An introduction to the history, functions, and current goals of France's intelligence agency, the DGSE or Direction gâenâerale de la sâecuritâe extâerieure.

The French intelligence service DGSE is recognized today as one of the most aggressive in the world. Once described by one of its former senior executives as "a little North Korea," it has also made a sinister reputation for itself for its readiness to kill, including its own. But it is lesser known for the secret war it wages against the United States since the end of the Cold War, and its obsession with domestic espionage spurred by a fear of Muslim terrorism and pervading American-style capitalism. On April 2000, French weekly Courrier international published the last words of ex-French President Francois Mitterrand, and between others he avowed for the first time, "France does not know it, but we are at war against the United States. A permanent economic war; a war without dead." Dominique Poirier who worked for more than twenty years for the DGSE takes us behind the closed curtain of the French intelligence community, to reveals for the first time shocking realities on mass surveillance and domestic influence in France, assassinations, and secret operations against the United States laced with startling revelations. And he tells us how the discreet cooperation between French and Russian spies evolved since Time magazine at last reported it in April 1968 with the scandal of the Martel Affair, two years after France and the Soviet Union had signed a decisive agreement on science and technology sharing. DGSE; The French Spy Machine is the biggest and richest book published to date on an intelligence service, detailing its current organization, methods, techniques and objectives.

Based on the experiences of a real French spy, Jack Beaumont’s first-hand knowledge and experiences make this thriller plausible and frightening as you’re plunged into the very real world of terror, espionage, and danger. Alec de Payns is an undercover operative in the ultra-elusive French Y Division of the DGSE, a foreign intelligence service equivalent to the CIA or MI6. Code named Aguilar, de Payns is one of the division’s most accomplished agents working to neutralize international threats on a daily basis while simultaneously trying to balance his home life as a husband and father. When a routine mission to infiltrate a dangerous terrorist group unexpectedly goes belly up, Alec is faced with the unthinkable: that he may have been betrayed by someone in his close-knit team—and they may be trying to pin the blame on Alec himself. Back in Paris, Alec is assigned to investigate a secretive biological weapons facility in Pakistan which the DGSE believes to be producing a newly weaponized strain of bacteria, intended for release in France. As Alec works to uncover the facility’s secrets, he must also fight to clear his name and discover who the mole is before it’s too late. It’s not just his reputation that’s at stake—it’s the lives of his wife, two young children, and the entire population of Paris.

For the first time since more than half a century a French spy of the DGSE, the French foreign intelligence agency breaks the wall of secrecy. The author, who voluntarily enlisted in espionage in 1980 and left in the early 2000s, describes the extent of domestic spying in France, and how French spies are recruited and trained. He also delivers numerous detailed explanations on the sophisticated way France carries out influence and cultural warfare. And he explains how the DGSE conducts its espionage operations abroad and in the United States in particular, the country where this agency is the most active since the 1960s. Along the 600 pages of this dense book, the reader will discover how deceptive the appearances of mutual understanding between France and the United States are, and the realities of the untold special relationship between France and Russia in the context of intelligence. The reader must not expect to find in this book the personal story of a spy, but rather a highly detailed report enhanced with numerous real examples and anecdotes, with a focus on influence, propaganda and cultural warfare. Technical sketches and maps are added whenever necessary. Dominique Poirier, the author grew up in a family whose members were involved in intelligence since the WWII. His stepfather was a high-ranking executive in domestic intelligence (the Renseignements Generaux). His elder brother was recruited in domestic intelligence in the 1960s, and he was steered towards counterespionage in the mid-1970s, a branch in which he immediately specialized in operations against Great Britain and the United States. Dominique Poirier joined the DGSE when this intelligence agency still was called SDECE, one year before the Socialist Party took the power in France, and ten year before the end of the Cold War. A few years later, this agency steered him towards influence and cultural warfare, a growing branch of the whole French intelligence community at that time. From the early 1990s on, he was increasingly involved in intelligence activities against the United States with a specialty in influence and propaganda, a period when he began to be introduced to the join intelligence operations between the DGSE and its German counterpart the BND. From 1996 on, he was progressively enlightened on the French Russian special relationship, and he began to meet agents and intelligence officers of the SVR RF, the foreign intelligence agency of the Russian Federation that succeeded the KGB.

On March 29, 1971, a Canadian was found brutally murdered in a small Paris apartment. The victim, François Mario Bachand, was a radical member of the separatist Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ), the terrorist group that had been causing havoc in Canada, planting bombs and carrying out kidnappings. Bachand served a jail term in the early 1960s, and after his release he was considered a loose cannon, heartily despised by many associates. It was widely believed that the FLQ had killed one of its own. Twenty years after Bachand died in Paris, author Michael McLoughlin came across a single document in the National Archives of Canada that shed an eerie new light on the circumstances of Bachand's death. The murder, McLoughlin discovered, was not so simple after all. And the deeper he dug, the more complicated - and disturbing - the case became. Last Stop, Paris analyzes the shocking circumstances surrounding Bachand's murder. McLoughlin carefully reconstructs the secret meeting that determined Bachand's fate and the events that led to his assassination on the March day in Paris. It also follows the movements of the FLQ and the RCMP Security Service, and reveals the close international connections that tied revolutionary groups of the later 1960s and 1970s - from Cuba to Europe to the Middle East - to underground agents of the CIA, MI5, and French intelligence. A revealing look at the international web of terrorism and government intelligence, Last Stop, Paris is an explosive examination of the secrets, betrayals and violence that characterized the most tumultuous period in Canada's recent history.

From the internationally acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of The Trinity Six, comes Charles Cumming's A Foreign Country, a compelling tale of deceit and betrayal, conspiracy and redemption. On the vacation of a lifetime in Egypt, an elderly French couple are brutally murdered. Days later, a meticulously-planned kidnapping takes place on the streets of Paris. Amelia Levene, the first female Chief of MI6, has disappeared without a trace, six weeks before she is due to take over as the most influential spy in Europe. It is the gravest crisis MI6 has faced in more than a decade. Desperate not only to find her, but to keep her disappearance a secret, Britain's top intelligence agents turn to one of their own: disgraced MI6 officer Thomas Kell. Tossed out of the Service only months before, Kell is given one final chance to redeem himself - find Amelia Levene at any cost. The trail leads Kell to France and Tunisia, where he uncovers a shocking secret and a conspiracy that could have unimaginable repercussions for Britain and its allies. Only Kell stands in the way of personal and political catastrophe.

The role of French security policy and cooperation in Africa has long been recognized as a critically important factor in African politics and international relations. The newest form of security cooperation, a trend which merges security and development and which is actively promoted by other major Western powers, adds to our understanding of this broader trend in African relations with the industrialized North. This book investigates whether French involvement in Africa is really in the interest of Africans, or whether French intervention continues to deny African political freedom and to sustain their current social, economic and political conditions. It illustrates how policies portrayed as promoting stability and development can in fact be factors of instability and reproductive mechanisms of systems of dependency, domination and subordination. Providing complex ideas in a clear and pointed manner, France and the New Imperialism is a sophisticated understanding of critical security studies.