SERVICE SECRET : LA PART D’OMBRE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE

KOSSOVO, APARTHEID: What Role for the DGSE? There's the politics and diplomacy on the surface, the kind that always presents a polished image, but above all, there's what happens behind the scenes, behind our backs: the shady deals and other underhanded schemes carried out in the name of the famous "national interest." It's well known that intelligence services often do the dirty work for democracies and are behind large-scale destabilization operations (and coups d'état), as this investigation by Pascal Henry reminds us. It reveals that the DGSE (General Directorate for External Security) allegedly recruited a warlord named Hashim Taçi in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, likely financed and armed behind the scenes by the French state. Today, he is Prime Minister of Kosovo and our most effective agent of influence in the region. France should choose its friends more carefully: this man, whose troops are alleged to have engaged in organ trafficking, is being haunted by his past. Another story: in 1988, South African activist Dulcie September (representative in Paris of the ANC, Nelson Mandela's anti-apartheid party) was assassinated in the heart of Paris. The parallel investigation (the official one yielded nothing) pointed the finger at several far-right French mercenaries, including a double agent working for both France and apartheid South Africa. Patrick Henry loosened a few tongues to find out more. Espionage enthusiasts, take note!