A book published this month in France - L’Espion du Président (‘The President’s Spy’) - accuses Bernard Squarcini, head of the DCRI, the country’s domestic intelligence services, of mounting illegal surveillance operations against the media, and notably this website. In this exclusive interview with Mediapart, Yves Bertrand, the former head of the now-disbanded French police intelligence organisation, the Renseignements Généraux, reveals how for years the French presidential and prime-ministerial offices have carried out illegal surveillance operations against the media and political opponents, but now taken to even more sinister levels. “President Sarkozy is wary of everyone,” he says. “And as for journalists, don’t even mention them. That’s the most prized of prey. Those who carry out investigations are permanently covered.” Report and interview by Fabrice Arfiand Karl Laske.
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Lawyers for Bernard Squarcini, head of the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur (DCRI), the French domestic intelligence agency, last week announced they were launching a libel action against the authors of L’Espion du Président (‘The President’s Spy’), a book detailing how the DCRI has been regulalrly used for illegal spying missions on the French media. Squarcini’s lawyers are also taking libel action against Mediapart, following an article on the book by its editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel.
Last October, Squarcini was placed under formal investigation – one step short of charges being brought – for his suspected role in the illegal surveillance of mobile phone records of Gérard Davet, an investigative journalist with French daily Le Monde, during reporting of the L’Oréal-Bettencourt affair.
In 'The President's Spy', authors Olivia Recasens and Christophe Labbé from French news weekly Le Point, and Didier Hassoux, from investigative weekly Le Canard enchaîné, detail how the DCRI has become, under Squarcini, a tool for the French presidency for the surveillance of journalists They describe how a unit called ‘R1’ is in charge of sound-bugging, while another, named ‘R2’, is dedicated to breaking into computers and which, they write, can “unlock security systems that prevent access to the contents of a PC or a Mac”. One DCRI officer interviewed in the book explains that “in a few minutes they are able to siphon off the whole of a hard disc”.
One notable interviewee is Joël Bouchité, a former security advisor for President Nicolas Sarkozy and once head of the now-disbanded Renseignements généraux (RG), the French national police force’s intelligence service. “[Squarcini] has also created by his side a small press unit,” Bouchité says. “These are guys in charge of picking up information tips about what’s happening in newspapers, the affairs about to be exposed, the personalities of journalists. For that, like with other things, they use perfectly illegal methods.
Yves Bertrand was Bouchité’s predecessor as head of the RG, running the service between 1992 and 2004. It was disbanded in 2008, when it merged with the former domestic intelligence service, the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST) to create the DCRI. In an exclusive interview with Mediapart, published below, Bertrand backs up Bouchité’s comments, and adds further detail about an illegal surveillance system that he says has long existed, but which has now become more powerful under Squarcini’s DCRI.
Mediapart: According to the book The President’s Spy, Bernard Squarcini has become President Sarkozy’s key police agent, notably responsible for underhand operations. What is your opinion of his career path?
Yves Bertrand: He’s someone who was for a longtime my deputy. I took him straight from school, that’s how well I know him. He was appointed to [the Brittany town of] Brest, then to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques [region near the Spanish border] to look after the ETA military wing. After that, he was brought to headquarters. He is an excellent servitor, but he’s not a conceiver. He didn’t know how to lead properly. You can see that today, he defends himself very badly.
At a certain time, Nicolas Sarkozy became besotted with him. I was in position then. [Nicolas Sarkozy’s then-wife] Cécilia Sarkozy didn’t like me, she called me ‘grumpy’, and she pushed her husband into putting Squarcini in my place. But I kept it until the end. He was a very good collaborator.
Squarcini’s strong points are easy to see. He has fought anti-terrorism his whole life, all the same limited to the Corsican FLNC [independence group] and the Basque country. He doesn’t know Islamic terrorism very well. The arrest of [convicted Corsican independence militant] Yvan Collona, which he’s often been credited with, is in fact due to a former agent, François Casanova, who worked a lot in the prisons.
Mediapart: Do you think Bernard Squarcini has gone too far under Nicolas sarkozy ?
Y.B.: He has indeed become the president’s man, the president’s spy. He has become infatuated with Monsieur Sarkozy like any civil servant would in an authoritarian system. At one point, he couldn’t retreat and now he has 12 years to do before retirement. He did twisted jobs every time there was one to be done. He hasn’t known how to say 'no' to Sarkozy. He’s done everything. There’s not just the spying on phone records.
Mediapart: Meaning phone taps?
Y.B.: Yes. But more than that. The DCRI carries out phone taps like you eat croissants. You need to know that there are taps that don’t pass through the Commission for Control of Security Interceptions [1], as it’s prudishly called. I’ve lived that myself, when I was head of the Renseignements Généraux. There were furtive taps, carried out on the discretion of the prime minister’s or president’s office. And which were not controlled. It’s outside of authorized procedure.
Mediapart: Have you personally witnessed this?
Y.B.: I remember them. The prime minister’s office had between 20 and 30 lines, maybe more, which were [set up for tapping] without going through the Commission. [Current French foreign minister] Monsieur Alain Juppé was prime minister. A member of the [prime minister’s] cabinet looked after them, and Jean-Michel R. [last name withheld], responsible for security, was in charge of them.
Mediapart: have you also used this system?
Y.B.: No. I went to see the Commission every six months to ask if our requests were in order. In reality, you have two types of [official] administration phone taps, those that went through the Commission, which can be refused, and the others. But the commission isn’t fooled. The members of the Commission should be questioned about that.
I think that the current political powers have used this system a lot. They have accentuated it. President Sarkozy is wary of everyone. And as for journalists, don’t even mention them. That’s the most prized of prey. Those who carry out investigations are permanently covered. All that can be done outside of the Commission, via the prime minister’s office, or by a secret outfit, but that’s something else still.
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1: La commission nationale des interceptions de sécurité, CNCIS, whose authorization must be sought before a phone-tapping operation can begin.
Mediapart: In ‘The President’s Spy’, the authors state that a technical centre for the former French domestic intelligence agency, the DST, based at Boullay-les-Troux, just south of Paris, is used for unofficial bugging.
Y.B.: That’s possible. The merging of the DST and the Renseignements généraux accentuated this drift. From a certain viewpoint, it’s a crime. Politically off-course. You don’t merge a service whose vocation is above all judicial and operational, like the DST, with an information service, like the RG, which has no judicial attribution apart from [investigating] racing and gambling [activities]. You create a political police. It is an enormous attack on freedom.
Bernard Squarcini finds himself at the head of this machine, which has become the country’s most powerful, more powerful still than the [French foreign intelligence agency] DGSE, and which no-one can control, in any case not the senior authorities of the national police force. Monsieur Squarcini is the master. He is someone who hasn’t the force to resist.
Mediapart: On the question of phone taps that are not approved by the commission, if the president or the prime minister asked for such taps to be carried out what would hapen ?
Y.B.: You do it.
Mediapart: In ‘The President’s Spy’, former head of the Renseignements Généraux, Joël Bouchité, says in an interview that the RG archives concerned with the press and political world have not been destroyed, as was initially planned, but handed over to the DCRI.
Y.B.: These archives were kept within the RG through every period, despite the disbandment of the political affairs section, then that of the press. To hide the pursuit of the political activity, interior minister [from 1993-1995] Charles Pasqua decided to re-name the section ‘general information’. And the ‘Press’ section was called ‘communication’.
Monsieur Squarcini recovered everything, and he turned it into a Sarkozy-ist tool with which to destabalise opponents. Counter-espionage doesn’t interest him. Counter-espionage has become a pretext. Since the end of the USSR, counter-espionage doesn’t interest anybody anymore. It’s the political opponents who interest him. That’s a secret for no-one.
Mediapart: Are you surprised that [former French prime minister] Dominique de Villepin, who you know well, defended Monsieur Squarcini over the illegal espionage of journalists’ phone records ?
Y.B.: It’s incredible that Villepin defends Squarcini. He’s wrong to do that. If I see him, I will tell him.
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The original French version of this interview can be found here.
English version: Graham Tearse