French Minister Gave Secrets to CIA

[Pert_UK]

"A junior minister in the current French government was recruited by the CIA during the 1990s before being "turned" by the French secret service and becoming a double agent, according to a book to be published next week.

Carnets intimes de la DST, a history of the French counter espionage service, reveals how Hervé Plagnol, now a junior minister in charge of civil service reforms, passed classified information to a US contact in Paris. It included France's baseline positions in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks.

In 1992, while working as a lecturer at the elite Sciences-Po academy in Paris and as an adviser to the new prime minister, Edouard Balladur, Mr Pagnol began lunching with Mary Ann Baumgartner.

She was a CIA agent, but presented herself as the head of the Dallas Market Centre, a foundation that sought to "clarify misunderstandings between Europe and the United States". Mr Plagnol told the book's authors, Frédéric Ploquin and Eric Merlen, that he had "no idea the information could have interested the CIA". "

Full article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,1035221,00.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Interesting how...

The CIA and these Trade Market thingied end up in the same sentence.

Occasionally.

See movie: JFK.

[Paschall]

2. Hmm...

Interesting connection with infamous Charles Pasqua expelling 5 US agents.

We're heading in to the literary season, with thousands of books being released in France. So I wonder why this article fails to mention the publisher or the author of this book?

The headline is a bit misleading though, isn't it? It sounds like the French fed the CIA what they thought were secrets. Is this more "we were duped" nonsense? I wonder how Richard Perle spent his time this summer in France... writing perhaps. We know that shortly after the well-documented "Forbidden Truth" about bin Laden was published in France, another bin Laden story by French authors appeared that was completely discredited. Sale of, and interest in "Forbidden Truth" suffered as a result.

:tinfoilhat: