The SDECE and DST had long suspected that a number of foreign agents had managed to infiltrate themselves into the French government. But nothing had prepared them for Golitsyn's disturbing revelations.
Now the hunt began. It was orientated logically around the most anti-American circles but not in the Communist ones: it had long been known that the Soviets had stopped recruiting from circles close to their own ideologies; so it was a question of looking further to the right.
The best-placed suspects, mainly because they were anti-American in general, were the in-power Gaullists. Based on the information obtained in Washington, it was this power that had been infiltrated by Soviet moles.
The DST and the SDECE began their investigations. It was delicate work, and as the first results were rather disappointing, a few of the shrewder agents (no doubt spurred on by the CIA), began to drop a few names, starting with that of the man who was seen as the power behind the throne, General Jacques Foccart. Another name belonged to an important politician who was one of the general's chief ministers and who had been one of the negotiators behind the Evian accords, which had sealed the end of the war in Algeria.
One of the immediate consequences [of the investigations] was the increase in mistrust, and not only in the corridors of power: panic was also spreading in the intelligence services, too. According to Golitsyn, there was a network called ‘Sapphire'59 in the SDECE, which included several senior officers. This information spread insidiously and inevitably caused serious damage as suspicions continued to multiply. Agents were driven out of their jobs with relative discretion and often without much evidence against them. The simple fact that they were suspects was enough.
However, the investigations into finding the real moles resulted in little success and this lack of results badly affected France's image in the eyes of its allies. As the Americans would not budge, the country was riddles with Soviet spies! They had kindly informed the French that they existed, but it was the French authorities who were unable to discover them. The conclusion was that France must have been even more deeply infiltrated by the Soviets than previously thought, as it was the Soviet moles who had used their influence to help paralyse the investigations.
France had to react, and fast. Luckily it was the providential discovery of a spy, Georges Paques, that would help them to save face.
Roger Faligot and Pascal Krop
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The other investigations took place within the SDECE from information provided by Golitsyn, with no definitive proof of treason emerging that would lead to any indictments. The prevailing suspicions merely led to the sidelining of certain members in 1970.
Yet Angleton’s delusional paranoia, driven by anti-Gaullist feeling in the US intelligence community, rubbed off on some of the senior counterintelligence officials. This caused a real crisis in the SDECE, as the result of poor information and an indirect knowledge of Golitsyn’s French dossier. Based on this information, even those who were carrying out the investigation came under suspicion. This was the case with Colonel Georges Barazer de Lannurien, who had fought with the Slovak Underground during the Second World War and had afterwards become private secretary to the SDECE’s director, General Jacquier, who himself had visited the USA in 1963 to interrogate Golitsyn. However, de Lannurien had since been bugged by the DST who suspected him of being a Soviet agent, just as he had also suspected other SDECE officers, such as Colonels Beaumont, Hounau, Delseny and Saar-Demichel.
According to Golitsyn's information, an important NATO document was now in the hands of the KGB, which had then been passed on to the Soviet embassy in Paris. This meant that one could logically deduce that the mole was French or was at least operating in France.
Initial investigations showed that nearly 800 people had had access to the document, which was clearly not so secret as it had been claimed. Elimination followed elimination before the DST agents brought the tally down to four people: three senior officials and a senior French official, Georges Paques. This little group was subsequently followed and bugged, but to no avail. These discreet investigations did not wield enough evidence to warrant a full prosecution.
The suspects were not questioned directly, but were simply monitored so as not to cause any alarm. After the investigations had dragged on for some time, a DST agent suddenly discovered some vital information. Georges Paques, who had previously had the reputation for being right-wing, relatively private and Catholic, now seemed to be displaying more left-wing views behind closed doors. Chalet, who was leading the investigation, immediately suspected that a man who was capable of such duplicity was also capable of hiding something much more important. Consequently, he decided to step up the surveillance on Paques at the beginning of August 1963.
Georges Paques had been working at NATO for two years as the press office deputy director: a role that did not exactly allow him access to top secret documents. Paques had had rather a chaotic career, which had begun in Algiers during the war. He had worked for several ministerial offices under the Fourth Republic before becoming the director of the 1’Institut des hautes etudes de la Defense nationale (Institute of Advanced Studies in National Defence). Likewise, this was not a position that provided him with the opportunity to overhear secrets as the focus of the institution is mainly theoretical and has a relatively open policy. No doubt Paques had greater ambitions to higher offices, but life decided otherwise, not to mention the fact that his personality was rather quiet and he had a reputation for enjoying
