1,a SPYING, From Al "Under Giscard, there is a much more realistic approach ffitiiingfle agents were dug up at to what a small service can do, ne point from the cellar of a and a much more hardheaded tli;lon building used by the economic approach to what .ree French. In the interest of French interests abroad are," 'allied unity, the scandal of says one foreign expert. "The unofficial French justice days of intervening directly in having been meted out on Africa for sentiment or the British soil was hushed up. glory of France seem to be Even after the war, at least over." c t o% some of the Gaullist But Africa and com- 4100;c Die 2 4,1975 operatives seemed to have partmentalization are still maintained the attitude that important elements of French Parts: Still Dotrig It De Gaulle's Way they were ouside the law, and covert operations. Gen. de Gaulle did little to SDECE, with Giscard's disabuse them of that notion. from both left and right, De evident approval, is now Fourth of a Series De Gaulle's successors, the cooperating, for example, Other Cloaks, Other Daggers---IV Gaulle did not want a con- late Georges Pompidou and centration of power in any one with the CIA and Zaire's By Jim Hoagland counts written by disgruntled insulated from the reper- France's current president, 'President Mobutu Sese Seko Wash,ngton Poil Foreign Service agents hoping to clear their cussions. security service. Yet he was Valery Giscard d'Estaing, not one to pay attention to the by channeling arms and • PARIS—French in- own names or to turn a profit An important layer of the moved to centralize important money to Holden Roberto's with a sensationalized best insulation consists of the details of the daily operation intelligence functions: telligence services have of government. National Front for the routinely undertaken covert seller. multiplicity of French in- Giscard has sharply curtailed Liberation of Angola, ac- But there has been nothing telligence operations. At least In wartime De Gaulle's the freewheeling activities of operations in foreign coun- followers got into the habit of cording to French, African tries, been involved in the comparable here to the U.S. four different groups in fringe operatives who mixed and diplomatic sources. Senate's attempt to delineate France carry out the kinds of not placing too fine a point on intelligence with drug assassination of opponents the legal niceties. The Free French support without any and conducted internal spying 'publicly the political operations that have brought smuggling, vice and gangland official government im- responsibility for the kinds of the CIA and FBI under sharp French movement based in rivalries. on political dissidents since London was constantly on the primatur is also;going directly World. War II, according to sins laid at the door of the U.S. criticism in the United States. Under Giscard, the 2,000- to the much smaller . Central Intelligence Agency. The proliferation grew up lookout for double agents man French equivalent of the published accounts of former slipping across the English liberation front for the French operatives and to - There have ,been internal under Gen. Charles de Gaulle, CIA, the service of external Cabinda enclave, known as interviews with French and honsecleanings at lower levels who encouraged security Channel from Nazi-occupied documentation and coun- FLEC, based in Gabon. The foreign experts on the in- after some o. the more services that "paralleled" France to join the Gaullist terespionage, whose French support, said to consist of telligence community here. spectacular French failures, government agencies and resistance movement. A acronym is SDECE, has money, arms and the promise Many of the French exploits but they have been carried.out were loyal only to him and not number of bodies of presumed become more professionalized to recruit mercenaries, is haVe become well-known quietly, if at times brutally, to the formal bureaucraty. and ip cooperating more widely believed here to be JACQUES FOCCART thi.otigh leaks to the press and and always with the top Faced at different times with closely with the*CIA and other directed by Jacques Foccart, ...personalized powei through highly partisan ac- figures of the regime carefully serious threats of civil war See SPYING, A9, Col. 1 Western intelligence agencies once De Gaulle's chief than under De Gaulle. operative on Africa and the The French services are reputed boss of France's dirty also putting more of their tricks sector under both De resources into straight Gaulle and Pompidou. commercial and economic The two largely independent espionage and monitoring of operations represent more Communist country com- than the kind of routine munications and movements, covering of bets that in- and sharply deemphasizing telligence services often their once paramount political make. role in former French colonies in Africa, according to French and diplomatic sources. SDECE's interests in Angola seem to be largely strategic, although there is a healthy dose of economic self-interest involved. The French share American concern, about the spread of Communism and Soviet in- fluence in Africa, and are interested in building their influence in Zaire 'and maintaining it in South Africa, which ,iS,also helping the National' ''ront and its ally ' Foccart's operation is believeri, however, to have major 4R dommercial im- plicatitoni.. It is said to be largelylinance0 by the sizable private treasury Foccart can put together from French companies with interests in Gabon, with an 'eye on Cabinda's oil reserves, or with outstanding political or other debts for Foccart's help during the De Gaulle and Pompidou days. It is a graphic demonstration of the per- sonalization of power by the Gaullists outside the channeli of government. Jacques Foccart, center, long linked to President Hamani Diori of Niger and Foccart, 64, was elbowed French intelligence operations in Africa, President Charles de Gaulle at Elysee out of his job As presidential looks on during a 1968 meeting between Palace. adviser shortly after Giscard was elected in 1974 and now runs a large export-import company here„ His network of informants and operatives is still largely intact, although diplomats report that the The 4cervice's 2,000-man apparatus no longer receives force h4ran official budget of any substantial amount of abobt 45 million a year, but onvernment money. experts say that it can draw on $50 million hidden elsewhere The post-World' War II in the budget in any given history of France's in- year. Agents' expense ac- telligence services has been counts are reportedly severely stained by repeated scandal, scrutinized by finance internal intrigue and ministry officials delegated to cooperation with criminal the swimming pool. elements that makes the Most of ifs agents abroad known CIA links to the Mafia look small. But no political body here has had the in- dependence or strength- to run a full-scale inquiry similar to . the Senate intelligence committee's report on the CIA. Such a body would also have extreme difficulty in coming up with docuMents or wit- nesses. Foceart carted off several truckloads of documents after the deaths of De Gaulle and Pompidou)and some of the key figures in scandals brought to public light have died violent deaths. The four major French intelligence services are: 1.—SDECE founded after DE MARENCHES World War II with help from ...picked up the pieces American intelligence, the service is known as .the "swimming pool" by the French because of the proximity of its headquarters to the Tourelles swimming appear to operate under diplomatic cover as military pool on the outskirts of Paris. The service is formally part attaches in embassies. In the of the ministry of defense but past, much of their work hap has a direct line of com- been confined to traditional munication to the presidency intelligence-gathering, while through o ne of Giscard's covert operations were left to advisers and coordinates Foccart's network. closely with Giscard's interior minister, Michel Poniatowski. Like De Gaulle's interior ime in, ministers, Poniatowski is Copyright Alfred Eisenstaeat, T probably the key man in PHILIPPE DE VOSJOIA security and intelligence —CIA connection policy decisions. The service maintains that to French and foreign sources. it only operates abroad. But a CIA Deputy Director Vernon Indications have emerged secret SDECE repo4t obtained Walters reportedly praised recently• that the source of by The Washington Post SDECE in Paris for its those documents wasU former shows SDECE surveillance of cooperation during the journalist named Dominique French dissidents and foreign Vietnam peace talks here. Calzi, who says he was a leftists in France and what The portly De Marenches member of Foccart's. appears. to be routine has also intensified com- "parallel" police and was able distribution of such reports to mercial spying. A French to- make off with copies of the ministry of the interior, source who usually offers no many of its documents. the national police and the compliments to the service Calzi, who was jailed on interior ministry's domestic says that the. French were longstanding charges shortly , counterespionage agency. kept fully informed of secret after the leaks about the DST The May 1972 report con- American negotiating lists appeared, published his cerns meetings in Toulouse proposals during this year's own account last month of that between French intellectuals "deal of the century," when incident and of more than a and leftists from Cuba, Brazil American and French dozen other major scandals, and Uruguay identified by the manufacturers competed to accusing Foccart's men of the service as Communist agents. sell jet fighters to four Ben Barka kidnaping, gold Reflecting a deep-rooted smaller European nations.