ESPION AUX OPÉRATIONS ILLÉGALES (DGSE): MANIPULATION, CHANTAGE, TORTURE,CE QU’IL A VU DE PLUS SOMBRE

Today our guest is a former spy of the DGSE, the French Foreign Service. His nickname is Jack Beaumont.

The saying at the box office is, you shouldn't be paranoid, but only paranoid survive.

Have you ever pretended to fall in love?

To make it sound real, you really try to convince yourself. A bit like humanity. Because in fact, you discover that everyone has a price.

Are there things you would like to forget?

Local services started with a drill in the child to make the guy talk. So the child died, then the woman. So I tried everything, I tried to go see a psychiatrist, etc. The problem is that when you go to a psychiatrist and you say, here I was a spy,

obviously the psychiatrist thinks you have a little problem with mythomania.

Hello everyone and welcome to Legends. Today our guest is a former DGS spy. His story, what he lived first in the first 8 years of his career where he was a fighter pilot on Mirage 2000 and then he was recruited by the French Foreign Service to do a lot of missions, then to the operations management. You will see very particular operations

where he tells us what he has been through, how he knows how to trust his wife again. He will tell us his journey, what he has been through, how he knows how to trust his wife again, he will tell us his journey, what he had to learn to do and what he had to live. Don't hesitate to comment on the show, to tell us what you thought about it, to like the video, it really helps us, when you like the video,

it allows you to go back to the YouTube algorithm and to put the little bell to be aware of the next releases. Anyway, thank you for being more and more numerous. And let's go with Jacques Beaumont on Legend, former spy of the DGSE. Let's go.

Hello, this is Jacques Beaumont, former DGSE spy, in operations, on the field, after being a fighter pilot and pilot for intelligence operations

in the Balkans. I come to tell you a few little anecdotes about Legend. Here we are, welcome. I'm going to tell you a few stories about legends. Welcome, Jacques Beaumont. That's not your real name, or your real first name. It's not my real name, and it's not my real first name. I was inspired by the character of Belmondo in Le Professionnel.

You didn't give your real name and first name so that we wouldn't find you, obviously. You were an outside secret agent, you were also in the Air Force, you were a fighter pilot on Mirage 2000, you did a lot of very different things, because it's rare that there are fighter pilots who, after Bifurc, on the DGSE, you were in the other...

In my knowledge, there are no others, yes. There are no others, is that true? You spent 8 years at the DGSE, within the DGSE, and you wrote a book called L'Homme Sans Nom Prix des lecteurs, 2025, book of pocket If you want to get it, I'll put the link in the description in the description of the youtube video or the podcast audio on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcasts, Amazon to go and find it

and thank you for being the first podcast in France still today, thank you a thousand times It seems that it's because you wanted to get out of a post-trauma, you had a post-trauma syndrome, a PTSD, you wanted to get out of that and you were told to write a book to heal yourself, and not necessarily to get it out.

Three things that are a bit out of the ordinary. And the DGSE, in particular, and even the special operations or even the fighter pilots, they are generally traumas of what they did, and difficulty sleeping. So I tried everything, I tried to go to see a psychiatrist, etc. The problem is that when you arrive in front of a psychiatrist, and of information, I was a spy,

obviously the psychiatrist thinks you have a little problem of mythomania, and so it didn't work. And I thought to myself, the only way to do it, one night when I was telling one of my writings, you should put it on paper, you should start writing. And that's how I started writing.

You were carrying a knife, you said, it translates a little like that,

you were, well, not paranoid, but let's say careful.

Yes, yes. So we have a dictum. Because paranoid is when you don't have, it's when you overestimate the danger, but you didn't overestimate it. If you really experienced things... The saying at the club, when I say the club, it's already this... The saying at the club is, you shouldn't be paranoid, but only paranoid people survive. So there's the good curve of paranoia, and the bad curve of paranoia.

And the problem is that some of us, unfortunately too much, after a few years, I go through a bad curve. Someone will come home, if I'm identified, someone will come home, because I do it to others. So why would... And we'll check, I'll check all the doors, the windows, etc.

And in the dark, without turning on the light, of course. And if possible, with something to defend me, yes, absolutely.

Are you still afraid of what could happen when we leave the company, the DGSE?

Do we continue to look behind a red light or in its rearview mirror? I think it's more a habit than a fear. I left about 10 years ago. When I drive, even in Australia, it may seem silly because it's at the other end of the world, but even in Australia, I rarely take the same route, I look in my mirror, if I turn twice to the right

and there's a car that's always behind me, I won't continue my route and I'll do a test to see... -"How far are you?" -"Yes, how far is it following me?" Every morning, without exception, you leave your house, and after looking at the pretexts of presence, what is there in the street. Same for vehicles. There can be a submarine, a submarine is a van, a construction vehicle, an ambulance or other, which can potentially be hiding something.

You will look at what is there in the street, then you will go out and you will do your security itinerary. So with several, what we call individual security, to be sure that you are not followed. With several changes of direction, etc. And then, when you consider not being followed, you're going to virtually become that someone else who has to do what he has to do, whether it's for a day, several days, several weeks.

You started your career, we were saying before, as a fighter pilot. I'll show you some pictures of you at the time. This is in Mirage 2000, we can see the images. You're on the small scale next to it,

we can also see you with a helmet, with your parachute in front, on the formation.

And then a lot of pictures of you on the plane.

What is your most memorable memory

during this period as a fighter pilot, before talking about the spy part?

I think there is what marks all pilots,

the first flight, the very first flight on Mirage 2000,

arriving from the Alpha Jet, I arrived from Cazaux, where there is the operational transition, and we learn to pilot, so we go from the Alpha Jet to Mirage 2000. And there is a step, which is even bigger today, with the Rafale, of course, which is even more powerful than the Mirage 2000. But the first flight on Mirage 2000, it's really something that marked me,

because it goes so fast, the acceleration is so powerful, that even if you are well trained on Alpha Jet, your brain is not at the speed of the plane taking off. After you do it completely automatically and without even thinking about it. But the first flight on a weapon plane, it's a great moment. It has nothing to do with a Space Mountain at the Paris Air Show?

No. In terms of G? No, it has nothing to do with it. After the Mirage 2000, I was flying single-seat aircraft. And so, by definition, as it's air combat, you have to make very, very violent evolutions. So every time you turn in an air combat, you can go up to 9G. We take 9 times our weight, with the blood that flows down to the legs.

That's why we have the anti-G suits, which inflate compressed air on the legs and abs to create an external pressure towards the heart and brain.

What will stop your career? To understand the passage of GSEs, as an external secret service, you will have an accident. Besides, it's not even an accident. Because you had a plane crash, where you, unfortunately,

you're going to tell a story, a sudden landing in a field, you crashed because you had no engine, you're going to tell us, but it's not there, you had a serious accident at that moment, without crashing.

Yes. Actually, compared to what you said earlier, the number of Gs you take, the way you take Gs. On Mirage 2000, it's flight controls that allow you to take a lot of Gs. And in a training phase of aerial combat, as you see in Top Gun, one plane, both planes, one against the other, I have someone coming behind me, above,

and I countered him to engage the fight. But to keep it visual, to see it, I was completely twisted in my seat, so my pelvis was in the axis, but my shoulders were completely turned in the plane. And in this position, I took the handle without putting myself back in the axis, and I pulled like a madman on the handle, by climbing a very, very high level of G,

while being turned around. And what it did was to put 600kg on my lumbar, but twisted, in addition, turned. You looked behind, that's what you mean. You looked behind while pulling on the sleeve. That's it.

So I put 650kg on the lumbar, and so I expelled three discs, I put 650kg on the lumbar and I had to remove 3 discs a herniated disc on the left, but a paralysing herniated disc because it stuck all the nerves of the left leg etc. So I went home, of course I stopped the fight, I put 100% oxygen to not fall in the apples because the pain is still quite violent

and I went home, and it clearly wasn't my best landing. Then I went straight to the military hospital in Percy, in Clamart, where I woke up with pipes in my back after the operation. And then I signed, and that wasn't very clever, I signed, because the training price of a fighter pilot is such that, on the operational level,

once you reach a certain level in flight, it's in the interest of the Air Force that you continue to fly. So every year you have medical expertise that validates or not your right to fly for a year. And at the end of an operation, you have temporary abilities that can be given, etc.

But normally, having had a back problem, they tell you, it's over, you can't fly anymore. And I signed the paper, I signed the discharge to be able to continue flying, knowing that my back would not have been able to withstand an ejection. So I continued to fly, having a very, very bad back, in bad condition after the operation. And quickly, I had to take pain killers all the time, whether it was in the morning, before the flight, after the flight, in the evening. And so, after a while, it was no longer bearable.

And so I said, I have to stop.

And so you stopped. How long did you pilot?

I did 8 years, about 7-8 years. 7-8 years, you has nothing to do with a fighter plane. What was it, by the way? It's a TBM-700. TBM-700, a single-engine plane. Yes, a single-engine turbo-propeller.

And so you will transport people, you will work for what service?

So at the beginning, for the Air Force, then kindly for special operations, I was transporting people for special operations in some countries, especially in the Balkans, mainly in the Balkans. And then, after a while, instead of having people dressed in khaki at the back, I had people in jeans and sneakers. And then I realized that they were not necessarily people from special operations, but rather from a intelligence service. And then I started to transport them more and more. I understood that they were not necessarily people from the Special Operations,

but rather from a intelligence service. And then I started to transport them more and more. And among them there was this old general, who seemed to be very well known and feared by the others who were on the plane, and who was always, of all his missions, and generally the most complicated missions,

where you had to land on rough terrain, or closed tracks, closed terrain.

It was always in Kosovo, right?

Yes.

During the war? Montenegro, etc. So it was in 2004-2005.

Was it very dangerous back then?

There were still some dangerous places, especially with him. Because when we would land, sometimes we had to accompany him. He had meetings that were a bit complicated with the local services. So there were times when it was pretty hot in Albania, or in Podgorica, in Serbia and Montenegro, or obviously Sarajevo, etc.

We were always in those places, Belgrade, Sarajevo, Podgorica, Tirana, we would stop in Mostar, that kind of thing. So we would stop there, there were local services looking for us, in Audis, RS6, RS8, big Audis.

What are local services, secret services?

Local services, because at that time, the DGSE, some of which I discovered later on the plane, and this general, General Rondeau, who was the central coordinator of intelligence for all of France, went to meet local services

in the framework of the search of Serbian war criminals, to try to find out where...

Those who committed war crimes.

That's it. So, Mladic, Milosevic, and all that. I was on a hike, so I spoke Serbian, but he had never told... He had never told... the Serbian service, which always used an interpreter. So, we were on the plane, and as we were getting off, he said to me,

today it's a bit special, because I'm going to tell them, to make them understand, that I'm talking about the Serbs. So they will understand, the Serbian service, that it's been 3-4 years that I understand everything they say

and that I don't need an interpreter. And they may react badly. And we find ourselves in front of these people, with a whole bunch of people in front of us. The interpreter, a high-ranking person in charge of the local services, and on the other side, General Rondeau, who uses the interpreter, who speaks, etc. And then me, sitting not far from him.

And then he tells me, when I give you a signal, you drop it. In this case, it's a napkin on the floor. You look under the table and you look if they're all armed or what's going on. And so what I did, he tells me, if they are, you put the napkin on the table, if they're not, you put the napkin on your knees. And so I drop my napkin at the signal

that he had been warned that he was going to make them understand that he was speaking Serbian. Indeed, I see under the table, among the people sitting next to the performers, rather apart from each other, that there are some with a gun on their knees. Okay?

So I stand up, I put the napkin on the table. And then he's there, looking at the napkin, and then he looks at the Serbian service manager who was still listening to the interpreter and he starts speaking in Serbian but fluently and there the boss of the Serbian service realizes that it has been several years that he has been completely rolling it in the flour and that he understands everything

decomposes takes a look not very happy and there Rondôme looks at me and says I think it's time for us to go and so so we left, quickly. He spoke in Serbian to the driver who was waiting in front of him, who didn't know what was going to happen. He said, take us back to the plane. We got back to the plane, and when we got to the plane,

he said, start, start, take off, take off, take off. And when we started taking off, there were cars coming in, with the gyros, etc. Clearly not very happy. But you let it go, it's just that... We forced the take-off a bit. We stayed very low, we stayed at low altitude. The idea is that you shouldn't go up too much after the take-off,

otherwise you potentially enter a range of fire of a portable missile or a light weapon, etc. Whereas if you stay low and fast... Ah yes, it's a kind of bazooka... Yeah, it's harder to get you. Is that how you're going to get into the DGSE? It's by meeting these people on the plane,

you're going to talk to them, you're going to tell them, they're the ones who are going to approach you, how does it work? How are you going to get recruited as a spy? So, we started to know each other, and the others I was transporting as well. And then, as a pilot, I was in the Air Force,

I was doing all these training operations as a pilot, and I was sent for what we have each year, the survival training in the mountains, etc. And so, in this survival training, we are supposed to be at the bottom of the mountain and we are supposed to dig igloos to stay for several days in our igloos, etc. And so...

What kind of training is this? Survival training in the mountains.

In the army? Yes, survival training in the mountains, pilot, air force...

In case you crash in the mountains.

That's right. Knowing that it was at this time that Afghanistan started to grow, and so we had to do a little more advanced mountain training. In fact, quite simply because in Afghanistan there is a lot of snow,

so we had to train in case France had to intervene even more there.

And so in fact, by digging my nipple, so in fact the snow is very heavy on a shovel, and by digging my nipple, I made this movement, again, of torsion, with the snow on the shovel, and I have one of the discs that came out. And so I had a second operation on the column,

and there, the doctors of the navigation staff, so the pilots' doctors, we say it's automatic, two operations on the column, it's over. You can't fly in the military anymore, you keep your civilian skills. So if you want to go as a line pilot, you can go as a line pilot. But military, it's over.

And no offense to the line pilots, but I didn't want to drive a bus. And it's a very nice job, but it wasn't for me. And so I was a little lost, I didn't know what I was going to become. And, in fact, one of his friends, whom I was transporting in the Balkans, told me, why don't you try to come home? And so I said, yes, it's not stupid.

And so I did the tests to get back home, while I was in an office at the Air Force's Chief of Staff in Ballard. Ballard is the Ministry of the Armed Forces. The Ministry of the Armed Forces, which at the time was just the Air Force. And so I did the tests, which last about a year, where you have tests on the ground, situational tests, lots of psychological tests.

Which look like?

You're going to get tired, so you're not going to sleep for a while, you're hungry, you've walked a lot, and you end up, generally, in countries that are not very far away, with a little mission, a little thing to do. And when you go back to France and you go through customs, obviously, the customs officers get on board,

and obviously, they consider that your papers are not valid, and obviously, you end up in a cell, to be questioned... It's done on purpose? You don't know, at the moment... Yes, of course, sir.

So it's to see how you get by, how you keep your false identity, your legend, etc. You find yourself, you have no money, you're far, you're tired, you're hungry. You find yourself in the toilets of a completely rotten bar in another country, and there's someone who comes next to you, who does what he has to do, and all of a sudden, you take him for a local alcoholic, and suddenly, he tells you the magic phrase.

And when you arrive at the debriefing, he's there. He's in the... He's in the room. Explain it to us later. So, the principle is a bit the same as when you're a pilot, a fighter pilot, you have to be able to do your self-criticism.

So you have to be able to self-criticize. So you have to be able to debrief yourself first, and say everything you didn't do well. Because if it's something you didn't do well, but you detected it yourself, it means that the next time, you won't make the mistake. The danger is when you made a huge mistake,

but you didn't see it, and you're not able to self-debrief, to readjust. So, the sentences, I imagine, are not funny things, they're things that go through the discussion, otherwise it would be too fly.

Absolutely, yes. I imagine. And are there exercises where you have to get in touch, you've heard that already, get in touch with a guy in a bar, you're told, hey, this person, we put you in front of a bar, and we say, this person, you have half an hour to have his email, his phone number, his name, his name. Does that exist?

Yes, so that's what we call coffee exercises. So there are several types of exercises, but there is this one, where we are a little bit apart from a bar, and we are told, here, you are this bar, you will go into this bar, and inside there is an instructor, who is sitting at a table, which you obviously know,

and who will discreetly designate someone for you. Knowing that you don't know if this someone is part of... Is he ugly or not? And you have half an hour to leave with his name, his phone, his email, what he does in life, everything you can. But no more. You must not go beyond half an hour,

because otherwise it means that the manipulation is reversed and that it is he who has taken control of you and who holds you and you can't leave. It's the case if you're a pretty girl in general. She has trouble being friendly with someone and at the moment of ... it's been 29 minutes, you have to leave. It's delicate.

So you go into the bar, and you see the instructor at a corner of the eye, who's giving you a sign, a sign at the bar. And you approach him, with your pretext, to make sure that he tells you about his life, and takes all the information.

There's that, there's going into a building. So the instructor says, you see the building there, you have 10 minutes to go through the two windows on the second floor. I want to see you at the window, on the balcony of the window on the second floor.

Incredible. And how do you do that?

You manage, you find an excuse.

You knock, you follow the sound of the guy, what can I catch?

It can be one, it can be... I lived there when I was little, I always wanted to come back to my apartment, because I grew up there.

You have to show no blanks, you have to be nice.

Otherwise you don't let a man in alone. No, you have to be nice. Especially if you're a woman alone. Especially in the chic neighborhoods. You open the door and you say, who is this guy? Did you succeed? Yes, yes, yes. I think that sometimes, the exercises in the cafes, they don't do it very far from... It's not necessarily in the cafes very far.

There are a lot of places Saint-Michel. Unless one day you have someone who comes to see you, places Saint-Michel.

I already did it, I was already the man. I understood it quite quickly. I was the man who was supposed to have my phone number quickly. In a café, I understood him with friends, because I made an allusion, he burst into laughter and left. So I understood, I said to him,

listen, I think you have a certain time to have my phone number, and the person who is waiting for you in front of you, etc., you will tell him that I know exactly what you're doing, so find another client. He burst out laughing. He said, good day, he left. I understood that it was the case. I was telling him, the man is way too paving, it's very weird. I was preparing myself in a cafe, the guy says to me, so what are you doing in life?

And I say to myself, but it's weird, the guy is nice, but a little heavy. Tell me what you do. He didn't understand what I was saying. He said, I'll give you my card. He had two cards. But he didn't put his card. I said, put your card. He didn't have it, of course. It was more for the joke, but I told him to look for someone else.

You have the same thing in two steps. You have a first one who goes to the bar, who must take a minimum of information, then he must go to the toilet, and another student goes into the bar, must do a clandestine transmission of the information in the toilets,

and then go back up. The first one leaves, and the second one must meddle in the conversation created by the first one.

Hey Jérôme! That's it, he has to pretend...

He already knows his name, etc. But I didn't meet you...

Damn, that's scary.

You work at...

It's still scary, because it's... In fact, it's manipulation. Absolutely.

Do you have manipulation lessons?

Absolutely.

So, there are lessons, but in practice... When we do these exercises, not all the time, but it happens, there is a psychologist who accompanies the whole device, and who, with small cameras that we have, either a button, etc., or in the backpack here, this kind of thing, sees what you see, and you have the little earpiece,

and she tells you, so she's in the Summa, in the Summa, in the van, and she tells you, so she's in the SOUM, in the SOUMA, in the van, and she tells you ah, there he looked at her like that, it means that. Ah, there, so she describes to you live the body language of the person, if possible, and so she tells you live where you have to go, where you have to go dig. What thread to pull. How do you learn that you are accepted as a spy? How do they warn you on that day? I was at IKEA with my wife, and I was trying to catch a kind of thing,

at the top of the ladder, a league, I don't know what. And my phone rings. So I hadn't told my wife that I was doing the tests to enter the DGSE. Because I thought, if I'm not caught, it's no use to make her freak out for a year. So I was at the top of my ladder, the phone rings, I pick up,

and she says, you are Mr. thing, yes, you have applied, yes, you have been accepted, so you are expected, it's early September, at what date, what time, at what address, don't be late, clunk, and it hangs up.

And so there, I go down the ladder, my wife says,

what's going on, what are you doing, who was it? And I say, ah, it was work, apparently I'm going to become a spy.

So you can imagine the return of Ikea in the car.

And your wife wasn't happy?

She had already experienced the pilot part,

hunting, operations a little bit... A little bit stupid. And then I told her that I had a back problem, that I was supposed to calm down, and I told her that I was going back to DGSE.

So she told me,

listen, as long as you're happy, as long as you do what you want to do, I'm fine with it, but I don't want to hear about speak. I don't want to know. Can you tell your wife? No, not necessarily.

So, in fact, as soon as you come home, you're told... In addition, mine being Australian, I was even less allowed to tell my wife, there's what's called a wake-up call, because I have a foreign wife, so normally I shouldn't talk about these things with her, just to say that you are at the Ministry of Defense. But, in truth, if you say that to your wife,

it's the recipe for divorce. It's obvious.

It's hard to stay ... When you go on missions, it can last a long time, not giving any news, it's complicated.

And then, you must not, you must not. You are someone else.

How long did you have ... You are someone else. How long did you have the mission, without being able to give a single piece of news to your wife?

It's a few weeks. In what I was doing, it's not what you see in the office of legends, where you can be abroad for several months. Obviously, my wife, being Australian, told me, I don't want to know, I didn't want to hide it from her. So I decided to tell her.

Obviously without telling her what I was going to do, but just that I was going back to the DGSE. And then she told me, listen, it's too much for me. Because she comes from Australia, a small surfing village, a hippie village on the Australian coast. So tell me, I don't want to know what's going on there, as long as you're happy. The day you're not happy, you leave.

So you don't talk to her about your job?

Yeah, I told her I was leaving. I'm leaving for two days, I'm leaving for three days, I won't be there tomorrow, I won't be there tonight, etc. But what's the point of the discussion? Because when you get home from work, you're like, -"Oh, I forgot all that!" That's the same problem with your whole circle of friends. You lose the whole social circle. The problem is that even at the level of friends-friends,

even at the level of friends-friends, normally, you're supposed to declare to the company, when you come home, five friends. To say, here, these five there... It bears a name, that. You give the names.

It has a name. They're trusted people. Yes, they're trusted people. You give five trusted people. Except that before you say yes, you can talk to them, there will be an investigation.

Of course. And so, you end up with, after six months, you go see one of your friends, and you say, well, here we go, let's have a coffee.

In fact, I'm at the DGSE. I'm not at the Ministry of Defense, I'm at the DGSE.

She says, but why are you telling me that?

You're crazy, normally, you shouldn't tell me, I'm not supposed to know.

And then you tell them you did a survey on them, no, no, but it's okay, I have the right to tell you, because I gave your name six months ago, and it's been six months since someone has been digging in your life. And there, in general...

Anyway, they don't tell you if they find things, they won't tell you their name. Ah, they just tell you no.

Yes, they just tell you yes or no. Yes, yes or no. And I had no. Ah, you had no? If you have a woman who can be from a country where we are a little cold. Not even, in this case, not even. But I had names.

Really? Or if they are journalists, I think.

Journalists, cashiers, that kind of thing. And so I had names. But then it's super delicate because you see the implications.

They tell you why or not at all, right?

No. No, no. It's frustrating. And you don't look at them differently? You meet your friends and they're like, so what are you doing now? You know, you have a beard, long hair, I'm still in the army.

You had a beard and long hair? Yeah, it happens. You let your hair grow a little more.

Depending on the missions, you don't go too military.

That's right. You have to immediately break your military attitude. It depends, again, if you're an analyst or if you're on the field, but you have guys who have done Saint-Cyr, who come in and arrive with, you know, the pants, little velvet pants, the gas boots, the Saint-Cyr cut, which walk like that in the street, you know, with a military patron. You see them in 10 bands.

There's an investigation that's been done on you, to check, of course. You were talking about your wife earlier, that's a subject for a lot of people. If you have a wife, sometimes, who comes from a foreign country, with whom you're at war, well, not at war, but you're cold, let's say, at the moment, well, there can be a little more in-depth investigations for that. If her family doesn't work in the army,

if she's not a girl from a foreign secret service, and then you have to be even more careful with all the women you meet. You always have a doubt, because that's the best way to catch someone, to make them talk, it's by sex.

There are two, three levers. M-I-C-E. That's it, the MICE. It's one of the means. So...

Can you explain, when we talk about it,

what is the MICE, so it's written M- leverage you have on someone. It's manipulation, clearly. That's it, it's the means of manipulation. So, we start from the principle, more or less, that we all have a corn. So, it's the four levers to manipulate someone. M for money, obviously.

That is, you pay someone to get information. Basically, it's someone who's going to be venal. It's like, I give you 100,000 euros and you give me your boss's name. It's interesting because he's not necessarily at the beginning, and you get used to it, you get used to people. You pay them little by little, more and more.

So they take a different way of life. Like drugs? Yes. They take a different way of life than they did before. Especially if they have a mistress, so they start giving little gifts, and then you say, oh, there's no more. Unless you tell me this and that.

And then people are in need and want their money.

What is I?

So I is for ideology. So, for example, typically at the moment, if you take some countries where things are happening in the world, recent, where there have been recent regime changes, you can find people in the country who were rather close or in favor of the old regime and would like the old regime to come back.

You'll go see them and you'll say, I work for a foreign state, we have interests, to what you already know, because before there was the phase of environment, listening, whatever.

And an investigation on the person.

Absolutely, what is called the environment. And so there was an environment, so you already know everything. Everything about the person. And there, you will say, well, here we have interests in what the old regime comes back to, obviously, the other will say, well, me too.

But we need people like you to help us.

That's the ideology.

It's very powerful. C is blackmail, coercion, in English.

It's not the cleanest.

It's not the cleanest, and in addition, human nature makes that when someone is stuck with blackmail, his reflex is to want to get out of it. And to do everything to get out of it. And to do everything to get out of it. Can you give an example? I know you have a very nice example of blackmail that you used to make someone talk who didn't want to.

So it was someone... They're not nice people, in general, when you do that. No, that's it.

They're often bastards.

Absolutely. We can talk about that, but... When they're bastards, it's not very... You accept to do this kind of thing, it's not very difficult morally, psychologically. The problem is when it's good people, who are in the wrong place at the wrong time,

and who have access to information. And there, it's more difficult to live with. But... So, in this case... Because after that, it ends badly for them. We'll talk about it later. We'll talk about it later, but the rule number one is that it usually ends badly for them. Because once you have the information, you want no one else to have this information,

no one else knows who has the information, and no one else knows what the information was. It's the darker part. It's the darker part. And so, this person was a great guy, we had done all the environment, there was nothing, everything was fine, he had no... We don't detect any leverage, he has no mistress, he's not greedy, he doesn't need money, more than that, his wife is there, she has no lover... You don't have leverage to blackmail, I think.

There's not much, so we're like, shit, what's the problem? How are we going to find the corn? And one day, as usual, we're in the environmental phase, waiting for him to leave his office. So I'm not saying where it was, in which country. We're waiting for him to leave his office, and we know from the recordings

that he's calling his wife and saying, I have a meeting that's going to last, I won't be able to leave the office before 3 o'clock, etc. He gets yelled at on the phone, and we say to ourselves, we're here for 3 hours, and everything. And then, 5 minutes later, he leaves.

Oh fuck! You tell yourself, go elsewhere.

Clearly, there's something.

So there, we go behind, the motorcycles, the cars, the pedestrians, we go behind, the bikes, the cars, the pedestrians, we go behind in a row. There's a big dispatch, so it's an important person. Yes, important person, very important information. Very, very important information.

So, it depends, the size of the dispatch depends, of course, on the country, the funds to be allotted to the mission, etc. And the phase in which you are. And so, we go behind... Is it a dangerous country or not dangerous? It was a country...

Between the two?

Yeah, where if you get caught as a spy, you get a little bit back. Okay, okay. And so, we go behind, and he... He goes in the equivalent of the Boulogne box in Paris. The Boulogne box is a wood in the west of Paris where there are women who work with their bodies.

Yes, there are women and others.

Prostitutes and guards.

Prostitutes, men, men, gigolo, men, women who sell their services. So he brings us to a similar place, and we lose sight of him, of course, because it's dark, it's night, we can't see well, etc. And then there's one who says, I see him, I see him, on the radio, of course.

And he was, so, both hands on a tree, with his pants on his ankles, with his buttocks back, having a sexual relationship with a man.

To suffer with a man.

Exactly, to suffer with a man. So, of course, long distance photos, at night, etc.

It really happens like in the movies.

Yes, exactly like in the movies.

Do you like it when you do that? You tell yourself, I'm in a movie, this kind of mission, is that what you imagined?

Yes, well, for everyone it's a bit of a nebula. In the GSE, you don't really know what's going on, but in summary, what you see in the movies comes from somewhere. I saw people parachuting jetskis or 4x4s at night in the middle of civil airways, from a transport plane, after a parachute,

and guys jumping in parachute behind That's what the COS does We did a report that they can parachute from an A400M a cargo plane that jumps from behind people but also, he said

quads, cars, even boats You see the airline agents passing in all directions and the jet ski falling in the middle of the night It's not funny So you in the middle of the night. It's not funny. No, no, it's not funny.

And so you take a picture of the gentleman.

And so we take a picture. With the other gentleman behind. So obviously there is satisfaction because we say to ourselves, well, here we have our corn. Yes, so your lever to do it. We have the lever.

And so we knew by the environment, so the observation phase, that it was him who, every morning, passed through his mailbox, leaving his house to go to work, and filtered the mail, sorted the mail, everything that was for him, he took it, everything that was for his wife, he left it. And there, of course, in his mail, a pretty little envelope, with a pretty little photo in it.

And so he leaves. We see him, so we're in the SOUM, in the SOUMAR, and we see him get out of his house and walk in the street and he looks at what he received and he falls on an envelope he has no stamp he looks, there is nothing on his back

he opens the envelope at 50 meters and he takes out the photo and he becomes white, livid the reflex immediately to put the photo back in the envelope

as if it was going to change something and immediately he starts looking everywhere around him. You were not afraid to look at him at that time? No, you can't see us. And so he looks everywhere around him, he looks at the picture again, he puts it back together, he looks around him again. Are you armed in case, you never know? Are you always armed?

For this mission, no, but you know where to find weapons if necessary. In the glove box, in the end. And so he heads to a telephone booth. There's a number? He takes out the photo, and on the back of the photo there was just a number.

Incredible.

And so he heads to the telephone booth, and then look at myself, laughing, obviously, in the zoom, saying to myself, that's for us.

And it rings.

And it rings, so I pick it up and I say, in an hour, at such and such place.

In English, you speak English?

In an hour, at such and such place.

And then it was over.

An hour later, he ... So we saw him walking down the street, it was quite... Humanly, it's terrible, because he's not a bad person. In this case, this person wasn't a bad person. But you see him doing zigzags and wandering in the street, completely lost. So we gave the M-I-C, the blackmail.

What is the E of M-I-C-E?

It's the ego. So, it's the ego. So, you can have people who are very rich, who don't need more, ideologies, they don't care about anything, they have absolutely no ideology.

blackmail, you give them pictures of two prostitutes and say, this one is not bad, I'll keep this one. And so, it's only the ego left. And so, you send them, if possible, usually it's only the ego left. And so you see, if possible, in general if it's a male, a female intern in her company, who will come and say,

I'm doing my studies in your university on this topic, I'm studying the deal you made two years ago, because for me it's the sum of the deal, etc. Can I interview you for half an hour? It won't take long, etc. But I would really like to hear from the master's voice how you did it, etc.

In general, the guys go there, they tell, they tell, they tell, they tell. But it's one-shots.

But that, he's going to tell stuff, but he's not going to give the information.

It's one-shots. It can. It can give access. He's going to give his personal phone number, for example. Because it's pretty. Because it's pretty. So he's going to give his personal phone number.

What's it called? It's called a Yerondel, right?

Yerondel, it goes up to...

These are women who have been sent by Secret Society. There are some, right? especially among Chinese and Russians. So sometimes you... I imagine the DGSI has to check a bit the people who are sensitive in France, on our side. And if they are ever caught by a new woman, there is a check that is made?

Yes, so if people are well trained in the big French defense companies, in general, they have a security officer in their company. And when this kind of approach occurs, immediately they write a report, which then goes to the DGSI and the DGSE to see if we know this person.

We're going to go into the operations management, that's where you go next. You go into DGSE, you become an analyst, and then you go into operations management. What's the difference?

There are big management departments within DGSE, like what we see in the films, James Bond and…

Are they action services?

No. Within the operations management, there are different types of services. One is the Legends office, for example. There are others. The action service depends on the operations management. You have different types of divisions in there, but basically,

the way it works, is that you have an analyst who is the head of the pie. It's the analyst who controls the subject. He can be specialized either on a theme or on a country. He will be specialized on a certain militia at the bottom of Libya, etc. And he really controls everything.

Who is in this militia, what are they doing, why, how, etc.

And to know more,

because his ultimate goal is to write notes

that will go to the President of the Republic, to the Prime Minister, etc.,

which are called broadcasts.

To write these broadcasts, he will need to have a grain of sand

and to have information that goes back to him. This information can come either from other people

from the Intelligence Directorate, under diplomatic passports abroad, who already have human sources, already recruited, and who will go see these human sources saying, here, do you know something about this? Did you hear that? Etc. All this goes back to the analyst. Either he will have the direction of the operations,

when there is no source that exists, maybe we should recruit a new one, or you have to go and get the information where it is, or the technical part, it has no number to exploit. It has no number...

A place that moves a lot, the operations management? Yes. So, the operations management is in charge of all clandestine operations, offensive, generally illegal, illicit. So you break a few laws... ...to get it. You break a few boxes. Why?

Because 90% of the information is blank. It means that it is...

There are three types of information.

There are three types of information. 90% of the information is blank. It doesn't mean it's easy to get. There are blogs in foreign languages, etc.

Blank is a bit of an open source. It's open source. You find information if you look for it well.

That's it.

Then the gray.

So generally it's in someone's head. But this someone is not necessarily trained to protect this information. Or sometimes not even aware of it. That he has information. To trained to protect this information. Or sometimes, he is not even aware... ...that he has access to this information. And then, you have 1% of the information that is black. So, it's either in a safe, in a encrypted hard drive,

in a encrypted USB key, or in the head of someone who is well aware that he has the information, and who is trained to above to not give this information. The management of operations does the black and the gray when necessary. Knowing, for example, that a telephone interception is white. Because you have the big antennas, it's in the atmosphere,

it falls into your antenna...

And the black is darker.

You didn't steal anything.

We're going to talk a little bit about psychology, what you were talking about before. You said that it was sometimes not easy psychologically, when the sources were nice people. We're going to talk about it again. You are an analyst and you are called.

Yes.

There is a person who calls you and tells you something incredible.

Yes.

So, in fact, at DGSE, as an analyst, we are at least two per office, because you always have to check what the other one is doing, because we are afraid of thieves, you know, traitors. Okay ? So, as soon as your little colleague from the office does something,

even gets up to go to the bathroom, he has to close his computer, he has to close his safe, his safe behind him. And you say, where are you going? He says, I'm going to the bathroom.

No, it's true?

Yes.

Damn, no trust in the guy in front of you.

It's not you, personally.

You don't control trust?

That's it.

You always control it.

And you really do that in the long run?

Yes.

Even when you're going to pee?

Yes. And if there are some who smoke, I'm sorry, I have to go out to smoke. Exactly, I'm going to smoke. And so you have your phone, and on this phone, to know who is calling you, there is always the name of the person. Inside, of course, it's a closed circuit. The person calling you is his service. Except for the DO, where there is no name, the Operations Directorate, where there is no name, there are only pseudonyms. And so there is the person's pseudonym

and marked DO next to it, so Direction des Opérations. And you don't know why they called you that.

Is it a bit like the dark side of the DGSE, the DO?

It's a bit like the dark side of the DGSE. With the SA, of course. The Action Service. So, the transactions are operations... Yes, so, they are operations that are really, really armed. And they also do... It's a really hard job because they also do everything that is bodyguards. So, for example, you're going to have someone from the Intelligence Directorate

who has to go and deal with a source at the end of Baghdad. These are the guardian angels of these guys. Where it's exploding everywhere. Well, he's going to have an escort,

of the type of the USA. So these are very solid guys, and what is very hard in the USA, to have already met some people there, is that if you get arrested, you can't even tell yourself that you're part of this service. So either you're taken for a spy from another country,

you don't even know where you're from, you can't recognize you. No, because you're not part of the DGC. France will let you go. It's hard. What we were doing...

You give your life for the country. It's hard.

I mean, the least shit is not at home, we know better. But you know, by signing, by going there, you know. There's a risk. Yes, but it's like when you become a fighter pilot and you do that for Top Gun, you don't really think about a moment when you're going to risk your skin or lose your friends, etc. It's a bit the same here. Until the day it happens, of course.

So, he calls you, you see, Deo on the phone...

I'm there, I'm in my office, and I see a name, a nickname, and it's marked Deo. So I pick it up, I'm in this tower, in this building, can you come and see me? He said, OK. And what do I say? That's my question, thinking about what I say to the other, who is in front of me, because I'm going to leave.

And there he says to me, well, you say that you're going to smoke, as usual, since it's 11 o'clock in the morning. And so every morning at 11 o'clock, I was smoking a cigarette at the bottom of the building. He had called me at the time I was supposed to go down to smoke my cigarette. He was already watching me, so I said OK. I hung up the phone, I got up, the other guy in the office said, where are you going? You're smoking a cigarette.

I go down, I pretend to smoke a cigarette, I go up to the other building to go see him. you can enter this part, the Chief of Staff of the Operations Department, you can't see anything, it's a completely glassed-out, but tinted thing. I go in there, and I see him, and he says to me, here, are you interested in going into the Operations Department? Because given the results you had on the training stage at the start, which we call the EOT training stage, Operating Officer,

which is when you go in as an analyst, there is a basic training, filature, etc. There is a French spy, the real name is Operator. Operating Officer. Sorry, it's EOT, Operating Officer. Absolutely. And so, are you interested in going back to the operations management?

I say, well, yes, why not, but what for? I can't tell you.

I said, well ...

Always trying to know what's in the surprise package.

Yeah, and above all, it's complicated to apply for something without knowing what it is, anyway. So he tells me, it's now, it's yes or no. I said, well, it's yes. He said, OK, you're going to have to do the tests. OK. you'll have to do the tests. OK? And he tells me it's roughly 10 days. So I say,

how do I do it? He says, your hierarchy of the direction of the information should not be aware that you are doing the tests for the direction of operations.

Holy cow! Even internally?

Yeah.

So you're going to take a vacation, and you keep me informed when you have the dates of your vacation, and you'll do the tests during your holidays." So I left, I went down, I went to see my boss, I looked at the dates, and I said, I'm taking 10 days off there. I go home in the evening, and I tell my wife,

I'm taking 10 days off, at this time. And she says, great, where are we going? I say, you stay here, and I don't know. And so I do the tests. It's much more advanced in terms of fatigue, and the situation. Paranoia has reached a really high level.

You feel like you're always with someone behind you. We did it for other people who were passing the tests. Once, we had a girl who was doing the tests, and she was in direct telephone contact with her intern manager. And we were behind in filature. And so, after a while, her intern manager calls me, and says,

-"Yeah, you're still behind her?" I say, -"Yeah, we're still behind her, I see her."

He says, -"Because she just called me to still behind her?" I say, -"Yeah, we're still behind her, I see her."

He says, -"Because she just called me to tell me

that she had done her security check,

her wire break, and that there was nothing behind,

that she wasn't followed, there was no wire,

and that she was going home." So, you confirm that it as long as possible, and you scare it, to show it that, well, yes, there are people behind.

How did you scare it?

It was late at night, very late at night, so it was one of the last subways,

and in fact, there was a member of the line in each car of the subway in which it was,

except his, let's say, and she arrived at the station at her place, so the door of the subway opened, she got out on the platform, and as she got out on the platform, each car had a guy who got out, who was looking at her. Incredible.

And then she went...

She completely broke down, she left in a hurry, she called the cops, Oh yeah? Yeah, it's not true. And then you say you're the ADO? No, we left. Oh yeah? Yeah. Fuck, incredible. We left. So she wasn't taken to the ADO.

So you, he tells you, how does he tell you that you're taken?

So, I do the tests, etc. I come back with a black eye.

Why?

Because in the tests, something happens. Something is happening They use all the means to make you talk They can use all the means to make you talk

And if you talk, you lose?

Yes

That's it, damn Does it hurt? What?

Does it hurt?

Yes, it's ok Do you really have to be resistant to pain or is it doable if you're very motivated? It's in the head Does it drown you or not?

You mean the aquatic part?

The aquatic part?

The board with the head back, right? Yeah, with the... With the jump and the...

No, no, it's forbidden, it's Hawaiian.

And the rag, yeah. It's forbidden. There's no law anymore when you're in there. All that is forbidden, we go to the other side of the force, a little bit. It's not the right to kill, it's the right to... It's the right to... break the law, it's the right to lie, it's the right to do what you want. In the name of the state, that's what you have to do.

It's the dark side of things. And that's where it's, in a way, grisant, if you will. It's very addictive. And that's why there are a lot of guys who freak out, because by having several different identities on which you turn, the identity cards, bank accounts, the phone, etc., the other addresses,

you have guys who, in the evening, when they finish working, when they're in Paris, instead of going home... They were saying their wives, I'm not there tonight... It's not sexy, you see. No, they call... You're someone else, so you don't call your wife.

You can't call to say, I'll be home late. You're someone else, so they stay someone else. And they go to a restaurant, to a bar, to a hotel, something... To flirt with the receptionist, you see, by being...

By being someone else. We'll get back to the story in a second. Did you ever get arrested by police in France? And you show them your fake passport?

No, you didn't. So, the DGSE doesn't have the right to act on national territory. We act...

No, but using your passport just to check your identity, not to give yours in France? Even if you weren't on a mission?

No, no, no. On the other hand, I was arrested once. Even if you weren't on a mission? No, no, no. But I was arrested once. We got caught by the police, you know. And so, in a nutshell, the others in the team see you leave,

the motorcycle follows you to see which police station you're in, then it tells the company, it goes up, so it goes to DGS, the internal security of the company, and it goes back down to the police station to say, let him go, he's at our place. And you don't say anything. But as long as this process is done...

It goes on for an hour. It goes on for an hour, and for an hour, you have the cops trying to interrogate you, like tough, you know? Like, tough, they try to cut A radio, a small earpiece...

They don't like it. So you don't say anything. And then, all of a sudden, it's quite funny, you see... I was being questioned, there's this kind of window, and the two guys, who are nice and tough, but at that moment, not nice,

who were trying to question me, and so I say nothing at all, no name, nothing, I don't speak. And there I see what I think is the commissioner,

coming from the other side of the window,

and knocking, telling them to get out of the room.

So they come out, and so there I don't hear, but I see them,

and I see the commissioner making gestures,

pointing with his finger, and then he comes back saying,

we're sorry, we didn't know, etc. We have to drop you off wherever you want, etc. Very nice, I said, you couldn't know. So I get in the police car, and I was waiting for the moment. Obviously, after five minutes, someone turns around and says, How do you become a spy? And I said, you just dropped me off there. It was the limit for just where I could go. So for the deo...

I... So, same, I'm in my office, so I come in with my coca, I take the other one in my office, it's good to spend your holidays with the black and white, yes very well, and then I have no sound, no image for several weeks. So I do my work as an analyst, and you can't call anyone.

You can't take your phone and say, so I did the tests...

You can't go back to the building next door to see, no?

No, no, no. You can go and ring as much as you want, there's a person who's going to open everything. You won't answer anymore? No. So, no sound, no image. You can't wait for him at the canteen, the guy is going to see him, it's not the same canteen. And you shouldn't be seen going to see him. You came down to smoke your cigarette to go see him, so you never saw him.

And then, a call, even on a nickname, marked Deo. So I pick up, he says, can you come see me? I imagine I'm going to smoke a cigarette. He says yes. I hang up the phone, I smoke a cigarette, I go down, I go up to the other building, I go to see him, he says to me, well, here you are, you passed the tests, so do you want to come home?

I say yes, well, to do what? He says I can't tell you. I say, I passed the tests. He says no, no, I can't tell you. I said, ok, but it's now. He said, yes, no. Do you want to come home? I said, yes. He said, ok, welcome.

We'll take you somewhere. I said, but before, what am I going to do? He said, we'll explain it to you later. I can't tell you. And so, ok. And then he said to me, well, it goes up like that, and he tells me, well, you have 45 minutes, at what time, in front of the bakery, Porte des Lilas, there is a car that will come to pick you up,

either not late, otherwise it's over. So I go back to my office, I start making my carton. And what do you say to your guy? So we need to justify ourselves or not, depending on the person in front of us, if they have the right to know or not.

We encircle the information, if you don't know it, you shouldn't know it.

Exactly. And so I start to make my carton, and he says to me, what are you doing? And I say, I'm muted in another service. He says, OK. So I close my closet, etc. I start to leave with my cardboard. And then I hear the screaming at the end of the corridor, who was my big boss,

who calls me by my name, who asks me to come see him.

So I was there, telling myself,

it's not going to work, I must not be late at the bakery.

And so I go to his office, and there he screams at me,

but you're completely crazy, why are you doing this?

You're going to end up homeless,

because we have tramping training. We learn to be a tramp. What does that mean? It means that when you have to observe an address, somewhere, in a country, in a city... And that... You pretend to be homeless? Yeah, you're a tramp.

So, usually, tramps are quite territorial,

no matter the country,

and so you have to be accepted by the local tramp

to be dressed and be in the bellman. The bellmaning training. It's the first time I've heard that term. And so, to monitor an address all night or for several days, etc. Yes, because we will never be suspicious of the guy down there for a long time. Yes.

So, he lives completely sick, even though he would you had a career, you could have gone to work abroad, diplomatic, all that. Obviously, you earn much better your life when you do that, because you're paid as a diplomat.

And then, time goes by, what do you do? Time goes by, so after a while, I tell him, I'm sorry, but I really have to go. He says, yes, and then I imagine that if I meet you in Paris, I don't know you. I said, that's it.

And so there I go, but really, Henri Cracq ...

He doesn't know you're going to another service?

Yes, he got a call.

He got a call from the ADO to say, we're taking him.

Not happy.

And then, so there, I go out quickly,

I wait in front of the bakery with my box, knowing that when you're at the headquarter of the analyst's training, you work in a tie-dress. So, wearing a tie, you don't go unnoticed, you see. You're with your company, wearing a tie, in a tie-dress. And there's a car coming with tinted windows. The window is closing. And there's a guy, with his hair like that, a little bit of a grunge, you see, with a beard,

looking at me like that, and he says to me, « It's ok, we can go ». I'm there with my box, I look at him and I say, « Yeah, we can go ». And then, while looking at me, he says to me,

« I'm not talking to you ». I say, « What is this thing ? » « What is this thing ? » It's weird, this guy. It's weird, this guy. It's weird, this guy. What is this thing? We're both in the car. And there, in the car, you hear, through the speakers, you have a motorcycle following,

and in fact, he's talking on the radio by pressing the button.

Unbelievable.

And you hear the motorcycle saying, yeah, it's clear for me behind, we can go. And there you go. We go to a center outside of Paris, and one of the entrances is the Batman tunnel. I can't say it better. You enter the tunnel, there are lights, and you arrive at the end with the stele in engraved marble, like in the CIA, with the stars. The guys are dead, there are no names. So you go through all the security gates, and you arrive in another part of the enclosure. And then I arrived in a section, and I said,

that's what we're doing here, and that's where I started. Incredible. And what was the section?

Is it official or unofficial?

It's a section that is part of the Operations Directorate and is in charge of the whole part of acquiring complicated information to obtain.

I'm not asking you what you saw as the most illegal.

What I saw as the worst, honestly, the problem of this job, is that you end up... you end up really losing faith in human nature, and really losing faith... losing faith in humanity. Because, in fact, you discover that everyone has a price.

That the corn works on everyone, actually.

And that when there is none, it happens very rarely.

And that's very difficult, because you finally find someone

who goes back to the base of humanity.

He is not interested in... He has no gain, particularly.

There is no ideology.

You have no leverage on him. No blackmail, he has no ego. He's a good guy, he's married interested in... He doesn't have any particular gain, he doesn't have any ideology, he doesn't have any blackmail, he doesn't have any ego, he's a good guy, he's married and all that. Well, in fact, you're going to destabilize his life to create a lever. So you're going to get into his life and you're going to make something happen. You're going to ruin his life. In his life. In his own. Exactly. Knowing that it will end badly for him in the end. So you destabilize his life

to be able to create a Maïs. Before doing it, of course, you have meetings and stuff.

What do you do? You bring a woman into his life?

It can.

Or you make him meet a man to his wife?

It can. You have a very good example in a film that is great, called Les Patriotes with Yvan Attal, a movie from the 90s, where it's so well done, on Mossad,

and it's so well done that some scenes from this movie are shown during the training of the internship and OT when you go back to the office. And so it's a very good example where... the guy is pretty much smooth, so he has nothing special.

You've already had a guy who has nothing? It happens once. Once.

No leverage?

Once. On many. So you say that human nature is still... And so in this film you see that they will make sure that the woman has a car accident. Well, the mother of the woman has a car accident. Because she lives in the province... So the woman will go to her injured mother,

so the guy is alone in the city, and then you can start to get into his life and take him, the bars, the whores, etc.

Fuck...

There are big means that are put in for that, is that what I mean?

That's why you have meetings before, to say, do we have other ways to get this information? Can we have it in a technical way? Do we already have sources that can give us this information? Is it really critical? Can we get it by other means?

Because you know that behind it, it's still heavy... Of consequences. ...to destroy someone's life. Yeah, that's it. And when you say that, it's going to end badly for him, in the end? Well, it depends, once again, on who you are and the subject, if you want, but... In this job, nothing is lost, everything is transformed, so... Once you've got what you wanted...

If it's someone... If it's a bastard, you can potentially... Give him as a gift to an allied service, where it will be arrested in another country, and you know that its end won't be very nice. And at the same time, you're doing a good deed towards the allied service, which is your partner.

Whereas, in fact, it's been X years since you've been collecting information about their country. There are no enemies, there are no friends.

There are no friends... Even friends are watching us.

Of course.

And sometimes you've seen nice people, where you've said to yourself, psychologically, you, humanly, because we're talking about... This world is a theatre, we all come from the same place, etc. Psychologically, what was the hardest thing to live? At least one that you can tell, to imagine, to, to understand what it implies when you go into it.

It's to give a sense of idea. It didn't happen to me. No matter the country, but basically, you had someone who was a young guy, about thirty years old, married, a child, who worked for the benefit of another nation,

not very classy, a child who was working for the benefit of another nation, not very classy, on super sensitive topics. Really super sensitive. Because he was a high-level engineer, etc. In nuclear? A high-level engineer. And so what happened is that, of course, we managed to recruit him,

and the lever for him, basically, it was for him, his wife and his child, a new life.

After.

But...

It can happen, you give them the papers, you say, here, we'll naturalize you, we'll...

It can happen. So... Once again, the deal, you're not going to do it right away. You're not going to say, tomorrow morning, thank you, great, your little paper, thanks for your info, and here's a new life." It's like, you're going to do this and that for us for X years, and if in X years everything went well, then...

And the truth is what? It's that after X years, once you have everything you want... Cinema for him. You can give it to someone else, etc. He would be a little less watchful. He would be, yeah. So he was in contact with a court officer.

And leaving, separating, instead of saying, we'll see each other again in a few weeks, he said goodbye. And in fact, what happened was that his wife, who was in the country, not their home country, had received a call from his mother to her,

we go back to the example before, who had received a call from his mother to her saying, your father is very, very seriously ill, he's going to die, you absolutely have to go home now to see him one last time, etc., etc. Go home right now, go home right now. Except that, in fact, the mother was doing that with a gun on her head.

Okay ? The mother did that with a gun to her head. But it had to look sincere enough to get the woman in. So the woman believes, comes in, gets arrested at the border, by the local services of the country, who are really, really not good people. And she too, with a gun to her head, calls her husband. So you can imagine, already, the parents, it's over.

What do you mean? They shot the parents. So, she has a gun on her head, she calls her husband, she says, you have to go right now, dad is very sick, he's going to die, etc. The other one says, I can't, I'm in such a thing... No, no, I took a plane ticket, you have to go now, it's now, etc. And that was just before the appointment with the OT. He felt that something was wrong, hence the goodbye.

And in fact, we knew it afterwards, but when he arrived at the border, he was arrested. He was taken to a place where his wife and his little boy, very young, I don't want to age to not shock some people, were hung, strapped on a chair. He was hung, strapped on a chair. He ended up hanging, strapped on the chair. And then the local services started with a drill in the child

to make the guy talk. And then the woman, so the child died, then the woman. And then him. And then, in this phase, he threw everything away. So, how to contact the treatment officer... Wait, but you're empty.

The appointments, how it worked, how to contact, etc. So, there you go. And then, of course, we learned that. So, the treatment officer who was in charge said, OK, I'm taking everything down. I'm taking down my false associated identity,

I'm taking everything apart to disappear. And the boss said, no, no, not at all, because we shouldn't burn the other side, as we got the information, so we're not supposed to know. So, they're certainly going to contact you

by pretending to be him, the way you planned to contact him, what's called a liaison plan. They will certainly use the liaison plan to contact you, and you will have to go.

The foreign country, there? Yes, the services of the foreign country. Those who have been stabbed? Yes. Do I have to go to the appointment?

Yes.

Yes, because you're not supposed to know he's dead. Oh, fuck... Wait, but you don't want to leave now? Well, yeah, so I have to go. But then you have a good reason to... What is this hell?

It doesn't make me want to do this job at all!

And then you have a good reason to do your insecurity, your break in the network, etc. Because you don't want to bring them home. Identify who you are.

Yeah, and that they understand...

Incredible. The officer was at the rendezvous, with a counter-rope around him, with a point of exfiltration. And there was people around. And he wasn't afraid at the rendezvous? I imagine he was very scared. Less scared, yes.

Are we trained to be less scared? To control our fear?

No, I don't think so. The one who says he's not afraid is a liar. It depends on the situation, of course, but... It happened to us in the section, too, to observe a place... that is feared... You know, you find clandestine mosques, this kind of thing, in some countries.

Really very, very violent. Very, very, very violent. It's not good to be a little white guy who's going to walk around there. And so there are vehicles that allow you to observe. And it happened that you have all the people who leave the mosque,

who start to surround the Soum, the vehicle, to try to open the doors, to scratch the things stuck on the window, and the other one who is inside, there I can say that you put the phone on silent and you turn off the radios. And there, if the thing opens, it's over.

But you have a weapon to defend yourself. No. Not necessarily?

No.

How did you know he had been shot?

We had someone on the other side. Who was the bad guy? Another source. That's why we shouldn't burn the other source.

You need sources, you need clues everywhere.

Yes, that's it, clues.

Do you psychologically feel remitted from that? Even if it's his job, that we distinguish his job, in reality, you, the problem is that you have jobs that are a bit...

Here, in this case, the guy was really a nice guy. In another life, it could have been a friend of the officer. It was a good person. And all he wanted was a better life for his wife and child. That's all he wanted. It wasn't money.

He was born there, so he did that.

Not money, it's not... And what he wanted was a new life for his family. And that's difficult. I went home afterwards, when we were aware of this story, and I had my children at the time, who were 4 and 2 years old, I tell this in the book,

and they were in the bathtub, taking a bath. So, all naked, playing with the toys in the bathtub. And there, I couldn't help but visualize. The little knees, the little ankles, etc. Did you go see a psychiatrist? Before writing, I told myself, at first,

I said, I'm going to see a psychiatrist for a lot of reasons. Because there's this example, but it's a rare example, but spending your days basically lying, recruiting sources while being someone else, having to hide this identity, your legend, where you live, your fake parents, your fake friends,

your fake Facebook, your fake Instagram, your fake LinkedIn, your fake stuff...

You have pictures, yeah.

Yeah, pictures. And knowing that you lead, on average, between 10 and 15 approaches at the same time, so you have like 5 different identities at the same time, okay? And so it ends where your... your return home and yourself become just a sixth, actually. You remember? And so you go home and you...

It's like you're playing your role.

You're playing your role. You're playing the role of an actor.

In an extra play.

Yes, of who you are. And you look at yourself in the mirror and you say, I'm a bastard. I'm a bastard. Because in your Ying and Yang, the black has gone.

And there's only a tiny bit of white left. And then you say, if... If your wife is no longer there, or your children, you shoot... Yeah, and then there are some who disappear, who shoot, but you see all kinds of things. I had a guy one day, a bastard, and a source, basically, and the deal was money.

And at the last moment, he asked for the expulsion from his country, for him. He was married, with children and everything. And he knew perfectly well that if he left, that he was expelled, it was death by torture for his wife and children. And so we told him, we expel everyone. He said, no, no, just me.

On the other hand, I want the suitcase on arrival. I want my money.

You see people in good.

Yeah.

You lose faith in humanity.

Have you ever had to pretend to fall in love with a woman? Do you sometimes have to pretend to see her again? Yeah, absolutely. And is it difficult to pretend to have another love story? You go home, you're in another story. Do you feel like you're cheating on your wife?

Well, yes.

Is that your mission? Especially that, to make it seem real, there has to be a minimum of sincerity.

You see?

So, when you're in contact with this person, you can't just play a role of I fell in love with you, I'm not Brad Pitt, you know? So, there has to be a... A seduction game. A seduction game. And so, to make it sound real, you try to really convince yourself. To manipulate yourself.

You see, there are things that you like. At her place. While you wouldn't be able to go in real life, for example. No. No, clearly not. And then, and so... But... And then...

And then you go home and... So you... In fact, to make it convincing, you can try to visualize your wife and take feelings...

Ah yes, yes.

Of your real life. Of your real life. And how do you do it if you have a love story, and that... I don't know, you send messages. You have a country's phone number, you flirt with her, etc.

How does it work when you go home, you're with your wife, you have to answer her months, or... No, because the pretext goes with it. The pretext goes with it, you see. And it's not that kind of thing where you really play on feelings. It's going to be... It's not viable on the duration, so it's going to be a little short-term stuff. And so you say, I don't know, you're a consultant in the country in question,

on a theme, on pharma, so you're interested in everything that is bio medicines, which allows you to work on biological armaments for example. And so there you will say, well here I will be back in two weeks by then I have to go to such and such a country, I will not be able to join, I'm going on vacation, whatever. Or the day, you find excuses, Yeah, and you're in different places in Paris. I remember once, you had on my desk, you had... I don't know how many cell phones, and behind you, you had a post-it

to remember the name that corresponds...

The girl?

The name of your name. Oh yeah? At the back of the phone, you have the post-it with this phone, I'm called... It's a bit schizophrenic. Ah, totally. You have several... Totally, totally. And you're even surprised, when you're supposed to be yourself,

you're surprised to see the attitudes of the other, well, of the others. Do you remember the name of your wife?

The game you play. Sometimes, or you know, are there names, have you ever called her another first name?

No, I haven't call another name. It didn't happen in Bugan? No, in Bugan, what happened to me was to tell a source for whom I was, I don't know, Alain, okay? And they told me that my name was François, and I'm there and I said, no, but if you have a problem, you call me, you tell me François, them, Alain. Yes, it's what I thought, François... That's it. It happened to me, it happened to me in a row, so you're behind a source, a very sensitive objective,

it was really someone not terrible, and you're behind them, and there you hear... I don't know if they pronounced me François, you hear, François, what are you doing here?

It had already happened? How is it possible?

Army buddy. Air Force buddies. Wait, but you were in a line in a country? Yeah, Air Force buddies. Who were in that country, embassy, stuff. A country not...

A bit dangerous?

Yeah, embassy, you know, like, attached to defense, stuff. Hey, what are you doing here?

So you're supposed to call Alan?

Yeah, obviously. And you're in a tight spot with the guy and you don't want to lose him. You have a little story, one day you arrive in a country, I don't know where it is,

you arrive at the entrance and there is a relationship with James Bond.

Yes, we were... So, no matter the country, we had things to do in a big hotel. Of course, you can imagine the type of clientele that you can have in a big hotel and what we are do with it. And so, we're there, we're the hotel's expert, we wait, we make sure the target comes out,

to make sure he's not in his room anymore, etc. He leaves, everything's fine, we had someone we met in there at the same time, we didn't have to go, It was a pretty complicated thing. Everything takes on crazy proportions, actually. Because you have so much security, so much level of security,

that everything takes on crazy proportions. And so we arrive in the street, we're sure there's no one, everything's fine. And we both go in at the same time. So we stretch our legs with the window door that opens to enter the hotel. And the moment we put our foot in the hotel, fully, but fully was the first of Casino Royale in the hotel.

So, when we came back, they turned on the music to start the event. But it was at the second we came back. You hear that, and you think, it's over. We said, we're kidding. They know who we are, we just have to leave. And the other time, we were with... It was the same, we had a date with someone in a hotel abroad.

And we took the elevator, so we wait, we are in the elevator. The elevator stops on a floor that was not ours, where we were going. The door opens and you have a huge hall of parties, an event, clearly a big event, with lots of people, cameras and everything. And right in front of us, in front of the door, there was Gérard Lanvin, the actor. And he was watching us, and he was actually doing the promo for his movie Secret Défense.

He was dressed as a spy, you know, black turtleneck, jacket, you know. And he's tough, you know, so he gets in the elevator saying hello, and we were like... Hello. And then you turn around, you see? We were both behind, looking at each other. And he was right in front of us, you know, with a big, big back. He was playing the bad guy. Yeah, we were the real ones.

And then he came out of the elevator saying good evening. And very nice, I think. And then we were... we had to do. And it was pretty funny. We ended up with...

There are... François Hollande made a little official, at least a little more public at the time, the homo operations.

Yes.

What is called homo, it's the elimination operations, in fact, when you kill someone. That's the action service that does it, it's you. It depends on the services. How does it work? Or is it unofficial? I don't know. I don't know if he made it official.

I don't know.

I ask questions, you answer whatever you want. But I'm telling you I'm asking you because it was official, like all states.

He might not have had it.

Oh yeah?

Yeah. So no comment on that. He was too talkative? I don't know, he was the president of the republic, but... Has it ever happened that you have trouble becoming friends with a source? You're told to become friends, and the guy is such a bastard, that even as a spy you have trouble having atoms somewhere? Yes, completely.

You know he's a bastard, you know he's working on horrible things, you know he's doing atrocities to people... What on horrible things, you know he does atrocities... What can be horrible things? You can imagine without giving details, but what can it be? It can be someone who does research on a type of bacteriological armament and who uses human beings as guinea pigs.

Fuck, does that exist?

Yes.

Yeah, because weapons were on people.

Well, in some countries. Yeah, I don't know. And here, you have to be friends.

But you have to live in another planet, actually. I mean, you have to live in a world that's so much darker.

Yeah, that's the problem. You end up not being able to talk to anyone. You don't have any friends, because of the people you trust, who run away because they don't want to be trusted people.

Your wife usually gets angry.

You can't talk to your parents, etc.

As you go along, you lose your social circle.

So what's left?

You have those who do the same job as you,

and who become your confidants.

There are psychiatrists at the office,

and obviously, they tell you,

yeah, you can go see the psychiatrist,

but you know, if you go see the psychiatrist, in the next second, you've lost your job. Because, let's say, he's not fit to do what he's supposed to do. You had nightmares at night, about what you saw?

Yeah.

So, actually, when you... I got to the point at the end where... I didn't recognize myself. You see, I was... When I was a chase pilot, I was... You see, I was telling bullshit all the time,

I was making jokes all the time, I was a party pooper, etc. And there, I was hyper... Hyper dark, you see... Depressed, self-conf anyone, everyone is your enemy. You don't trust anything anymore.

Even your wife, you remember, you tell yourself, my wife has a mice. You realize that everyone can be... Yeah, so you look at yourself in the mirror and you say, you see in your eyes that it has changed.

Just to finish on one last thing, you can awaken ancient sources. You have sources that you can put to sleep. That is, you will have a contact who will give you information. Thank you, you don't see him for 10 years

and one day you get in touch with him again. Yes. So it's not... You have to reactivate him.

So, generally, it's not to get information, it's what we call HCs, so honorable correspondents, who give you access, so they are benevolent French people towards France or the service, who give you, for free, without being manipulated, themselves...

By ideology.

By ideology. Services. By ideology. By ideology. Services, it can be a car rental, it can be a hotel room, it can be a lot of things. Offices at your disposal for one of your legends. And there, in this case, it was funny because he had a file, something like that. So I was told, in this country, you have to find an access. We know that something is going to happen on a boat, a big yacht. We know that something super sensitive is going to happen on this boat,

so we need to have access to this boat. So either you go before and you put on the microphone, camera, etc. But you have to access it, you have to put on the microphone and camera. Either, while you recruit someone who will be on board, you recruit a steward, so you have to identify the steward, you have to see who the stewards are, their life,

is there a lever, approach him, get into his life, etc. Or, last solution, which is clearly not the best, because you have no more fuse between you and the operation, is that a notary gets on board the day it happens. With the risk, of course, on board, that if it happens, there is a spy hunt and you end up with cement palms at the bottom of the sea.

So, I was told that in this country, the person who can give you access to this boat is an old man from La Vieille. He went to the time of the SAC, the De Gaulle Civil Action Service. An old man from La Vieille. He has to be awakened. Only he can give us access to this boat. So we send him the file.

What was the bag for? The bag was the De Gaulle Civil Action Service.

What was it exactly?

It was a secret service that only reported to De Gaulle. In parallel with the secret services, and whose main purpose was to be an anti-communist service. So, it was a bit of a Pasqua era, you know, those people, young people. Okay?

And so, they told me to wake him up. So I call him, with the authentication sentences. Is your bank account good? And then, the voice, but the voice of the godfather, you know? The voice of the godfather. Hello, how are you? With the little Corsican voice, but with the accent.

And so, I give the sentences sentences and he says to me, « We'll see each other on Monday, at this place. » And the place in question was the most chic bar, the crazy thing, of the biggest hotel in this city. So, as I had something else to do in another country, I took a technician with me, who was a specialist in what we call IMSI catching.

IMSI catching is...

To retrieve everything that is in...

All the mobile phones around, in fact, in this... how do you say... not this superposition...

They are used for a Wi-Fi network...

Exactly, for an antenna, in fact. An antenna Wi-Fi. for an antenna, and all the phones will connect to this antenna, which is your IMSI catching. It's forbidden. It's forbidden. And then you have the IMEI catching, which is the signature of the phone itself.

The registration number of each phone.

And there, the distance is much more, it really allows you to identify a person, really, at 3 meters. And so, I had something to do, so I take this technician with me, a great guy, and so I say to do, so I took this technician with me, a great guy, and I told him, since you're here, you're going to help me, I have an appointment with this guy, in the bar in question,

what you do is that you go first, 15 minutes before me, you go into the bar, you go deep, with an angle of view on everything that comes in, everything that comes out, and on the bar, you wait, and you observe people, no direct look, you observe people, you order a drink, you observe if there are people talking to each other,

if there are radios, if there are calls, etc. I'm going to arrive, you watch what happens when I come in, is someone on the phone, is it a photo, whatever, and you watch what happens when he comes in, and who must to find me. Does he look someone straight in the eye with a head sign, etc.? Same when we leave. OK, OK. I say, and in an hour, we meet at the end of the interview,

at the same place where I dropped you off. So I drop him off, he goes there, I go into the bar, super chicos, and there, at the ADGSE, because it's still a French administration, we are limited in the cost of the bill. In the cost of the bill, okay?

So, first, you replace the Aston Martin with a Peugeot. And when you are not in contact with a source, because here it's different, but when you're alone and you take a drink, you're limited to 15, 20 euros. So, in a very big hotel, in a very big bar, you have a lemon slice that goes in the perrier.

Okay? Anyway, I enter the bar, I order, I see in my field of vision the other, the bald, my technician at the end of the thing. I order my perrier, so there I already lose all credibility with the...

the waitress who is on the other side of the bar. Obviously, I avoid asking for a ticket, because normally you don't get a refund if you don't have a ticket, it's super discreet. So I wait, and I see her freeze behind the bar, like in the westerns, the bad guy going into the living room.

And then I feel someone coming up to me, and it was the little Corsican who gives me the ID card, etc. I'm going to call him Johnny, for the record.

He said, how are you? It's a pleasure.

Do you want to drink? I'm like, I think it's 15,20 euros. I said, no, I'm fine. He said, I know what it is, it's for me, it's a pleasure. I said, ok. I said, a Jack, a Jack Daniels. He looks at the waitress, who was vibrating, and says,

Give me a bottle of Jack Daniels. I say, shit.

OK.

So he takes the bottle and then, But we're going to sit at the end over there, so we'll be more quiet. There will be no one,. I said, shit. Then he looks at me and says, can you tell your friend the bald guy to join us?

Is that true?

Incredible.

And shit. So he came, we meet at the table, and we ask him if he can help us. He says, we'll meet in two days, etc. And then he throws a cards on the table.

A card, you know, hotel cards. He said, that's nice, it's for me.

You're going to spend a night at the hotel?

I said, what is it? He said, it's a room up there. Because I know how you are accommodated in the club, it makes me happy. But he gives you what you want? He said, we'll see each other in two days, I'll try to find his clubs and everything. So he throws the card, he leaves. The other, the technician,

Oh, it's crazy, look, it's so beautiful. And you go up to the room? So I say, you take the card, you go, you'll see what's up in the room. Because if, normally I was supposed to be alone, so if there's someone waiting for me, it's not me who's going up.

So I said, you'll see, you'll observe well, you'll go down,

you'll tell me what you saw, he goes down.

I said, fuck, the crazy sequence, the two rooms, the jacuzzi, it's crazy, the view on the whole thing,

it's beautiful, come, come. I said, OK, we're leaving.

He said, what? I said, No, we're leaving. He said, no, for once... I said, no, no, we're leaving. So we start to leave, he says, can I have a bottle of Jack? So he takes the bottle of Jack to leave. We go to a parking lot, at the corner of the road, we're actually without a curb. And we spent the night in the car,

drinking our Jack and smoking cigarettes. We come back two days later, and we meet Johnny again. We arrive and he says to me, You're well trained at the club.

He says Johnny.

Yeah, Johnny. You're well trained at the club. Johnny is not his real name.

Okay.

You're well trained at the club. I look at him and I say, Johnny, the girls, what time should they arrive?

He wants to trap you? Yeah. He looks at his pumps and says, And he said, Johnny, the girls, what time should they arrive?

He wanted to trap you? Yeah. He looked at his pumps and said... Around 2am.

He wanted to trap you with sportswear? Yeah.

To take pictures afterwards? Yeah, of course. And so I said, you know, if you have something to ask me, our relationship will only be better if you ask me directly, rather than taking pictures with me. He said, well, I than taking pictures with me." He said, "- Well, here you go,

I'm doing business with a guy, I'm not very sure, I wanted to know what you have in the box for him. It's good if I know, because it would prevent him from ending badly."

And so you gave him the information?

Yeah, I said, "- Well, listen, I'll see what I can do, etc, etc." If there's a deal... But don't try to... Did they put hidden cameras in the room?

I guess so.

You say that sometimes the majority of cases,

to get information, are the family of the people.

Once you managed to go through a student,

you became friends with a student who was the son of a person

high-ranked in the country you were on a mission in, as a spy.

And you managed to find yourself alone with your father,

being friends with your son, and you scared him.

Yes. In fact, it was a recruitment phase, we didn't have many opportunities. It was in another country, and the son was... actually hidden. Because, in fact, the father's country, their country of origin,

doesn't accept homosexuals.

When you're homosexual in those countries, things happen to you.

And so, the father had hidden his son under a false identity,

in a more flexible country,

where he could do his studies with this false name, if you will. And so, we, of course, at the company, globally,

identified that it was the son of the person in question. Who was a big leader of a country? A big bridge, not of a country, but in what he worked in, a big, big manager. With access, if you prefer, to really, really critical information. And so, my mission, because I was young, I was still young, etc., was to go to this university, from time to time, more and more,

and then approach the son, make friends with the son, first identify him, see if he had a lever, etc., etc. And until the day I managed to create such trust with the son... So the son was gay, that's why he put you in the army? And I managed to build such a trust with my son

that he started talking to me, his father, who works in the country, etc. But the father only comes once a year to see him, etc. It's complicated, because his father, you understand, he's an important person. Okay, so obviously I'm the basic fool.

So I keep making friends with him. And one day, so we know, obviously, that the father is coming. And so, it's the moment when I'm going to see him at the university, we're going to drink glasses together, etc. And then he says to me, ah, I'm going to see him at the university, we're going to drink together, etc. And he tells me, I'm super happy because, he admits it, because my father comes.

Oh yes, there, I have a thing. I say, great, and everything, I say, it's great, since you've been talking about it, and how much you love your father, I don't know if it's possible, I don't want to put you in a bar, etc. But I'll be there this week, and it would really make me happy, as we're friends, and you're alone here, it would really make me happy to meet your father.

If it's possible, I don't want to put you in... Yeah, yeah, I don't know, I'll see. Anyway, it's going up. So he tells me, OK, you can meet my father, it will be the bar of such and such a hotel, etc. The time of a coffee, etc. I say, no problem, I'm delighted, etc. And then he tells me, like that, finally, he will be able to see that I have friends in the country,

it will reassure him, he will be happy for me, in short. You play the naive guy. Oh yeah, completely. It's the basis. We arrive, big security clearance. Oh yeah, so it's very important. Yeah, big security clearance. The guy, you know, is a bodyguard, etc.

And who allows you to do things around him. Yeah. So it's... OK.

And so we go into the Grand Hotel bar. Dangerous country or is it OK? It's just the guy who comes to a dangerous country. No, dangerous country. Yeah, also. Yeah. No, in a dangerous country. Yeah, also. And... So we go to the Grand Hotel bar, and there, his father is waiting for us.

So we sit with him, and the other one says, Dad, I introduce you to my friend, Emil. Hello sir, nice to meet you.

So you're older than him?

Well, he was a student, I was... I was what, 35? Yeah, you know, I was 35. Yeah, you could be a student at the end of a very long study. Yeah, and then he says, I'm happy to meet you, my son has been telling me for a while that he has friends, stuff,

I finally meet one of his friends, it's great, well, you know, you take out the violins, and then after a while, the son says, well,What do you want to drink? I'll get it.'' And he goes to the bar. Do you have security guys? They're not stuck, they're in the room.

In the corner of the room, at the entrance of the hotel. They're not in the front circle. And then, the son leaves. And the other one says, ''It's great, I'm happy for my son, that he has a friend. And I look at him and say, I'm not your son's friend.

So, a little bit of a bit of a dick.

In English, still?

I'm not your son's friend. I work for the French intelligence services. It's a bit of a revelation phase. It's dangerous there. I work for the French intelligence services. In your country, you will be contacted by Mr. something. And I strongly suggest that you meet him at his request.

So a guy with a diplomatic passport, etc. That you meet him at his request. Without which, your own internal services will be under which name your son is hidden and in which country. And you know like me what happens to homosexuals in your country, and to you, for your career, if it's known that you have hidden your homosexual son abroad.

And there, you find him in the middle of nowhere?

He's white, he's white in white, white livid, you see. But you see that, you know, the jaws are tightening. So he hesitates, he doesn't know what to do. And then he ends up saying... I knew it would happen one day. This thing would happen one day. And then he stays like that in silence.

And then the son comes in with the glasses. So, is he nice, my friend?

What does the father say?

And then he says, yes, he's very nice, your friend. Very nice. And then we drink coffee, I drink it in two seconds. It was very, very cold. And then I say, I leave you, I leave you, you don't see me very often. It really makes me sad to meet you. Thank you for introducing me to your dad.

We see each other as usual. You mean, continue to see him afterwards? Yeah, so in front of the dad, you do it on purpose to say, anyway, we see each other, just to say, I have control over your son. I leave you, see you soon, see you soon, I hope, etc. And there you have the dad who is there, I don't think we'll meet again, but happy to have made your acquaintance.

And there you go, outside the hotel, I put the little earring, so the little earring, like for the deaf, so there's no wire.

It's not wired. Yeah, it's very regular.

So you put the little earpiece, and I double tap on the alternator to say I'm out. And then, it's on or off, the guys on the radio tell me, there's people, it's going behind. The ones following you? Yeah, it the guy had to make a little sign of the head to one of his henchmen, you see, obviously. And then, we had everything planned, of course.

I was riding a motorcycle, I was going right, right, I was disappearing from sight, and hop, on the motorcycle, and you're gone.

You weren't armed, for example, if it goes in...

No.

How does it work? You throw the hammer. But you're with the guys, there are a lot of security guys who fall on you, you still have a team outside. There, in this case, there was a team, but you can't do much. You had a story, a last anecdote, you see, preparing the show, you told me that there was a device that had been unfortunately destroyed by a thief. It was in a hidden truck, so in a submarine. And unfortunately, a guy will try to steal the truck.

You wanted to go inside. Yes, actually, it was in the SOUM, there was an old navy commando, you know Jean Ducos, so he was an old...

Ducos is the special operations...

Special operations. And so, an old navy commando, I think he was Hubert, a man, a great guy. He was in the SUV.

We were positioned all around. You never wait in a car. We were positioned all around. And he was in the SUV, you can't see him, he's in the back of the van. And in the SUV you have the equipment, video, radio, etc. And it was made up as a construction vehicle. and then you have the equipment, video, radio, etc.

And it was made up as a construction vehicle.

And there are countries where all the cables cost a lot. Copper, in all the countries. In all the countries. Even in France now. So we're there, waiting, we all have earphones, we drink coffee, we wait, we wait, and then we hear the voice of a man on the radio,

very slowly, who says,

''It's scratching, it's scratching.''

We say, ''What, it's scratching?'' And then, ''What's that scratching?'' And in fact, ''It's scratching'' was to say, there's someone scratching at the lock, to try to open... To open the truck.

Yes, but on the from everywhere, you see, to get there, to get there quickly, to catch the guy before he sees us, and before he opens the door, and there's a guy in front of a lot of screens, you see, in front of everyone, and we almost get to the end of the street, and I hear the door sliding, and I hear a loud bang, and the door closes. I get to the street, and there's nothing. So I pretend I'm walking past the street, I look around, and I see the SOUM parked there,

nothing's happening. I keep going, and the radio guy says, he's gone, and I say, no, I have him with me. What did he do? The guy was about to open the door, he opened the door, he put one in, he grabbed it inside

and closed the door. So then we had to put the guy somewhere so that he was not able to come back right away and remember what he had seen. And he was asleep. And we had to exchange everything we had.

You can't put the same van in the same place, you can't put the same thing...

You have friends, you said, especially at the company, especially at DGSE, when you're a scientist, it's very complicated to have other friends. In the long run, do you think you have a clan today? Do you find your friends? Did you keep a bunch of friends from there?

Yes. So, in fact, exactly as you just said, you lose all your social network, even your family, etc. It becomes very complicated. The only people you can share with are people who have the same life as yours, who know what you're talking about, and, above all, who don't go, because we all need to express ourselves at some point, and who won't judge you.

They won't judge you for what you are. And so one night, we were there in Paris, drinking beers, and one of us said, why don't we create a Scottish clan? And so, in fact, you have the right, even if you're not Scottish. So it took us a year and a half to draw our own tartan,

with software that lets you know if the tartans are already used or not.

What is a tartan, with software that allows us to know if the tartan is already used or not.

What is a tartan?

A tartan is the drawing of the kilt.

There are thicknesses of lines, colors,

so you don't have the right to take...

It's like the coat of arms of a family. You don't have the right to take the coat of arms of a family.

Very coded.

Very coded.

And so you have software that exists, software to know which ones are already taken or not. So we took a year and a half to draw our own tartan, which is based on the colors of the Lorraine Cross of the Free French Forces, and the Templar Cross. And we recorded our clan in Scotland, a real clan, with rules. The first rule being, you can't judge. So from the moment you're in the being, you can't judge. So, as long as you're in the clan,

you can say what you want, the others don't judge you. Even if you've done some bullshit. We printed our 18m roll of tartan in Scotland, in which we made our custom guilds. And once a year, we make a weekend clan. We spend the weekend in guilds.

And the name of the clan is called the Bouncing Bells. Obviously we don't have underpants under the cult.

Did you have a hard time after being part of the DGSE today, managing your emotions?

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely. A lot of trouble managing your emotions. Absolutely.

It's very hard to manage my emotions. More patience on certain things? More patience and more patience for others, even those you love. Always be in anticipation, try to plan everything, anticipate everything, to control everything,

even though you obviously can't. It's a bit crazy. Yeah. After a while, I think it's a bit crazy. There's a limit, if you want, where you feel like you have to leave. And if you stay, you'll spend your life there.

You almost fought for a marriage.

A fiancé. Like friends. Yes, yes. On my way home from a mission, but really, just before. And when I got home, my wife said to me, I don't know if you remember, but tonight we have a bachelorette party.

At Intel?

Yes, at Intel, and we went. And at dinner, one of the girls who was there said to me, what are you doing these days? It's been a long time since I've seen you. And there, the same, long hair, etc. Ah, I'm still in the military. But where do you live? I live there, not far from Paris.

Ah, that's stupid, we're 2 km apart, the kids are the same age, we should meet, one of these days, you'll as we arrived at the fiancé, I started drinking a whiskey, two whiskey, three whiskey, four whiskey... So I said to her, it's not going to be possible. She said, why? In front of everyone, you know, a round table of ten people, super fiancé and all...

Why is it not going to be possible? I said, because your husband is an asshole, and if I come to dinner at your place, It's not the best sentence to put the atmosphere in a girl's dinner. And so my wife did...

Why did you say that?

I don't know, I was still in the mood...

You know...

Healed. And so my wife said, well, apparently he's tired, we're going to go. So we left. So imagine how I got screwed on the way back. And then, obviously, we weren't invited to the wedding.

Oh, fuck... You didn't like the boy too much?

No.

They got divorced afterwards.

Oh, they got divorced.

They got divorced. Everything's fine.

How many languages do you speak? Do you have to learn languages?

No, so... Actually, everything is related to your legend. So, for example, you have people who will be specialized in certain Eastern countries, who will speak Russian, Uzbek, Pashtun, etc. You have people, as you've already seen in your shows, who went on diplomatic duty for three years in a particular country.

So, obviously, they speak the language more or less of each country. But us, as we do a lot of little things, you see, everywhere, generally, you're a consultant, you're a journalist, you're a photographer, you're a consultant, a journalist, a photographer, a teacher, everything and anything. And generally, it's just English. Sometimes, you have a little bit of a varnish at the end of a moment of comprehension.

On a certain language, yes.

Yes, of really basic comprehension, but really basic. But otherwise, it's practically everything in English.

Page 376 in the the book you say, maybe I'm swallowing my last beer, at some point. Is that... What is the time when you were most afraid for your life, during your career, at DGSE, as a spy? Is there a time when you really said, it's really complicated, it's hard?

Yeah, but I don't know if it's... I still don't know if it was paranoia, or if it was true. You know what I mean? I don't know if the threat was real.

I don't see it because I don't have any information.

I still don't see if the threat was real or not. I'm in a very complicated situation in another country, where the information I had on me was really critical. A source had just given me something very sensitive.

And if I had been caught with that, on me, in that country, The source had just given me something very sensitive.

And if I had been caught with that, on me, in that country, it was... Complicated.

Yeah, yeah. I think it would have been a very, very bad ending.

A bad ending, not a pleasant ending, but a very unpleasant ending.

A very, very unpleasant ending, with your body exposed, you know, the nice thing. On a crane. And then, you go back to your room, you see clearly that people have passed by, you have to leave, and then you go through the customs, they ask you to get out of the queue. You know when you do that thing?

They ask you to get out of the line. You know when you do that thing? We ask you to get out of the line for a personal interview, you know? And you play it like you're a fool. You say, I missed my flight, I did it wrong, you know? The guy who looks at the pictures, the stuff... And when they let you go... You're happy.

You're happy. You wait for it to take off before... It's a story I tell in my second book, or in the third, because the third is in Australia. And it's in the Shadow of the Kremlin, right? That's right. So, the Shadow of the Kremlin is the second in French, in English it was called Dark Arena, and the third is called Liar's Game in English, and we don't have the title yet in French. So I was in the plane, sitting at the back, on the right,

and the door closes, everything is fine. So I say to myself, I'm leaving, it's over. And then it doesn't start, it doesn't start, it doesn't start, the engine doesn't start. And then, as a pilot, you know how it works, the engine first, the hydraulics, etc.

You're there, you say, what is he doing? Normally he has his clients and everything. And then, the door opens again, the front door opens again, and two guys come in, with the Kalashnikovs, and give a piece of paper to the cabin manager.

The cabin manager does this, she takes the paper, she takes the passenger list, she does this, she shows it to the guy, and the guy goes,

Did you live that?

Yeah, yeah.

And then he goes up the aisle, looking at the number of the seats, and I was looking outside, I said to myself, my name is Machin, I was born on that date. My name is Machin, I was born on that date. My name is Machin, I was born on that date.

My name is Machin, I was born on that date. What a hell of a laugh! He didn't come, it wasn't for me, it was for a guy in the back row. He started yelling, they punched him in the face and they took him out, manu militari. Oh yeah, it's not the French police that they put punches in. They took him out, closed the door, and then... They hit the road, and then you have the hostess passing by with the cart.

Do you want a drink or something?

Yeah, I'm going. There are no good times? Yes, yes, yes, there are times when you say, well, it's okay. You're leaving? In what year? You're leaving 8 hours later, right? Yeah, I'm leaving at the end of 2013.

Would you discourage people who want to... Well, kids, yeah.

Yeah.

Why?

It's interesting to understand, you for the rest of your life. You lose confidence in people, you lose confidence in humanity, you lose your friends. Everyone is a threat. Yeah, but... Is the real face of the human being that there are no good people?

Do you prefer to be in a...

A fighter pilot, you do a fantastic job, you take G's and you save people. You defend your country, there's the adrenaline, the pleasure of piloting, you've experienced it in a blast. The box is slow, it's dark, it's dark, what I mean? It's very... You have to go deep into the darkness to fight those people. And someone has to do it. Someone has to do it.

Would you do it again if you were to do it again?

That's the worst. Because you've lived through things. That's the worst, I would do it again. It's a bit like when you're a biker, you go with your kids, they have a motorcycle, and you love riding a bike. A little bit. I think I'll do it again. Maybe differently, but I'll do it again.

Are there things you'd like to forget, without saying what?

If you could just have a USB key, and it was a...

If I had a USB key, at my survival training, I wouldn't lift snow with my shovel, and I'd still be flying over Rafale. If there are things that you imagine you will never be able to entrust to someone, or you can entrust them to your... How does that work? You said you had people you trusted, can you entrust them certain things that you saw, or are there others that you can't tell anyone? No, I can't tell anyone.

That you'll take with you? Yeah.

And that's not hard to do,? That's not the goal, if you want. There are lots of people... Not lots, but there are people who leave the ADGSE and decide to write a book saying, here I was, I did this, that mission, that country, that thing, that thing... It's a mistake. From my point of view, it's a mistake, because I don't judge them and I don't throw stones at them. But for me, it's a mistake, because, in fact, in the information, it's a puzzle,

and you rarely have the global vision of your entire mission. Because what James Bond does is done by 50 people. So, for your mission, you have a small piece of the puzzle. And by revealing that, the names, the countries, etc., in fact, maybe even without noticing it,

you put at risk all the puzzle.

And so there are people who are still there or who were involved, you put at risk their life. And so the idea for me was really not that. The idea for me when I started writing the first book, I wrote it thinking

that there would only be my children and my wife who would read it. I really had to empty my soul and my head. I'll put back the link of your book if you want to go and get it. Jacques Beaumont, the man without a name, at the bookstores. It's a thick book, a big book. 530 pages.

The second one is the same. I'll put the links of all the books that will be released in the description on YouTube. If you want to look for them in podcast audio, Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcast, Amazon Podcast, we are available on four platforms if you want to listen to us. Practical when you are on the road, in transport, you can listen to us while doing sports too, very practical too, in bed at night to listen to stories like that,

life paths, very different life choices too, very particular to go and find that in podcast audio. In any case, thank you for being a legend, the first podcast in France today again. And on YouTube, you have about 150,000 subscribers every month, don't hesitate. It helps us a lot when you subscribe, we can have even more original guests like you today. It's not your real name, Jack, but thank you Jack for coming. It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you Guillaume team who prepared the show,

who worked on it together. Thank you all for being more and more numerous. It's a pleasure to have you every week, three times a week. We put interviews or documentaries on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday on Les Gendons. We'll see you soon for a next video. We'll see you soon for a next video.

Ciao everyone! I'm out. Thanks for watching!