The
Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) was a directorate of the
French National PoliceThe National Police , formerly the Sûreté Nationale, is one of two national police forces and the main civil law enforcement agency of France, with primary jurisdiction in cities and large towns. The other main agency is the military Gendarmerie, with primary jurisdiction in smaller towns and rural...
operating as a domestic
intelligence agencyAn intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defense. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...
. Its attributions included counterespionage, counterterrorism and more generally the security of France against foreign threats and interference, including economic. It was created in 1944 with its headquarters situated at 7 rue Nélaton in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. On July 1, 2008, it was merged with the
Direction centrale des renseignements générauxThe Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux , often called Renseignements Généraux , was the intelligence service of the French police, answerable to the Direction Générale de la Police Nationale , and, ultimately, the Ministry of the Interior...
into the new
Direction centrale du renseignement intérieurThe Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur is a French Intelligence agency which reports directly to the Ministry of the Interior...
.
The DST Economic Security and Protection of National Assets department had units in the 22 regions to protect French technology. It operated for 20 years, not only on behalf of defense industry leaders, but also for pharmaceuticals, telecoms, the automobile industry, and all manufacturing and service sectors.
History
According to a recently published book, the DST has never been infiltrated by any foreign agency in all of its history. This resilience was supposedly taught to Cuban intelligence service recruits.
During the Algerian War (1954-62), the agency created in December 1956 the Organization of the French Algerian Resistance (ORAF), a group of counter-terrorists whose mission was to carry out
false flagFalse flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations which are designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of...
terrorist attacks with the aim of quashing any hopes of political compromise.
On 3 December 1973, agents of DST, disguised as
plumberThe word plumber dates from the Roman Empire. In Roman times, some roofs were made of lead, or in Latin . Lead roofs were waterproof, and the workers on such roofs were what are now called "plumbers". Roman baths later used lead for piping and for the main baths...
s, were caught trying to install a spy
microphoneA microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike , is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1876, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
in the offices of the
Canard Enchaîné newspaper. The resulting scandal forced Interior Minister
Raymond MarcellinRaymond Marcellin was a French politician.- Biography :The son of a banker, he studied law at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Paris. He worked as a lawyer for three years, before being called into the army in September 1939. He was captured by the Wehrmacht, but managed to...
to leave the government.
Reporter
Marie-Monique RobinMarie-Monique Robin is an award-winning French journalist. She received the Albert Londres prize in 1995 for Voleurs d'yeux, an expose about organ theft...
, author of a book investigating relationship between the Algerian War and
Operation CondorOperation Condor , was a campaign of political repressions involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the governments of the Southern Cone of South America. The program aimed to eradicate alleged socialist/communist influence and ideas and to control...
, declared to
L'HumanitéL'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International ....
newspaper: "French have systematized a military technique in urban environment which would be copied and pasted to Latin American dictatorships.".
Roger TrinquierRoger Trinquier was a French Army officer during World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War, serving mainly in airborne and Special forces units...
's famous book on
counter-insurgencyCounter-insurgency is a military term for the armed conflict against an insurgency by forces aligned with the recognised government of the territory in which the conflict takes place...
had a very strong influence in South America. She declared being shocked to learn that the DST communicated to the Chilean
DINADirección de Inteligencia Nacional or DINA was the Chilean secret police in the government of Augusto Pinochet. DINA was established in November 1973, as an Army Intelligence unit headed by General Manuel Contreras and vice-director Raúl Iturriaga, who fled from justice in 2007...
the name of the refugees who returned to Chile (Operation Retorno). All of these Chileans have been killed. "Of course, this puts in cause the French government, and
Giscard d'EstaingValéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing is a French centre-right politician who was President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981...
, then President of the Republic. I was very shocked by the duplicity of the French diplomatic position which, on one hand, received with open arms the political refugees, and, on the other hand, collaborated with the dictatorships."
One of the greatest success of the DST was the recruitment of the Soviet
KGBThe KGB was the national security agency of the USSR. From 1954 until 1991, the Committee for State Security was the Communist state's premier secret police, internal security, and espionage organization, whose coat of arms—the Shield and the Sword—illustrate a national military hierarchy...
officer
Vladimir VetrovColonel Vladimir Ippolitovich Vetrov was a KGB spy during the Cold War, who passed on to NATO extremely valuable information about the Soviet program to obtain technology from the West...
. Between the spring of 1981 and early 1982 he handed almost 4,000 secret documents over to the DST, including the complete official list of 250 Line X KGB officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world, before being arrested in February 1982 and executed in 1983.
Directors of the DST
- Roger Wybot (1944 - 1959)
- Gabriel Eriau (1959 - 1961)
- Daniel Doustin (1961 - 1964)
- Tony Roche (1964 - 1967)
- Jean Rochet (1967 - 1972)
- Henri Biard (1972 - 1974)
- Jacques Chartron (1974 - 1975)
- Marcel Chalet (November 1975 - November 1982)
- Yves Bonnet (1982 - 1985)
- Rémy Pautrat (August 1985 - April 1986)
- Bernard Gérard
Bernard Gérard is a French intelligence officer; he was director of the Direction de la surveillance du territoire from 1986 until 1990....
(April 1986 - May 1990)
- Jacques Fournet (23 May 1990 - 5 October 1993)
- Philippe Parant (6 October 1993 - 1997)
- Jean-Jacques Pascal (1997 - 2002)
- Pierre de Bousquet de Florian (2002 - 2007)
- Bernard Squarcini
Bernard Squarcini, born on December 12, 1955 in Rabat, Morocco, is the current head of the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur , France's counter-espionage and counter-terrorism Intelligence agency....
(June 2007 - July 2008)
External links