The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War

Douglas Porch prepares an excellent and authoritative history of French Secret Services since the Dreyfus Affair. It is current and generally up to date. Well worth reading as a follow-on to Richard Deacon's previous work that begins French intelligence during a much earlier period.

Popular memory is replete with images of France's intelligence failures prior to the Second World War, and during its own Vietnam War, as well in the dramatically bungled 1985 French intelligence effort leading to the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, a ship belonging to the environmental group Greenpeace. While these are all subjects treated in this book, Douglas Porch takes a far more penetrating look at the intelligence services of France, tracing their origins back to the ancien regime and Napolean, and looking at some lesser known sucesses. The depth of this book is impressive, given the well known propensity for secrecy among the French establishment which makes it exceedingly difficult for researchers like Porch to access relevant archives. This is a serious, academic study, and one which become even more relevant given the increased output in France during the 1990s, after this book was published in the United States, on some related subjects relating to French foreign policy. If you are interested in a less historical, less academic, and more limited English-language account of French foreign policy, including the role of its intelligence servies, try Mort Rosenblum's Mission to Civilize which I have also reviewed on this website.