Celebrated French Rainbow Warrior Investigation Echoes Watergate

DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REVIEWS Celebrated French Rainbow Warrior investigation echoes Watergate RÉMI PARMENTIER is director of the Varda Group, an international strategic consultancy specialising in environmental advocacy and project development www. vardagroup.org. He was a veteran of early Greenpeace campaigns on board the original Rainbow Warrior in the 1970s and early 1980s, and later Greenpeace International’s political director. La Troisième Équipe—Souve- nirs de l’Affaire Greenpeace, by Edwy Plenel. Paris: France. Editions Don Quichotte, 2015, 140 pp. ISBN 978-235- 949-462-4 F YOU visit the headquarters Iof the newspaper Le Monde in Paris, on the wall facing you in the main hall after you’ve passed security you’ll find, side-by-side, Rémi Parmentier alongside the 1985 Rainbow Warrior the large reproductions of two 'scoop' front page in the foyer of Le Monde. covers of the daily newspaper third team of French military’ (September, which has been for decades the hallmark 1985). of the French intelligentsia. Testimonies Why did someone choose to juxtapose of passed times, nearly three decades two stories that bear no relation? Maybe it separate the one on the right side of the is because both events marked a new point wall, ‘Marshal Stalin has died’ (March, of departure in the psyche of the Parisian 1953) from the one on the left, ‘The Rain- left: Stalin’s death opened the key to the bow Warrior would have been sunk by a Soviet Pandora's box, and the sinking of PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 21 (1) 2015 185 DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC the Rainbow Warrior 30 years ago by a four weeks for Le Monde to figure out that French secret service squad in Auckland what had happened in Auckland, in the harbour to prevent Greenpeace from pro- antipodes had a French political dimension; testing against nuclear weapons testing in four weeks during which the newspaper had French Polynesia is now seen as the most only published a handful of brief agency grotesque illustration of François Mitter- dispatches, with the exception of a larger rand’s presidency (1982-1995) renunciation piece from Le Monde’s environment cor- of his Socialist Party’s stated values. respondent. The sinking of the Rainbow The Rainbow Warrior front page story Warrior took place on 10 July 1985; Plenel was the outcome of weeks of investigation explains in the book that it was almost by by Edwy Plenel, then a young reporter in accident this story fell onto his desk, at a his early thirties and now 30 years later, time when the newspaper’s offices had been the founding director of Mediapart, the largely deserted in August for the summer leading French investigative news online holiday. publication. Chapters 2 to 4 contain Plenel’s first- On the occasion of the 30th anniver- hand account on how he collected one sary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing, by one what he describes as the pieces of in La Troisième Équipe-Souvenirs de a jigsaw puzzle. He was supported and l’Affaire Greenpeace Plenel shares anec- worked in synergy with a few journalist dotes and reflects on the ways the world colleagues from within and outside his own has changed since that time, for better or newspaper, but Plenel also describes how worse—mostly worse. his work was undermined and sabotage was Plenel’s book should be on a list of attempted by many other French journalist recommended reading for all young jour- colleagues whose goal was obviously to nalists, political scientists and politicians deliberately conceal the truth in order to who have reached adulthood only after protect the military. the internet and the end of the Cold War Indeed the strong ties, at least at the changed the way global political action and time, between French media and the coun- communication takes place. try’s secret services was, during the summer ‘The landscape of the Greenpeace of 1985 one of the most destabilising factors affair is a world that is reaching its end for everyone involved closely or remotely and does not know it,’ writes Plenel three in trying to uncover the truth—the author decades later. ‘The tension around nuclear of this book review included. weapons and the disregard for environ- Plenel also refreshes our memories mental challenges, the political resort of with his description of the infamous Tri- state terrorism by the French state in New cot report, named after Bernard Tricot, a Zealand was anchored in this old world.’ former close collaborator and political ap- (p. 23). pointee of General de Gaulle in the sixties In ‘A Story From Before’, the first of and a member of the Council of State (the four chapters, Plenel reminds us that it took French equivalent of the Supreme Court 186 PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 21(1) 2015 DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC for administrative justice) at the time of both had covers to suggest that they could the Rainbow Warrior affair. In a desperate not have possibly dived under the hull of attempt to cover up, President Mitterrand the Rainbow Warrior to fix the two limpet commissioned Tricot to undertake an ‘in- mines with which she was sunk. vestigation’. By uncovering a third team, Plenel Released on August 25, little more than caused the collapse of the fragile house 6 weeks after the explosion of the Rainbow of cards assembled by French authorities Warrior in Auckland, the Tricot report con- to cover their backs. The Ouvéa team’s cluded that, if French agents were present mission was ‘only’ to sail into New Zea- in Auckland at the time of the Rainbow land with the two bombs on board; the Warrior bombing, it was only to watch (spy ‘Turenge’s’ role was ‘only’ to catch up with on) the Greenpeace vessel, not to attack it. the Ouvéa outside Auckland and to deliver Only those who wanted (or were told) the bombs to the third team that had gone to believe Tricot did, but the vast majority unnoticed until Plenel figured it out. took his report for what it was: a gross, ut- In his book, La Troisième Équipe (The terly predictable whitewash. Third Team), Plenel explains that in the In the three weeks and a half that fol- first draft of his story he was not using the lowed after Tricot, there was a race among conditional tense ‘… would have been sunk a handful of French journalists to get to by a third team …’ that was imposed by the the bottom of the truth. Bits and pieces newspaper’s executives. However that was were released here and there. But nothing enough to unmask the truth. It took 48 hours conclusive until Edwy Plenel signed (under after the release of Plenel’s story for Prime the supervision of his boss, the head of the Minister Fabius to sack Charles Hernu, newspaper’s Justice Section Bertrand Le the Defence Minister, and Admiral Pierre Gendre who was co-signatory) the outcome Lacoste, the head of the secret services. of his investigation which was published Many of the protagonists of the Rain- on September 17: ‘The Rainbow Warrior bow Warrior affair are now dead. The for- would have been sunk by a third team of mer Defence Minister, Charles Hernu was French military.’ the first one to go, in 1990. François Mit- Until then, everyone had paid attention terrand remained President of the Republic to two different teams of French agents in until 1995 and died in 1996. Auckland: the false ‘Turenge’ couple that In 2005, nine years after Mitterrand’s was arrested in Auckland almost immedi- death and 20 years after the Rainbow War- ately after the bombing, and another group rior bombing, Le Monde published a leaked that had come from New Caledonia on a document that proved that in 1986 the head yacht, the Ouvéa, and which had escaped of the secret services, Pierre Lacoste, had from New Zealand, and later Norfolk testified in a classified document commis- Island, in time to be rescued by a French sioned by a new Defence Minister, that nuclear submarine in the high seas. President Mitterrand had been aware of Both groups had played a role, but they early on and had approved the plan to sink PACIFIC JOURNALISM REVIEW 21 (1) 2015 187 DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC the Rainbow Warrior. ‘I would not have is still alive, according to Plenel. Through- undertaken such an operation without the out the book, Plenel calls him le Consul, personal authorisation of the President of the Consul. That was Plenel’s informer the Republic,’ Lacoste was reported as from within the French administration, saying. throughout that summer of 1985. Rather One character who is still alive and than a straight informer, Plenel describes well is Laurent Fabius, then the youngest him more like a guide or a coach who puts ever French Prime Minister who was in his him on the right tracks, and warns him late thirties in 1985. It is generally thought, when he’s making a wrong turn. Very much unless proven wrong, that Fabius inherited like the ‘deep throat’ of Bob Woodward this poisonous affair and had been kept in and Carl Berstein of The Washington Post the dark by President Mitterrand until it during Watergate. But with a notable and took place, some say even until Plenel’s very French difference: Plenel was meet- story came out. ing his deep throat in exquisite Parisian Thirty years later, Fabius is currently restaurants apparently, not in a parking lot President François Hollande’s Foreign like Woodward and Bernstein.

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