Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

The post-war Paris residency also had what was, in effect, its own weekly newspaper, focusing on international relations: La Tribune des Nations (codenamed ÉCOLE). Founded in 1946 by André Ulmann with the help of Soviet subsidies, 11the Tribune ’s subscribers included both French government departments and foreign embassies. Publicly, Ulmann disclaimed any connection with the French Communist Party (PCF). According to his friend Pierre Daix:

There was nothing Stalinist about him. He did not even seem like a Communist. He was a progressive intellectual, but without any of the utopian or idealistic nonsense associated with this expression. His feet were firmly on the ground. 12

Ulmann’s KGB file, however, reveals that he was a secret member of the PCF. Recommended by the Party leadership to the Paris residency, he had been recruited as agent DURANT in 1946. From 1948 onwards Ulmann also worked as an agent of the Polish intelligence service, which gave him the codename YULI and provided monthly subsidies of 200,000 francs to help finance the publication of La Tribune des Nations. 13Between 1946 and his death in 1970, Ulmann received a total of 3,552,100 francs from the Paris residency, as well as an (unidentified) Soviet decoration for his work for the KGB. 14To at least some Paris journalists, however, Ulmann’s cover was somewhat transparent. The historian of the PCF, Annie Kriegel, herself a former militante, recalls hearing Ulmann being described by one of her friends as “a secret agent disguised as a secret agent.” 15

Despite the Paris residency’s successes during the 1950s, the Centre was dissatisfied with the number of its new recruits. It took Moscow some years to accept that, following the end of Communist participation in government in 1947, the pace of subsequent agent recruitment was bound to be slower. In a despatch to the Paris residency on February 3, 1954, the Centre insisted that it step up its campaign to acquire new agents in the foreign ministry, the cabinet secretariat, the SDECE, the DST, the general staff’s Deuxiäme Bureau, the armed forces and NATO. “The residency,” it complained, “is living on its old capital and is not taking energetic measures to acquire new, valuable sources of information.” 16

In 1955 the Paris residency recruited a major new agent inside NATO, codenamed GERMAIN, who was controlled by an (unidentified) illegal despatched from the Centre. GERMAIN, like JOUR, was later awarded the Order of the Red Star. His wife NINA trained as a KGB radio operator and was given the medal “For combat services.” 17In 1956 a residency agent, DROZDOV, reported that one of his wife’s friends, ROZA, who worked at SDECE headquarters, had become pregnant after a one-night stand with “a chance acquaintance.” On instructions from the residency, DROZDOV gave ROZA financial help after the birth of her daughter in the following year in the hope of laying the basis for an eventual recruitment. ROZA’s cultivation, however, proceeded slowly. By 1961 the residency had concluded that she would rebuff any direct attempt to turn her into a KGB agent, and decided instead on a false flag recruitment. DROZDOV successfully persuaded her to provide regular intelligence reports to assist a fictitious “progressive organization” of which he claimed to be a member. 18Other French recruits during the early years of the Fifth Republic, established in January 1959 under the presidency of General Charles de Gaulle, included two cipher clerks (LARIONOV 19and SIDOROV 20), two Paris police officers (FRENE 21and DACHNIK 22) and two young scientists (ADAM 23and SASHA 24). In 1964, like his fellow cipher clerk JOUR seven years earlier, SIDOROV was awarded the Order of the Red Star 25—a further indication of the success of KGB SIGINT operations in decrypting French diplomatic traffic.

The French embassy in Moscow was also a major KGB target. During the early 1960s both the ambassador, Maurice Dejean, and the air attaché, Colonel Louis Guibaud, were seduced by KGB swallows after elaborate “honeytrap” operations directed by the head of the Second Chief Directorate, Oleg Mikhailovich Gribanov, with the personal approval of Khrushchev. Dejean was beaten up by a KGB officer posing as the enraged husband of the swallow, a Moscow ballerina who had seduced him. Guibaud was confronted with the usual compromising photographs of his sexual liaison. Both seductions, however, failed as intelligence operations. In 1962 Guibaud shot himself with his service revolver. The following year, a defector revealed Gribanov’s plan to compromise Dejean, who was recalled to Paris before serious KGB blackmail had begun. De Gaulle welcomed the ambassador home with the now celebrated reproof, “Alors, Dejean, on couche!” 26The KGB files noted by Mitrokhin reveal for the first time that a third French diplomat in Moscow was successfully targeted by Gribanov. A female member of the embassy staff, codenamed LOUISA, was seduced by a male swallow, confronted with photographs of her seduction and persuaded to work as a Soviet agent. Once back in Paris in the early 1960s, however, she broke off contact with the KGB. 27

The most successful French recruitment in Moscow recorded in the files seen by Mitrokhin was that of the businessman Franáois Saar-Demichel (codenamed NN) in the 1960s. 28After fighting in the Resistance, Saar-Demichel had served briefly in the DGER and its successor, the SDECE, before leaving in 1947 to begin a business career. In 1954 he won an exclusive, and lucrative, contract to import Soviet wood pulp for French paper manufacture. A year later, during a visit to Moscow, he was recruited by the SCD as a KGB agent. Acting on instructions from the Centre, Saar-Demichel used his Resistance connections to make contact with some of de Gaulle’s leading supporters and contributed almost 15 million francs to the Gaullist cause during the final years of the Fourth Republic. 29

After the change of regime and de Gaulle’s election as President of the Republic, Saar-Demichel succeeded in gaining an entrée to the êlysée and supplied regular reports on his meetings with Soviet leaders during business trips to Moscow. According to Constantin Melnik, security adviser to the first prime minister of the Fifth Republic, Michel Debré, “More than any other political movement, Gaullism was swarming with agents of influence of the obliging KGB, whom we never succeeded in keeping away from de Gaulle.” The most important of them may well have been Saar-Demichel. His reports were designed by the Centre to reinforce de Gaulle’s belief that Soviet leaders were guided not by Communist ideology but by traditional Russian interests, and to persuade him that they were genuinely anxious for an understanding with France:

My Soviet interlocutors [nowadays] make much less use of Marxist-Leninist phraseology… They are very open to dialogue and make a clear distinction between propaganda statements and discussions based on precise facts… The dead weight of ideology is fading away, particularly among the new generation. Faced with this transformation of public opinion, the leadership is making no attempt to put a stop to it. 30

During his visits to Moscow, Saar-Demichel also provided the Centre with regular reports on de Gaulle’s foreign policy. He claimed that after the signature of the cooperation treaty between France and West Germany in January 1963, which had been badly received in Moscow, de Gaulle had said privately, “We extended our hand to the Germans so that we could at least be sure they were not holding a knife in theirs.” 31

AS WELL AS collecting intelligence, the Paris residency continued to be energetically engaged in active measures. In its annual report for 1961, the residency proudly reported that it had been responsible for inspiring 230 articles in the press, 11 books and pamphlets, 32 parliamentary questions and statements, 9 public meetings and the circulation of 14,000 copies of 10 posters and flysheets. 32In addition to André Ulmann (DURANT), editor of La Tribune des Nations, 33the residency’s agents of influence included at least two socialist politicians, GILBERT and DROM. 34GILBERT (later GILES), who was reported to be “close” to the future president, Franáois Mitterrand, was recruited by the Czechoslovak StB in 1955 under the codename ROTER. KGB contacts with GILBERT began a year later. 35DROM was first cultivated by the KGB in 1959, recruited as an agent in 1961 and paid a monthly retainer of 1,500 francs for the next twelve years. 36