Alexandre de Marenches

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Count Alexandre de Marenches (June 7, 1921, Paris - June 2, 1995) was a French military officer, former director of French intelligence services, special advisor to U.S. President Ronald Reagan and a member of the Academy of Morocco.

Family

Alexandre de Marenches was born in Paris in 1921, son of Captain Charles-Constant-Marie de Marenches, a French aristocrat from a very old family of knights with Norman origins, aide de camp of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Marshal Philippe Pétain representative from Pershing with Aldebert de Chambrun. His mother Margaret Clark Lestrade, (May 7, 1881 New York - May 3, 1968 Paris) very rich U.S. citizen, widow Monahan.

Early years

In his youth he met many of the heroes of the First World War, including Henri Pétain. He joined the army in 1939 and initiated himself into a form of intelligence work by informing his relatives and contacts in the United States about German activities in France in 1940. In 1942, he made his way to Algiers, joined the French army there and played a distinguished role in the Italian campaign, becoming Juin's aide-de-camp.

During the Second World War, Count de Marenches was aide de camp to General Alphonse Juin. As such, he helped to coordinate the US military with the remaining French divisions.

After the war he moved into industry, resigning from the army reserve in protest against Charles de Gaulle's Algerian policy.

Head of the intelligence services

He was head of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE, France's external intelligence agency) from November 6, 1970 to June 12, 1981.^[1]

Steeped in military culture and raised in the culture of secrecy, he learned early on that the price of so many privileges of birth was a strong sense of duty.

The choice of President Pompidou

It is said that in Britain, it is the most carefully chosen people who go into intelligence work, but in France, those who are considered to be the best go rather to the Quai d'Orsay. It would seem that President Georges Pompidou had the British model in mind when he appointed Alexandre de Marenches as the head of his intelligence services.

His independence last quality was particularly important at the time because Pompidou knew how the intelligence services had been circulating defamatory reports about his wife and himself during the last six months of de Gaulle's presidency. They had allegedly been involved with the film star Alain Delon, whose bodyguard had been found murdered in September 1968.

A number of agents had seized the opportunity of revenging themselves on Pompidou, who had taken strong action against those colleagues who had been involved in the kidnapping of Ben Barka, the leader of the Moroccan opposition in 1965. De Marenches was brought in to clear up these networks, and the fact that he was a great friend of de Gaulle's rival and enemy Alphonse Juin was an additional advantage.

Once installed in the Elysée, from 1970, onwards as head of the Service of External Documentation and Counter-Espionage (SDECE), the forerunner of today's Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, he was in his element. A natural authoritarian, he carried out the President's instructions about cleaning up the service and was indifferent to the protests that this caused. A natural activist, he started to travel, to meet with other governments and to pursue the interests of France in different parts of the world.

The Presidency of Giscard d'Estaing

Such was his authority that when Giscard d'Estaing succeeded Pompidou in 1974, he kept his position throughout the presidential term so he occupying the post for an unprecedented 11 years. Symbolically, when Pompidou died, the key to his personal safe had been mislaid. Only de Marenches had a key. With the new President, he tried to awaken interest in the former Portuguese colonies in Africa, and when Giscard protested that they were a long way away, he answered, "Yes, but they are getting nearer".

Achievements

It was a time of change and of rumour, and it is difficult to assess de Marenches's achievements. There were those who believed that while he was one of the busiest figures on the intelligence circuit, some of his pronouncements (those on the Soviet Union for example) were based on slender information. Others noted how he successfully cultivated his contacts in the Middle East, pushing the sales of Mirage fighters and helping to establish a relationship with Iraq that has persisted. In Africa, sometimes working with the old Gaullist emissary Jacques Foccart, and sometimes behaving as his rival, de Marenches strengthened France's traditional strongholds.

He co-founded the Safari Club, a "private intelligence group [which was] one of George H. W. Bush's many end-runs around congressional oversight of the American intelligence establishment and the locus of many of the worst features of the mammoth BCCI scandal."^[1] The Club involved a number of states, including Saudi Arabia (which financed the operations), Morocco, Egypt and Iran, and was intended to counter Soviet operations in the Middle East and Africa.

Interlocutor of many heads of state in the world and close friend of King Hassan II of Morocco, he was elected member of the Academy of Morocco. After the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States of America, he would have become, according to the American journalist Colley, one of his closest advisers doing business in Afghanistan.

Among other things, Count de Marenches is known to have predicted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to an American journalist who immediately reported his conversation to US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and left for Kabul, "arriving in the same time as the Soviet tanks did" (Marenches in Dans le Secret des Princes).

Extremely charismatic, he was highly esteemed for his valour and patriotism.

Edouard Balladur knew him well when they were both working closely with President Pompidou. When Balladur was Prime Minister, he was due to preside over a medal-awarding ceremony. He was suddenly unable to attend and he asked de Marenches to take his place. Coming from Balladur this was a serious mark of respect as well as of friendship.

He was called Porthos in reference to the Three Musketeers and his corpulence.

Resignation

With the coming of the Socialists to power, de Marenches resigned. The presence of Communists in the government formed in 1981 was unacceptable to him. He disapproved of the new organisation of security and was particularly scathing about the fiasco of the Rainbow Warrior.

Publication

In 1986, with the journalist Christine Ockrent, he published a book, Dans le secret des princes, which claimed that there were concealed archives that contained evidence proving that certain supposed figures of the French Resistance had, in fact, collaborated with the Germans during the occupation. Perhaps he had certain of President Mitterrand's friends in mind.

In 1986, he co-authored Dans le secret des Princes ("In the Princes' secret", literally, published in English as The Evil Empire: Third World War Continues) with journalist Christine Ockrent about his days working in secret services.

In 1992, he co-authored The Fourth World War: Diplomacy and Espionage in the Age of Terrorism with David Andelman, book in which he predicted the rise of terrorism as a new form of warfare. This book was a great success among American elites after September 11, 2001.

De Marenches was a member of the Knights of Malta.^[1]

See also

• Michel Roussin, Alexandre de Marenches' chief of staff

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Phelan, Matthew (2011-02-28) Seymour Hersh and the men who want him committed, Salon.com

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