Tempest in an Opium Pot by C
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NYTimcs NOV Tempest in an Opium Pot By C. L. SULZBERGER PAR1S—The world has been having FOREIGN AFFAIRS a field day with the real-life thriller story of plots. counterplots, drugs, tontraband and other James Bond and also another bunch of hard nuts divertissements apparently unfolding who had served as Gaullist bully boys as a consequence of the arrest in New during the general's early years of ,e-ac:' of a minor French espionage exile and who were called S official charged with dope smuggling. (Service of Civic Action). The verbal fallout from this event As Francophone Africa became in- has becnme absorbing reading matter dependent, de Gaulle's Fifth Republic elthouge much is without foundation. organized a special intelligence branch This it is not apparently in any sense under 3acques Foccart to keep the true that there is a dash between new states on the road to survival the American CI A. and its French and also close to France. S.A.C. sur- counterpart, S.D.E.C.E., nor that vivors joined that special secretariat. S.D.E C E. is being riven by internal When the Ben Barka case blew in pull., .i. 1966 both Foccart's and S.D.E.C.F.'s. Dope and e.apionage were • ertainly name became tarnished by scandal. involved in the arrest last April of a De Gaulle decided to rein in S.D.E.C.E. former S.D.E.C.E. agent named Roger and put it under the Defense Ministry, Delouette. Delottette was callieg for replacing its boss with Gen. Eugene art imported car loaded with 96 pounds Guibaud, a regular officer. • of heroin. He claimed to he acting Guibaud put S.D.E.C.E. into its proper tinder instructions from an S.D.E.C.E. place in a civilian regime that had official. - terminated the threat of civil war. The case ballooned in importance. He discharged unsavory thug elements. Dregs. of course, are a major pre- He was asked to stay on an extra occupation in the United States, and year and finally was replaced in 1970 chauvirmlic steam was worked up by Count Alexandre de Marenches. about the French poisoning American In French eyes. Marenches, a huge youngsters. man, is the typical pro-"Anglo-Saxon." For their part, the French have al- His wife Is British, his mother was ready been regaled with tales of how American. his father served as liaison S.D.E.C.E. agents were involved in the officer on General Pershing's staff. He murder of a Moroccan left-wing politi- speaks perfect English. Nevertheless. cian named Ben Barka, and of the so- there is every evidence that he is a called ''Topaz" case. "Topaz," en loyal French patriot of the same type American novel, was based on charges as his predecessor, and there Is no of en S.D.E.C.E. agent in Washington question of pro- or anti-Americanism that high French Government officials involved. vunv leaking information to Russia. Thus there is little truth in tales now S.D.E.C.E. is a postwar organization circulating here about "settling old of mixed antecedents. Thd.e...included scores" between pro-Soviet and pro- de Gaulle's Cmigrd intelligence organi- Americti-ii cliques or doing away with zation in wartime London, a similar nefarious double agents. Such rumors s,rueture in North Africa, parts of the have been spread by persons at one or old Petainist Second Bureau and Re- another time associated with S.D.E.C.E. sistence groups inside occupied France. who have got into a publicity cmitest, Frum itr start, shortly after the war, and the French opposition is trying to S DE.0 F.. has been preoccupied with crdbarrass the regime. crises. First came Indochina, then the Nevertheless, since the student up- cold war. Then there was the Algerian risings of 1968, after which relations partisan conflict and finally the strug- with America perceptibly improved, gle with the O.A.S. (secret Army or- Paris and Washington have had ex- ganization) conspiracy. cellent working relations even on the The Algerian guerrillas depended on secret service level. Furthermore, the foreign arms supplies, so S.D.E.C.E. French are just as concerned with the got into the brutal business of fight- drug problem as Americans are. ing gunrunners with dummy organiza- The present furor is a tempest in an tions such as the ruthless "Red Hand." opium pot. Once justice has taken ils Murder and kidnapping became one course, it will blow over. No deeper aspect of its operation. S.D.E.C.E. took political implications are involved de- in some toughs from criminal elements spite the best efforts of tale-epinnet .