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The French connection
03 July 2005
The Rainbow Warrior bombing was France's Watergate - a tale of bugs, bullying and deception at the highest levels. The French journalist who 20 years ago revealed his government's lies over the affair tells Anthony Hubbard why President Mitterrand was never properly held to account - and why the story isn't over yet.
French president Francois Mitterrand had bugged Edwy Plenel's phone before the Rainbow Warrior blew up. But Plenel's scoop over the Greenpeace affair displeased "Tonton" - "Uncle", as the president was known - even more.
Plenel and his team at Le Monde newspaper showed in September 1985 that the two men who planted the bombs on the Greenpeace ship worked for the French secret service. The government's lies about the bombing - "nothing to do with us" - were exposed.
Heads rolled, and Plenel's phone stayed bugged until at least March 1986. "Finally," says Plenel, 52, on the phone from Paris, "Mitterrand got to know me better than I knew him."
The president was obsessed with the journalist. Pierre Joxe, minister of the interior at the time of the bombing, said later that Mitterrand "had a real hatred for Plenel, who was a very good investigative reporter".
Twenty years after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and nearly 10 years after Mitterrand's death, all this is being dragged through a court in Paris. High officials are trying to defend the president's illegal bugging of his political enemies, and Plenel has a starring role.
There are 1000 pages of transcripts of his conversations, more than of any of the others who were bugged. "Plenel," as a colleague explained, "is talkative."
Most New Zealanders do not know that the Rainbow Warrior scandal was part of a much wider scandal, France's Watergate. Mitterrand approved a project aimed at preventing the Greenpeace ship protesting against nuclear tests at Muroroa, although Plenel says it is still not clear whether he specifically approved the bombing.
But Mitterrand was also busy bugging all kinds of people who irritated him, including a writer who threatened to reveal the existence of his illegitimate daughter, Mazarine Pingeot.
It is as though Richard Nixon's Watergate henchmen had come before the American courts long after the president's death. And that is no accident, says Plenel, an intellectual former Trotskyite who is himself a controversial figure. France, he says, is an illiberal culture with no great tradition of freedom of speech.
The Rainbow Warrior affair was "a very French story," he says. In particular, it was about "la grandeur francaise", or the glory of France, and about France's uncrowned king. Mitterrand was the Socialist president who came to power promising a moratorium on nuclear tests in the Pacific. So what happened?
"A leftist president with a programme against nuclear bombs organised more tests than all the other presidents," he says. "And he organised them with a sort of logic from the past - that France will be great and independent and so on. That's the first point.
"The second point - and this is the great mystery of the story - the president himself is a sort of republican monarch which is more monarchical than the real monarchy. And with Mitterrand, that is the real problem."
The nuclear tests were visible proof of France's greatness - they made France a third power between the nuclear giants America and Russia. So when defence minister Charles Hernu and DGSE head Pierre Lacoste asked the president to back their anti-Greenpeace campaign, the president said yes - as Lacoste revealed in his memoirs in 1997.
But when the scandal of France's involvement broke, says Plenel, French politicians did not want a parliamentary inquiry.
"There were no questions, nothing. The right says: 'It's the army, we don't touch the army.' Or: 'It's the president, oh, we don't touch the president, even if he's our political enemy."'
Even the far left, he says, believed in la grandeur francaise. Besides, the nuclear industry provided jobs for workers.
The 20th anniversary next Sunday of the bombing which caused France such embarrassment will be little noted there, he says. France is obsessed with its lost glory, and is not interested in discussing its own faults. It has an identity problem.
"We have this sort of obsession about immigration . . . we are not in the multicultural world. There is a kind of dream about our sovereignty, that we will be closed to the world."
For the same reason, the bugging trial - officials are charged with infringing their victims' privacy - had attracted little attention.
"We don't have what you call in the Anglo-Saxon countries a liberal tradition of individual freedom, of free speech . . . That was our problem, finally, it's Napoleon."
Those responsible for the phone tapping acted in the trial like "French versions of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld", he says. "They say: 'It is terrorism and against terrorism there is no precaution. We spy everywhere."' The end justified the means.
"I was really surprised to listen to these people, who don't say: 'It was a difficult period, we were young, we made some mistakes.' They don't apologise, never, never, never."
New Zealand found out quickly that the two arrested French people, Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur, had a connection with the Secret Service. The pair had, after all, rung the DGSE in Paris while under police surveillance. But in Paris, the government denied everything. And in August an official French inquiry by Bernard Tricot reported that the French team had been only spying on Greenpeace, not trying to blow up its boat.
In any case, neither Mafart nor Prieur had attached the bombs that sank the Rainbow Warrior and killed photographer Fernando Pereira, and the French government was putting it about that English mercenaries had done the deed.
Plenel decided that French government involvement could be proven only if he could find the bombers. They formed the "third team", separate from the logistical leaders Mafart and Prieur, and from the team that brought equipment for the operation into New Zealand on the yacht Ouvea.
Plenel found out about the third team - two military frogmen, later named as Jean-Luc Kyster and Jean Camasse - through his principal source, "our Deep Throat, if you want . . . He was in the public service, close to the staff of Mitterrand. I can't release more details." The man wanted to protect the state from the damage caused by the bombing. "He was really a sort of democrat, and he thought finally it was a pity to put all the state in a big lie for a ridiculous operation."
Other sources were also keen to get the truth out - partly to stop the story going further and damaging the president. And this, says Plenel, is what happened. Hernu and Lacoste resigned, and Mitterrand was left in his ambiguous splendour.
It is not true, he says, that his story caused the sackings. "We must be modest," he says, emphasising the word on its second syllable in the French manner. What led to the resignations was the "internal battle" within the government.
Prime Minister Laurent Fabius did not know about the plan to sink the Rainbow Warrior. "He's not an angel, but he was fighting for his political survival." When he demanded the truth from Lacoste, the admiral refused to say anything. He felt bound to protect his staff, but at the same time he could not lie to the prime minister.
At that point, says Plenel, the whole "castle of cards" fell apart. Fabius called a dramatic press conference and said: "The truth is cruel". But Hernu hardly suffered from his forced resignation: he remained "very popular" . . . It was a paradox - for the people in France, the real victim was not Pereira. It was Hernu."
Plenel interviewed Hernu in 1987, when he was mayor of Villeurbanne. "He was still angry with me," he recalls. But Mafart and Prieur, strangely, were not. They claimed they did not want to bomb the ship, but had to obey orders - orders that ultimately came from politicians.
"They understood that our investigation - that's the paradox - was in defence of these military people," says Plenel. "Even Lacoste was not angry with me."
But Mitterrand seems never to have forgiven the reporter. He ordered the bugging in April 1985, although the exact reason seems unclear. Plenel was investigating claims that the president's "anti-terrorism" squad was trying to frame alleged IRA terrorists. He had also been writing about a "mole" in the KGB who had helped expose a network of Russian spies in France.
The head of the squad, Christian Prouteau, told an investigating judge in 1998 that the president called him into his office. "He opened Le Monde and showed me an article I hadn't read. The president of the republic was very angry. He told me that the article contained information known only to him and the minister of the interior.
"He thought microphones might be hidden in his office. I had the office searched and found none. Then he told me of his wish that Edwy Plenel's phone should be tapped . . ."
Plenel knew a good number of Mitterrand's staff. "They say to Mitterrand: 'This guy, he's not an enemy, he's a journalist, but a very serious journalist, you must meet him.' But he just said: 'Never. You just love his moustache."'
It is ironic that the journalist who fought against abuse of power now stands accused of practising it during his 10 years as editor of Le Monde. In 2003, journalists Philippe Cohen and Pierre Pean accused Plenel, editor-in-chief Jean-Marie Colombani and supervisory board chairman Alain Minc of using the paper to boost their friends and undermine their political enemies.
Cohen and Pean's book, The Dark Side of Le Monde, said the paper was a "mafia-like republic" and "an Orwellian nightmare". It had deliberately portrayed France in the worst light.
But Plenel says his two critics are merely practising the "journalism of 'reasons of state"'. Instead of "my country right or wrong", Plenel prefers "the truth - even if it hurts". He says Le Monde published damaging stories about left-wing politicians as well as right. He himself - the son of a geography professor and for 10 years after 1968 a Trostkyite activist - led an investigation revealing the Trotskyite youth of Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.
Plenel resigned as editor last year to return to reporting, but his future with the paper is uncertain. Le Monde is facing an economic crisis and there has been great upheaval. His opponents tried to force him to quit the company, but were blocked when other journalists signed a petition. Now Plenel - who has never visited New Zealand, though he says he would like to - is "waiting".
He wrote a book about his own ultra-leftist past, called Secret of Youth, and was amazed when French conservatives criticised him for revealing his own youthful radicalism and that of the French premier. "It's as though both journalists and political people should keep their secrets to themselves!"
And that, too, is a "very French story".
03 July 2005
The Rainbow Warrior bombing was France's Watergate - a tale of bugs, bullying and deception at the highest levels. The French journalist who 20 years ago revealed his government's lies over the affair tells Anthony Hubbard why President Mitterrand was never properly held to account - and why the story isn't over yet.
French president Francois Mitterrand had bugged Edwy Plenel's phone before the Rainbow Warrior blew up. But Plenel's scoop over the Greenpeace affair displeased "Tonton" - "Uncle", as the president was known - even more.
Plenel and his team at Le Monde newspaper showed in September 1985 that the two men who planted the bombs on the Greenpeace ship worked for the French secret service. The government's lies about the bombing - "nothing to do with us" - were exposed.
Heads rolled, and Plenel's phone stayed bugged until at least March 1986. "Finally," says Plenel, 52, on the phone from Paris, "Mitterrand got to know me better than I knew him."
The president was obsessed with the journalist. Pierre Joxe, minister of the interior at the time of the bombing, said later that Mitterrand "had a real hatred for Plenel, who was a very good investigative reporter".
Twenty years after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and nearly 10 years after Mitterrand's death, all this is being dragged through a court in Paris. High officials are trying to defend the president's illegal bugging of his political enemies, and Plenel has a starring role.
There are 1000 pages of transcripts of his conversations, more than of any of the others who were bugged. "Plenel," as a colleague explained, "is talkative."
Most New Zealanders do not know that the Rainbow Warrior scandal was part of a much wider scandal, France's Watergate. Mitterrand approved a project aimed at preventing the Greenpeace ship protesting against nuclear tests at Muroroa, although Plenel says it is still not clear whether he specifically approved the bombing.
But Mitterrand was also busy bugging all kinds of people who irritated him, including a writer who threatened to reveal the existence of his illegitimate daughter, Mazarine Pingeot.
It is as though Richard Nixon's Watergate henchmen had come before the American courts long after the president's death. And that is no accident, says Plenel, an intellectual former Trotskyite who is himself a controversial figure. France, he says, is an illiberal culture with no great tradition of freedom of speech.
The Rainbow Warrior affair was "a very French story," he says. In particular, it was about "la grandeur francaise", or the glory of France, and about France's uncrowned king. Mitterrand was the Socialist president who came to power promising a moratorium on nuclear tests in the Pacific. So what happened?
"A leftist president with a programme against nuclear bombs organised more tests than all the other presidents," he says. "And he organised them with a sort of logic from the past - that France will be great and independent and so on. That's the first point.
"The second point - and this is the great mystery of the story - the president himself is a sort of republican monarch which is more monarchical than the real monarchy. And with Mitterrand, that is the real problem."
The nuclear tests were visible proof of France's greatness - they made France a third power between the nuclear giants America and Russia. So when defence minister Charles Hernu and DGSE head Pierre Lacoste asked the president to back their anti-Greenpeace campaign, the president said yes - as Lacoste revealed in his memoirs in 1997.
But when the scandal of France's involvement broke, says Plenel, French politicians did not want a parliamentary inquiry.
"There were no questions, nothing. The right says: 'It's the army, we don't touch the army.' Or: 'It's the president, oh, we don't touch the president, even if he's our political enemy."'
Even the far left, he says, believed in la grandeur francaise. Besides, the nuclear industry provided jobs for workers.
The 20th anniversary next Sunday of the bombing which caused France such embarrassment will be little noted there, he says. France is obsessed with its lost glory, and is not interested in discussing its own faults. It has an identity problem.
"We have this sort of obsession about immigration . . . we are not in the multicultural world. There is a kind of dream about our sovereignty, that we will be closed to the world."
For the same reason, the bugging trial - officials are charged with infringing their victims' privacy - had attracted little attention.
"We don't have what you call in the Anglo-Saxon countries a liberal tradition of individual freedom, of free speech . . . That was our problem, finally, it's Napoleon."
Those responsible for the phone tapping acted in the trial like "French versions of US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld", he says. "They say: 'It is terrorism and against terrorism there is no precaution. We spy everywhere."' The end justified the means.
"I was really surprised to listen to these people, who don't say: 'It was a difficult period, we were young, we made some mistakes.' They don't apologise, never, never, never."
New Zealand found out quickly that the two arrested French people, Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur, had a connection with the Secret Service. The pair had, after all, rung the DGSE in Paris while under police surveillance. But in Paris, the government denied everything. And in August an official French inquiry by Bernard Tricot reported that the French team had been only spying on Greenpeace, not trying to blow up its boat.
In any case, neither Mafart nor Prieur had attached the bombs that sank the Rainbow Warrior and killed photographer Fernando Pereira, and the French government was putting it about that English mercenaries had done the deed.
Plenel decided that French government involvement could be proven only if he could find the bombers. They formed the "third team", separate from the logistical leaders Mafart and Prieur, and from the team that brought equipment for the operation into New Zealand on the yacht Ouvea.
Plenel found out about the third team - two military frogmen, later named as Jean-Luc Kyster and Jean Camasse - through his principal source, "our Deep Throat, if you want . . . He was in the public service, close to the staff of Mitterrand. I can't release more details." The man wanted to protect the state from the damage caused by the bombing. "He was really a sort of democrat, and he thought finally it was a pity to put all the state in a big lie for a ridiculous operation."
Other sources were also keen to get the truth out - partly to stop the story going further and damaging the president. And this, says Plenel, is what happened. Hernu and Lacoste resigned, and Mitterrand was left in his ambiguous splendour.
It is not true, he says, that his story caused the sackings. "We must be modest," he says, emphasising the word on its second syllable in the French manner. What led to the resignations was the "internal battle" within the government.
Prime Minister Laurent Fabius did not know about the plan to sink the Rainbow Warrior. "He's not an angel, but he was fighting for his political survival." When he demanded the truth from Lacoste, the admiral refused to say anything. He felt bound to protect his staff, but at the same time he could not lie to the prime minister.
At that point, says Plenel, the whole "castle of cards" fell apart. Fabius called a dramatic press conference and said: "The truth is cruel". But Hernu hardly suffered from his forced resignation: he remained "very popular" . . . It was a paradox - for the people in France, the real victim was not Pereira. It was Hernu."
Plenel interviewed Hernu in 1987, when he was mayor of Villeurbanne. "He was still angry with me," he recalls. But Mafart and Prieur, strangely, were not. They claimed they did not want to bomb the ship, but had to obey orders - orders that ultimately came from politicians.
"They understood that our investigation - that's the paradox - was in defence of these military people," says Plenel. "Even Lacoste was not angry with me."
But Mitterrand seems never to have forgiven the reporter. He ordered the bugging in April 1985, although the exact reason seems unclear. Plenel was investigating claims that the president's "anti-terrorism" squad was trying to frame alleged IRA terrorists. He had also been writing about a "mole" in the KGB who had helped expose a network of Russian spies in France.
The head of the squad, Christian Prouteau, told an investigating judge in 1998 that the president called him into his office. "He opened Le Monde and showed me an article I hadn't read. The president of the republic was very angry. He told me that the article contained information known only to him and the minister of the interior.
"He thought microphones might be hidden in his office. I had the office searched and found none. Then he told me of his wish that Edwy Plenel's phone should be tapped . . ."
Plenel knew a good number of Mitterrand's staff. "They say to Mitterrand: 'This guy, he's not an enemy, he's a journalist, but a very serious journalist, you must meet him.' But he just said: 'Never. You just love his moustache."'
It is ironic that the journalist who fought against abuse of power now stands accused of practising it during his 10 years as editor of Le Monde. In 2003, journalists Philippe Cohen and Pierre Pean accused Plenel, editor-in-chief Jean-Marie Colombani and supervisory board chairman Alain Minc of using the paper to boost their friends and undermine their political enemies.
Cohen and Pean's book, The Dark Side of Le Monde, said the paper was a "mafia-like republic" and "an Orwellian nightmare". It had deliberately portrayed France in the worst light.
But Plenel says his two critics are merely practising the "journalism of 'reasons of state"'. Instead of "my country right or wrong", Plenel prefers "the truth - even if it hurts". He says Le Monde published damaging stories about left-wing politicians as well as right. He himself - the son of a geography professor and for 10 years after 1968 a Trostkyite activist - led an investigation revealing the Trotskyite youth of Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.
Plenel resigned as editor last year to return to reporting, but his future with the paper is uncertain. Le Monde is facing an economic crisis and there has been great upheaval. His opponents tried to force him to quit the company, but were blocked when other journalists signed a petition. Now Plenel - who has never visited New Zealand, though he says he would like to - is "waiting".
He wrote a book about his own ultra-leftist past, called Secret of Youth, and was amazed when French conservatives criticised him for revealing his own youthful radicalism and that of the French premier. "It's as though both journalists and political people should keep their secrets to themselves!"
And that, too, is a "very French story".
;)
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