GREENPEACE SHIP SINKING BECOMES PARIS SCANDAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630022-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: August 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630022-9
ARTICLE APKA40
014
PNtlE
WASHINGTON POST
17 August 1985
Greenpeace Ship Sinking Becomes
Paris Scandal
By Michael Dobbs
Wu1itt{ton Post Foreign Service
PARIS, Aug. 16-Mounting evidence that
French secret service agents sabotaged the flag-
ship of the Greenpeace environmental move-
ment has created a political headache for Pres-
ident Francois Mitterrand's Socialist administra-
tion.
Suspicions of French involvement in last
month's sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in the
New Zealand port of Auckland were bolstered
this week by the issuing of international arrest
warrants for three suspected members of the
French secret service, the DGSE. Two other
alleged French undercover agents have been
formally charged in New Zealand with arson and
the murder of a Rainbow Warrior crew member
killed in the explosion.
"The DGSE is indeed responsible for the attack
against the Rainbow Warrior," ran the headline in
today's editions of the respected Paris newspaper
Le Monde, summing up what has now become the
consensus in the French press.
The Rainbow Warrior was severely damaged
by two underwater explosions a few minutes be-
fore midnight on July 10-just as it was about to
set sail for the French nuclear test site of Mu-
ruroa Atoll in the South Pacific. A converted
fishing trawler that has been used to champion a
wide variety of environmental causes, from the
preservation of whales to the prevention of oil
pollution, the ship was the leader of a flotilla of
vessels protesting French nuclear policies.
With no one in the French government bother-
ing to deny allegations of some kind of DGSE in-
volvement, attention is now focusing on who or-
dered the sinking of the Greenpeace ship. Theo-
ries advanced so far in the French press have
ranged from an elaborate plot hatched by the pres-
ident's own aides to a bungled operation organized
by a right-wing faction of the secret services.
In an apparent attempt to prevent the affair
from developing into a French Watergate, Mit-
terrand last week entrusted an independent in-
quiry to a respected Gaullist politician, Bernard
Tricot. Mitterrand promised to publish the find-
ings of the inquiry and to "severely punish" any
official found to be involved in a terrorist act.
Among the 100 pieces of evidence so far col-
lected by New Zealand police are a
rubber dinghy and two white-
painted oxygen bottles with French
markings found on a beach near
Auckland shortly after the explo-
sion. Local residents said the din-
ghy had been abandoned by the
owners of a camping van who left
the beach after being mistaken for
burglars.
Three days after the sinking of
the Rainbow Warrior, police ar-
rested a French-speaking couple
with Swiss passports in the name of
Alain and Sophie Turenge as they
were returning a rented camping
van similar to the one seen on the
beach. The passports turned out to
be false. After being formally ac-
cused of murder and arson, the "Tu-
renge" couple refused to make any
statements.
Subsequent inquiries by the New
Zealand police focused suspicion on
another group of Frenchmen seen
around Auckland shortly before the
explosion: the crew of a yacht, the
Ouvea, rented in the French Pacific
island of New Caledonia. The
Ouvea-along with three members
of its four-man crew-has since
vanished.
Although the French Defense
Ministry has refused to comment
publicly on the case, it now seems
virtually certain that "Sophie and
Alain Turenge" are French under-
cover agents. Telephone numbers
found in an address book in their
possession appear to belong to the
DGSE, and several French news or-
ganizations have identified them as
a captain and a maior in military
intelligence.
The weekly magazine L'Express
today reported that "Sophie Tu-
renge" was in fact Capt. Dominique
Prieur, 36, a member of the
DGSE's special "action section." It
said that friends had recognized her
picture in the newspapers following
the arrest of the "Turenges."
There is still some doubt about
the exact nature of the "Turen-
ges' " mission in New Zealand. The
most charitable explanation for
their presence in Auckland is that
they were merely gathering infor-
mation on the Rainbow Warrior be-
fore its departure for Mururoa.
A report last Saturday by the
state-run radio station, France In-
ter, claimed that the crew member
of the Rainbow Warrior killed in the
explosions, Fernando Pereira, be-
longed to a pacifist group with close
ties to the Soviet Union. It also
maintained that the ship was car-
rying powerful transmitting equip-
ment capable of relaying to foreign
countries sensitive information
about France's nuclear testing pro-
gram.
Spokesmen for Greenpeace have
denied these allegations as well as
reports that the Rainbow Warrior
carried highly sophisticated equip-
ment capable of precise monitoring
of French tests of neutron bombs.
The more damaging hypothesis
for the French authorities is that
the "Turenges" were working with
the crew of the Ouvea to sabotage
the Rainbow Warrior. The New
Zealand authorities are reported to
have evidence of links between the
two French groups, including some
remarkable coincidences in their
itineraries before the bombing.
In a press conference in Paris
today, Greenpeace chairman David
McTaggart refrained from directly
accusing the French government of
ordering the sinking of his organ-
ization's flagship. But he said it was
quite clear that the "Turenges"
were in the pay of the French gov-
ernment.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630022-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630022-9
r ~.
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL/REUTER
"Alain and Sophie Turenge": News reports have identified them as undercover French military intelligence agents.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201630022-9