The Renseignements Généraux (3): RG, the Scandal Machine

“RG” Dossier

The Renseignements Généraux (3)

Extracts from the book by Patrick Rougelet: RG la machine à scandales, published by Albin Michel

The extracts presented concentrate on the description of the functioning of the RG as described by the author. We refer the Internet user to the highly instructive reading of the book, to learn of Patrick Rougelet’s personal affair as well as the numerous examples illustrating his argument. The hyperlinks in the quoted extracts were added by CICNS

(…) Who knows the RG in France? Beyond the popular image of policemen charged with informing the prefect and investigating the morals of provincial notables, who knows the extent of their investigations? Who knows that they stock hundreds of thousands of cards on citizens, famous or unknown? At the RG, I learned all the methods of collecting and processing intelligence in domains as varied as politics, the press, the economic world, the trade-union or judicial universe. I was raised in the school of “not seen, not caught” where any means are good. I myself took part in a good number of reprehensible operations, crossing for the needs of the service the yellow lines that morality or the penal code reproves. Each time, I was congratulated and even promoted by my superiors. (…) I have chosen here to evoke only a series of dossiers for which I have solid information. They prove the dangerous excess of the renseignements généraux. (…) Every prefecture houses its renseignements généraux service. For once, the name really means something. The intelligence there is as general as can be. Surveillance of demonstrations, surveillance of opinion, surveillance of local elected officials, of the atmospheres of municipal councils, of the electoral map, of personalities at official events: the RG serve as the prefecture’s maid of all work. (…) Traditionally, before each election, the local RG are all mobilised for a life-size poll… So many mothers of families are needed, so many executives, so many liberal professions, unemployed, young people… Generally, the old hands of the RG fill in the forms alone at a bistro table. I saw it done several times… In their defence, by dint of rubbing shoulders with opinion and describing all its states of mind in interminable reports, the old campaigners end up knowing it a little. (…) In the same register, the local officials are also called upon for a whole series of field inquiries. In the Paris region, for example, the central office regularly demands an opinion note on the sensitive subjects of the moment. If a big company makes redundancies, a note. If the department is shaken by judicial affairs, a note. These service notes, atmosphere notes, land at the central office. Then - it is the rule - the official knows nothing of their addressees. (…) The daily life of a departmental service is also the monitoring and counting of demonstrations. Everyone knows the formula, “100,000 demonstrators according to the organisers, and 10,000 according to the prefecture” - in fact, according to the officials of the renseignements généraux. The stake of a demonstration is the number of people it mobilises to occupy the street. For the power in place, the greater the number, the stronger the warning. All governments therefore use the RG, first to know, secretly of course, the real number of demonstrators, then to minimise that number in the eyes of opinion. (…) At the RG, the daily round is also “faire la bulle”. In our jargon, the expression has nothing to do with its neighbour “coincer la bulle” [to laze about]. On the contrary, “making the bubble” means surrounding a personality during an official visit. (…) In 1941, France is under German occupation… The state of mind of the occupied French, of families cut in two, must be measured… It is indeed in this context that the RG are organised in the modern fashion. (…) the RG use different methods… The most widespread is the method of “immersion” in the milieu… When it is impossible to introduce a police official into the organisation to be watched, the service sometimes has recourse to indirect entryism. It does not hesitate to use a relative or friend of an official, already in place, who will inform indirectly. (…) The functioning of the RG obviously depends on the couple formed by the director on one hand and the Minister of the Interior on the other. (…) In May 1981, many of us then thought the left was going to abolish the RG purely and simply. Which, I must confess, scandalised us! The socialists, who had suffered from the service’s surveillance during twenty-three years of opposition, were pushing in that direction. Paradoxically, their unpreparedness on arriving in power saved the renseignements généraux in that delicate period. Result? Not only were the RG not abolished, but the service, since 1981, has changed course. Rapidly, the left wanted to use it to know what lay beneath the cards. (…) In the current system of blancs [editor’s note: anonymous notes drafted by the RG] whiter than white, anything can be written. Without any control. Without any proof. The politicians in power - the left, then the Chiraquians - threw themselves on this supposedly confidential information. Who sleeps with whom? Who has relations in business circles? Who has troubles with the tax authorities? One must have read white notes, sometimes several pages long, to measure the talents of imagination of the officials. And their extraordinary subtlety. For example, in the 1980s, rather than say that such-and-such a boss of a luxury company was homosexual, it was fitting to use the formula: “likes the English lifestyle”.

The RG, thanks to their blancs, quickly made themselves indispensable. The politicians even began to “place orders”. The world upside down! Perverted to the extreme, the system ran on empty. A director of central administration, little desirous of receiving two petitioners, demanded that a white note be addressed to him indicating that the two persons concerned were not respectable… This administrative prose makes wide use of the conditional, and its authors, I can testify, do not hesitate to practise amalgam, without the slightest restraint. Sometimes one even forgets to mention facts possibly contradicting the demonstration… It suffices to have been incarcerated, even for a few days, in preventive detention, to benefit from the mention “has done prison” without further precision! One can equally write that the person concerned “is the object of reserved impressions in banking circles”, quite simply because one of his accounts is overdrawn, or that “his morality is placed in doubt by his circle”, or even that he is liable to “be in liaison with a foreign power” because he travels a lot. (…) Today, manifestly spurred on by a political power that trusts them, the RG no longer even have to bring the slightest proof of what they advance. (…) France is, to my knowledge, the only democratic country to maintain policemen whose sole activity is to occupy themselves with the media. In the United States or in England, punctually, the FBI or MI5 “attend to” journalists when the latter take a close interest in a terrorism affair, for example. But never have they spied on or tried to manipulate editorial offices in a permanent and systematic manner. (…) The press section [editor’s note: of the RG] is a capital instrument for the power in place. Its mission is to act, by trying to control the press and manipulate journalists, to make them say what one wants. (…) The famous journalists’ cards are stored in two different places… The official cards, presented to the National Commission for Information Technology and Liberties (CNIL) when it asks for them, pile up in a big Bristol cabinet… The occult cards, which will feed the notes requested by the authorities, are much richer. When I was there, the service counted in total 53,000 dossiers, updated daily!… The cards “which do not exist” are locked away with a double turn of the key in the archives room. If need be, in case of a surprise visit from representatives of the CNIL - it has never happened, for they have the kindness to give notice when they come by -, the dossiers can be transported to another service. (…) By dint of rubbing shoulders with journalists at cocktails, press conferences, ministerial trips, lunches, breakfasts, the officials of the press section seek to make friends. The journalists slip them information in the hollow of the ear… In his turn, the RG official passes on to him what another journalist has taught him… Lured by such a good “source”, so rich and so accessible, more than one journalist has not seen the trap close on him. First, in exchange for a new tip, he agrees to “drop” a piece of information obtained elsewhere which he is asked, amicably, to set aside. Next, the journalist will consent, because he will have been asked “not to harm an ongoing affair”, to mention only part of it. Finally, he will agree, unbeknownst to himself or not, to tell a truncated story. In every case, he will have been manipulated. Within the press section, the subject “who manipulates whom” often came up. Some think, precisely to avoid thinking about it, that everyone manipulates everyone. Others assert, and I believe them more readily, that at the game of cat and mouse, the journalists are often the losers. The most extreme think outright that as soon as a journalist pokes his nose into the RG, he is manipulated. (…) More recently, after the carnage of the Order of the Solar Temple, in the winter of 1995, the subject of the cults kept the media in suspense. The RG, on the question, did not have much. In a rush, a “report” had to be manufactured. An official took charge of compiling the work done by others, notably by the gendarmes. A report had already been written, notably by the Interministerial cell for intelligence research and exploitation of the centre-east zone (CIRER). It was in great part “copied out”. The RG report on the cults then flooded all the editorial offices, as a reference document. A few weeks later, certain associations, filed in the urgency as bloodthirsty cults by the renseignements généraux, obtained redress before the courts. The trials took place, without cameras this time. (…) Why has the power of the RG, a secret political police, been so much reinforced? Quite simply because the services they render to politicians to smother affairs have made them, over these last twenty years, untouchable. How to make enemies of people who know the underside of the cards so well? Why renounce using people so zealous, indeed servile? (…) A few figures: intelligence in France counts about 10,000 officials. Half of them soldiers, who answer to the Ministry of Defence, and the other half policemen who answer to the Ministry of the Interior. Defence heads the DGSE, “organ of external intelligence”, in plain terms our espionage service, our own CIA… The Interior heads the DST, about 1,500 officials, charged with counter-espionage, that is to say with fighting, within the Hexagon, against the actions of foreign agents… France distinguishes itself from its European neighbours, however, with the RG. The truth is that this service has no true counterpart except in dictatorships. The Ministry of the Interior employs 3,800 officials charged with spying on their fellow citizens… It is in the name of the reason of State, a most useful pretext, that our fellow citizens are often spied on. (…) Pierre Joxe is the only contemporary Minister of the Interior who really attempted a reform. But he did not manage to modify the machine. The whole apparatus resisted. The administrative machine demonstrated that it was stronger than the ministers. Even Charles Pasqua, under Balladur, pressed to act by the scandal provoked by the RG’s spying on a secret meeting of the PS, initiated, for a time, a reform. It gave birth to a mouse. All these attempts demonstrate clearly that in the current state, given the men at their head, the RG are not reformable. The only effective reform would be their closure… If one adds to the journalists the parliamentarians, the elected officials - including those who sit on the most modest municipal councils -, business circles, intellectuals, what are called opinion leaders - in Paris or in the provinces -, one obtains the figure of at least 500,000 people on file, and doubtless as many again on whom the service has had occasion to collect data, legally or not (candidates for an administrative competition, for example)… How many more scandals will it take for our leaders to renounce maintaining an army of officials charged with rummaging through the country’s dustbins?

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