The Renseignements Généraux (1)

RG Dossier

The Renseignements Généraux

after an investigation by Pétrarque on a site that has since disappeared

Preamble:

Political regimes, monarchical or republican, have always had recourse to special services to ensure the security of the state. The current Renseignements Généraux watch the slightest deeds and gestures of any citizen leaving the beaten track, especially if he belongs to a 1901-law association (1).

Portrait of the institution

THE RENSEIGNEMENTS GENERAUX (R.G.)

OF THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR

The Central Directorate of the Renseignements Généraux (D.C.R.G.) is placed under the authority of the General Directorate of the National Police (D.G.P.N.)

The Central Directorate of the Renseignements Généraux (480 officials) is located at 11 rue des Saussaies, 75800 PARIS.

Order of 6 November 1995 on the organisation and missions of the Central Directorate of the Renseignements Généraux and its devolved services (Official Journal of 08/11/1995):

Article 1:

The Central Directorate of the Renseignements Généraux comprises central services and devolved services: regional directorates and departmental directorates. It is charged with the research and centralisation of intelligence intended to inform the Government; it participates in the defence of the fundamental interests of the State; it contributes to the general mission of internal security. It is charged with the surveillance of gaming establishments and racecourses.

IN PLAIN TERMS

The stated objective is to inform the government better on new potential dangers and the great problems of society, and to abandon what was the pride of the service: the monitoring of political parties, except those qualified as far right or far left.

Article 2:

The central services of the Central Directorate of the Renseignements Généraux are composed of four sub-directorates:

1 The Sub-directorate of Research: Charged with the research and centralisation of the intelligence necessary for the prevention of and fight against terrorism, as well as the surveillance of at-risk groups acting on the national territory.

IN PLAIN TERMS

Charged with the surveillance of at-risk groups on the national territory; concerns, among others, that of the French branches of Cults such as: Church of Scientology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Raelian Movement, etc.

2 The Sub-directorate of analysis, prospective and facts of society: Charged with the analysis and synthesis of intelligence in the social and financial domains and the facts of society.

IN PLAIN TERMS

Charged first and foremost with following and forecasting agitation in the towns and banlieues. Also missioned to sound out public opinion, and not only in electoral periods. Three tools are assigned to this task: the rule-of-thumb estimate, computer simulations and the opinion poll via the R.G.’s own polling body, namely the Central Office of Statistics and Polls (OCSS). Note that the D.C.R.G. has the Salamandre system, a powerful computer program which permits fast and reliable exploitation of partial voting results.

It is interesting to know that this Sub-directorate publishes every fortnight - or on a precise request from the government - an “opinion note” which synthesises the notes drawn up by some fifteen local correspondents.

3 The Sub-directorate of resources and methods: Charged with the management of human resources, logistical means, documentation, and the monitoring of budgetary devolution.

IN PLAIN TERMS

Charged with the management of the three files:

The manual file
The automated file of associations
The automated file of individuals

The manual file of the R.G. catalogues either individuals or associations.

The automated file of associations manages those which have attracted the attention of the authorities by reason of activities of a nature to disturb public order, or supposed to be such.

The automated file of individuals comprises three distinct applications:

· the “departmental dossier” application

· the “racing and gaming” application.

The information collected relates to:

· the identity of persons

· their address and profession

· their social label (political, trade-union, etc…)

· their departmental or central dossier number.

4 The Sub-directorate of racing and gaming: Charged with the surveillance of gaming establishments and racecourses. They also comprise a general staff which fulfils an operational role of liaison and coordination with the General Directorate of the National Police, the devolved services of the Renseignements Généraux, the Prefecture of Police, and the other Administrations and authorities, and an Operational Technical Inspection charged with ensuring respect for ethical rules and favouring communication.

Article 3:

The central services of the D.C.R.G. are charged with animating, orienting, evaluating and controlling the activity of the devolved services.

Article 4:

The Departmental Directorates of the Renseignements Généraux implement the instructions of the Department Prefects, and, under the latter’s authority, those transmitted by the Central Services and the Regional Directors within the framework of the attributions defined in article 5, first paragraph.

IN PLAIN TERMS

Concerned: 23 Regional Directorates and 103 Integrated Services of the Departmental Directorates (2,700 agents).

Article 5:

The Regional Director of the Renseignements Généraux animates, controls and coordinates the Departmental Directorates of the Renseignements Généraux established within the bounds of his region, and transmits to them all instructions emanating from the Central Echelon under the authority of the Region Prefect, and, for the Ile de France, of the Prefect of Police.

He may have at his disposal, in case of need, specialised units whose vocation is to exercise their activity within the geographical limits of the Region.

IN PLAIN TERMS

This makes it possible to create, outside the official structures, small informal teams to which confidential missions are entrusted, verbally: these are the “boss’s brigades”.

Article 6:

The Regional Director of the Renseignements Généraux residing at the chief town of the Defence Zone centralises the information relating to affairs within the competence of the Zone Prefect. For the execution of this specific mission, he coordinates the activity of the other Regional Directors of the Defence Zone.

Article 7:

The Director General of the National Police is charged with the execution of the present order, which will be published in the Official Journal of the French Republic.

The files of the R.G. are subject to the control of the C.N.I.L. (National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties), which verifies every five years the soundness of the nominative information they contain. The same for the wiretaps which, for the time being, are limited to the monitoring of dangerous persons and subject since 1991 to the authorisation of the C.N.C.I.S. (National Commission for the Control of Security Interceptions), presided over by the Conseiller d’Etat who each Wednesday goes through the register of those tapped and the products produced.

In fact, wiretaps “legal or not”, 100,000 people are listened to each year in France. This more than honourable score asks only to be improved! (example: by “scanner”).

D.C.R.G. ANNEXES

Wiretaps for the benefit of the Renseignements Généraux:

The transcripts of administrative wiretaps of the G.I.C. (Interministerial Control Grouping) falling within the quota attributed to the Ministry of the Interior are typed. According to the particular case, the D.G.P.N. communicates their tenor to the D.R.G.

On each wiretap card figure:

· 1) at top and bottom the mention: Secret Source

· 2) at top right the code number attributed to the official who established it,

· 3) at top left the pseudonym of the person placed under surveillance (often a name beginning with the first three letters of the surname, for example MARSEILLE for MAR(?), an investigator on the Order of the Solar Temple).

· 4) Then figure on the left the hour of the conversation and opposite it the (summarised) text of it.

Functioning of the “actives” of the Renseignements Généraux:

Professionals of intelligence and today provided with selective diplomas obtained at the Police School, the men of the R.G. do not carry out judicial-police missions and therefore repression.

They do not depend on the authority of an investigating judge but solely on the administrative authority. The some 2,700 “active” agents spread over the whole territory, with a minimum of seven or eight men in the smallest departments, carry out, for 80% of them, work “in an open milieu” and therefore legal “stricto sensu” for the benefit of the Ministry of the Interior.

To do this, they create for themselves a personal network of more or less voluntary informers, attend trade-union, political, religious, indeed UFOlogical meetings, collect leaflets and publications, analyse the press. In this work “in an open milieu”, they have little difficulty gathering information. In principle, only information whose multiplicity of sources attests its interest reaches the Parisian general staff. That said, every day, from the smallest Prefectures as from the largest conurbations, more than five hundred notes on every possible subject come up to the Services of the Central Headquarters, rue des Saussaies.

After skimming, the information the Central Director of the Renseignements Généraux judges essential for the government becomes the object of four or five synthesis notes on the principle “one sheet, one subject”. Assembled, they constitute the “minister’s dossier”, distributed in a dozen copies and delivered, with the information coming from the D.S.T., every evening of the week, around 6:30 pm, to the Cabinets of the Minister of the Interior, the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic.

The other, more “sensitive” information becomes, according to the case, the object of notes on white or green paper, devoid of any service letterhead (fewer than fifteen a day), which the Central Director hands personally to the Minister, sometimes accompanied by information transmitted orally.

The rest of the daily notes is archived for all useful purposes for the intermediate echelons which, on one ground or another, believe they need to know. For example, currently, in the PACA region, all the doings of the cults, which are counted there by the dozen, must be catalogued in the Database of the D.C.R.G. specially concerning them.

Of course, the men of the R.G. do not only work “on their own initiative”; they must sometimes also answer the precise questions posed by the authorities of the State, from Ministers to Prefects.

To satisfy these at a moment’s notice, the R.G. have an exhaustive and continually updated documentation. In work “in a closed milieu”, the actives of the R.G. are asked to “manage”, if possible avoiding providing the Authorities with precise information on their methods of penetration and the names of their informers, so as to implicate nobody in the upper hierarchy.

Note finally that the very great majority of the officials who enter the “big ears” (R.G.) accomplish the whole of their professional career in the service.

Recruitment and management of the R.G.’s “informers”:

At the Renseignements Généraux the operational work of recruiting informers falls to the “Operations and Specialised Research” section of the Sub-directorate of Research of the Central Directorate of the Renseignements Généraux.

Still within this Sub-directorate, the “Intelligence Processing” section deals solely with the administrative management of informers, that is to say their dossiers opened after a “trial period” of three months.

The note placing an informer on trial is drawn up by the service concerned and transmitted for information to the Central Director of the R.G. by the head of the Service in question. If he has given satisfaction, this informer will be registered.

The registration note, also drawn up by the service concerned, will mention the complete civil status of the person concerned, his address, possibly his profession, the pseudonym given to him, and his registration code number. The pseudonym is left to the total initiative of the handling service.

The code number comprises four figures: the first two are the number of the department concerned, followed by a number increasing as registrations accumulate. When an informer ceases his activity, the service concerned draws up a striking-off note.

During the informer’s activity, the handling official draws up at each meeting a contact note. This is a report bearing the informer’s pseudonym, his code number, and five headings:

· - conditions of the contact: the date, hour and place of the contact, as well as the pseudonyms of the official(s) present (each official handling informers has a pseudonym).

· - result of the contact: the official mentions all the intelligence provided by the informer at the meeting.

· - exploitation of the intelligence: the official specifies the exploitation made of the intelligence provided as well as any transmission to a section of the R.G.

· - opinion of the handler: this heading mentions the official’s opinion on the work and state of mind of the informer (example: good collaboration from petit-gris!).

· - sum handed over: the official indicates the sum of money he handed, if need be, to the informer.

All these notes and the informer dossiers (trial periods, registrations and strikings-off) are centralised at the “Intelligence Processing” section of the Sub-directorate of Research of the D.C.R.G. (this holds for the whole metropolitan territory and overseas territories).

Persons having access to the identity of an informer:

The Central Director, his deputy, and the Sub-Director of Research. To this must be added the officials of the “Intelligence Processing” section and, if the informer is handled in the provinces, the handling officials, the Departmental Director and the Regional Director concerned.

(1) Créer son association, by JF Collinot: éd Milan, collection “les essentiels Milan”.

Read also “RG, la machine à scandale” by Patrick Rougelet, published by Albin Michel.

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