Honeytraps don’t work in France, ‘they’re too used to having affairs’

HONEYTRAPS do not work on French spies because their wives are used to them having affairs, a television documentary about France’s equivalent of MI6 has revealed.

Intelligence agents in the Directorate-general for External Security (DGSE) said that their Russian enemies came to realise that blackmail over taking lovers was ineffective.

The stock phrase in response was “Go ahead, my wife already knows,” one agent said in Making of Secret Agents, a 90-minute documentary on French public TV channel France 2 last night that gained unprecedented access to the spy agency over several weeks.

The agent known only as Nicolas, whose voice and face were blurred, says: “Defectors from the Soviet Union used to talk about the ‘French paradox’, namely if you surprised a Frenchman with a mistress by telling him, we’ve caught you red-handed with a 22-yearold called Tatyana, work for us or we’ll tell your wife, it didn’t work.

“That was because he generally said: ‘Go ahead, show her, she’ll understand,’ or ‘she already knows about it’.”

The anecdote was part of an explanation of the motivations behind potential sources playing ball with French intelligence known in the espionage trade as MICE, namely, Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego.

But fans of the hit French spy series The Bureau beware, the real thing is a far cry from James Bond, bar “the odd vodka Martini”, according to one agent, and is inhabited by “ordinary people doing extraordinary things using exceptional means”, said Bernard Emié, France’s spy chief until December 2023.

The decision to open the doors to the agency appears partly in response to the negative press the DGSE has received for a string of apparent recent setbacks.

In one key sequence, Mr Emié, 65, vigorously defends claims French intelligence was caught napping when Russian forces had massed at the Ukrainian border in February 2022.

“When Russia unleashed its war on Ukraine, the DGSE had the same technical information as its American partners,” insisted Mr Emié. “The problem is how you exploit and analyse information and the way in which you think an event will or won’t take place,” he said.

In one jab at “Anglo-saxons”, the documentary cites agents who claim they provided photographic evidence that disprove American claims that the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was fabricating scuds that could carry weapons of mass destruction.

The agent said the Americans mixed up images of rolled-up carpets in a factory and petrol pipeline tubing with missiles.

Anglo-saxons also tend to “throw more money at seeking to make contacts”, while the French rely more on ulterior motives. The documentary includes interviews with agents. New agents are sent out into Paris to try and make new contacts. One has to chat with an Irish rugby fan and get his email address with an offer of free tickets for the next game. The plan works.

Another explains how she leads a double life running a real business with employees and clients but also carrying out a second mission via that company collecting intelligence.

Agents explain how hard it is to keep their jobs from their families, with one saying they learn not to ask questions.

One unnamed agent said: “Most secret agents of the DGSE are under diplomatic cover in embassies. It’s not James Bond. In general, we rely more on subtleness and discretion and rigorous handling of communications means than a Glock [pistol].”

‘It’s not James Bond. In general, we rely more on subtleness and discretion more than a Glock [pistol]’