State terrorists at work
THE PUBLICATION of the Tricot Report on the involvement of the French secret services in the sinking of the Greenpeace flagship
"Rainbow Warrior" in a New Zealand harbor has proved counterproductive for President Francois Mitterand.
of the Danish section of the Fourth International, concentrated on exposing the collaboration of the rightist Schlueter government in Denmark with apartheid:
"The South African regime's repression and barbarism are so open today that the Danish government has to do something. Ministers and bourgeois politicians talk a tough line against the South African racists, they have even shut down our general consulate. Their line sounds tough, but it is really soft.
"This is the same Danish government that has opposed reducing coal imports from South Africa, has done nothing to stop AP Moeller from transporting oil to South Africa, which could even fail to vote for its own proposal for a halt to investment in South Africa because an extragovernmental majority stiffened it with amendments, which as late as the last parliamentary debate on South Africa clearly supported the Reagan administration's South Africa policy, and which has opposed the proposal to increase aid to the victims of apartheid."
RODRIGO O' FARRELL
Under fire from his country's press, which was beginning to say openly that French espionage agents were responsible for the attack on the environmentalist vessel, in which a crew member was killed, the Social Democratic Party president named a personality in the bourgeois opposition, an old Gaullist, to carry out an investigation. The objective was obviously to stop speculation that the administration itself gave the green light for this terrorist operation.
However, the conclusions that Bernard Tricot drew from his supposed investigation far from calmed the waters. Instead, they reinforced the conviction among observers that the top echelons of the government must have been involved in this ruthless attack on the environmentalist activists.
In his 25-page report, Tricot not only exonerated the top levels of the government and the officials in charge of the foreign security department (DGSE) but also the DGSE opera-
"infiltrate its organization," and to "consider" means for disrupting its attempts to protest against a French nuclear test on Mururoa atoll.
Days before the report was released, the "Piscine" ("Swimming Pool"), as the general headquarters of the DGSE is called in Paris, leaked to a journalist working for the state radio the same version, that those arrested in New Zealand were officers in the French land army assigned to collecting information on Greenpeace and nothing more.
Just looking?
This story was confirmed by Bernard Tricot, who disclosed that Admiral Pierre Lacoste, chief of the DGSE, had given such orders. They supposedly did not call for any violent action against the peace activists.
"Heading off" Greenpeace's protest actions was the key word in official circles, Tricot discovered in reading an internal memorandum of the Ministry of Defense.
According to Admiral Henri Fages, commander of the French nuclear testing zone in the Pacific and the author of the memorandum in question, "heading off" did not mean sinking the Rainbow Warrior or anything like that. And Tricot accepted the statements of the officers involved as the revealed truth.
Consistent with this approach, Tricot was extremely careful to avoid even giving any names. About the crew of the yacht Ouvea, he said only that they had been in a port in the far north of New Zealand after June 22, that they had left the country hastily after the sinking of the
In its August 22 issue, Internationalen the naper of the Socialist Partu/ alen, the paper of the Socialist Party/ Swedish section of the Fourth International, stressed a petition of a group of engineering workers that is to be presented to the upcoming congress of their union:
of the police.
To people health crime by the New Zealand the astonishment of many
Tricot gave a clean bill of to those arrested in Auckland
"In Sweden all important organizations are against apartheid or claim to be. But the Swedish engineering union in fact accomodates the South African regime by opposing practical economic measures. On September 12, for example, it opposed the proposal to put teeth in the so-called South African Law for stopping new investment in that country.
"So, when a group of metalworkers took the initiative a few weeks ago to launch a petition for a total boycott of the racists, it came just in time."
after the attack, Commander Alain Mafar, alias Alain Turenge, and Captain Dominique Prieur, alias Sophie, who mascaraded as his wife.
Tricot also claimed that the three French noncoms who operated on the yacht Ouvea also had to be considered innocent "in the present stage of the investigation." The explanation for the undercover presence of this military personnel in New Zealand, according to the veteran Gaullist white-washer, was that the DGSE had ordered all of them to spy on Greenpeace, to
International Viewpoint 16 September 1985 tives who were caught at the scene
and that, since
Rainbow
Warrior
Fabius, who premier, their
T the perpetrators espionage services.
being the
Fabius has suspect this."
will has asked continue task to the affair. However, the Tricot commandos in contribution to report about throwing an the explosives assassination the bo rejected the Gaullist on of Mehdi
Ben its carried out by between the passions," or cre motivated by the crew of and in sinking of the
Gabon and in the coup the
"harming have
Ca the Camores, among other things.
Pereira.
DA to harm both
It's all in the family of the
Greenpeace, theory
In other words, the DGSE is the lawyers
Sui those terrorist arm of French imperialism.
has
Why should Greenpeace not be one of by its targets, if, as the Tricot report last
Greenpeace.
have not at admits, this organization had become of Human Rights.
Th obsession for the French army an abr
Prieur had
Mafart and of its denunciations of because wit tests?
Tricot confirms its for which it nuclear ut the that through Admiral Lacoste, acr minister of defense, Charles Hernu, sailboats tog ordered the DGSE to build up a wa:
tions.
"file" on Greenpeace.
ing
Moreover,
As in the case of the kidnapping
Sin announced his armed forces and murder of Ben
Barka, which
Irel would
Bernard Tricot was assigned to clear cost was ext the names about up
(strangely enough,
The of those responsible for that
Tricot's estimates, crime to
Ho scare off the did not come to light either), the board us," one
Greenpeace affair remains far from was pri said, of the group's were involved.
settled.
her pointing
It is obvious that from the moment he was named to head this investigathe wIC nuclear tion by the Socialist Party-controlled app waters.
would executive branch,
Tricot's objective pro authorities' international me was to absolve the French state of in order to filn blame. But the clean bill of health respectability.
whi
Zealand.
that the report gives was so incredible immediately generated that it trail on July 27.
the it has res] boomerang effect.
jou despite offices.
The text of the report, rad a crew the author's intentions, gives a clear ships but impression that the higher interests with cohorts member
Bor
French
(alias
Eric
French ruling class
- the
Andries and of the development of the country's nuclear
SO
- are deeply involved in this of the to.
mel the belonged to were power the civil rights.
the French trained sinister episode.
jou
This suspicion is confirmed by the secret services, as in operations opposition this affair can complicit attitude the and leaders have taken toward the ove scandal. While they are certainly not are seen day issue useful this unaware of how and could be in the legislative elections a nuclear that are coming up in March 1986,
Pacific that testing the the opposition leaders have preferred zone to accept the conclusions of the
Tricot report
International Viewpoint 16 September 1985