflewonMorane-Saulnierand Dewatine aircrafts. He graduated second of his class at the end of 1939. During the droˆle de guerre (the ‘‘phony war’’) period from September 1939 to May 1940, he stayed at Etampes and flew several missions. However, in early May 1940, just before the Germans invaded France, his plane was hit by Allied antiaircraft fire and he was wounded. As a result, he was unable to take part in the Battle of France (10 May to 22 June 1940). Instead, he ferried planes to the rear as the Germans advanced on French airfields. When the armistice was signed, Grosjean remained in the Air Force (he INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE FIDO, SECURITY SERVICE DOUBLE AGENT 339 had signed up for five years) and was posted, first to Montpellier and then to the Fighter Group (GC) 2=1inLeLuc,Var,partofVichyFrance.The Germans allowed Vichy to keep a reduced army, air force, and navy to defend its territory. The mission given to Grosjean’s group was to protect the French fleet in Toulon, which they did with their Bloch MB 152 s. In late September 1941, the engine of the plane Grosjean was flying suddenly stopped and he crashed into a forest in Flassans-sur-Isole, Var. Badly wounded, he spent several months in a hospital (at the end of 1941 to the beginning of 1942), and then several more months convalescing in Lille, Orange, St. Maxime, etc. Recently accepted into officer school at Salon de Provence (he was a master sergeant by then), he was unable to attend. The first part of his Air Force career ended in November 1942 when the Germans invaded the unoccupied part of France and the remaining French military were demobilized. Much of what happened the following year probably had its roots in Grosjean’s rather unhappy military career till then: he had missed the fighting in 1940 because of his first accident, he had been badly wounded in his second accident, and he had failed to go to officer school because of his injuries. Many of his friends were either in North Africa (he had asked to go there but his request was turned down) or in England fighting with the Free French Air Force or Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF). The 22-year-old trained fighter pilot was seeing no action; even worse, as of November 1942, he could no longer fly. ACCEPTING THE GERMANS’ PROPOSAL The Grosjean LRC (London Reception Center) report7 indicates that, after having been released from the Air Force,8 Grosjean started law studies, first in Lille and then Paris. He rented a small flat in Paris at the beginning of 1943 and went to lectures, but clearly his mind was elsewhere. In his 9 Downloaded By: [Grosjean, Francois] At: 17:24 25 February 2010 unpublished book, the main character, Franc¸ois Perrin (his own pseudonym later in the war), thinks of stealing a German plane and flying it to England, but he never does so as it is too dangerous. Around 7 May 1943, according to the LRC report, Grosjean met fellow pilots, Georges Montet and a Commandant Lacroix, at the Cercle Europe´en. The Cercle was a notorious meeting place for German officials and French collaborators. A question arises as to what Grosjean was doing there, as no evidence indicates that he was himself a collaborator.10 Montet, a lieutenant in the French Air Force, was currently head of the ‘‘Centre pour l’Espagne’’ (Center for Spain), a cover for the work he did for the Germans.
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