City of light, city of love, stronghold of fashion… Paris has many qualifiers, but did you know that the capital has also been a den of spies since the end of the 19th century, ready to do anything to extract information or even eliminate their enemies.
With “Paris, secrets of spies” broadcast this Sunday March 13 from 8:55 p.m. on France 5, viewers will discover this dark and little-known facade of this French jewel.
Why Paris?
With its two airports, its seven major train stations, its department stores, its tourist districts, its atypical little streets but also its cemeteries, Paris is the ideal playground for spies from all over the world. They would be 10,000 to 15,000, of various nationalities, to work discreetly and even sometimes under a false identity, thus making Paris the world capital of espionage.
“Any Parisian could, without realizing it, be in the middle of an exchange of information in a restaurant”, underlines Jérôme Poirot, assistant to the national coordinator of intelligence at the presidency of the Republic between 2009 and 2015.
To meet, his secret agents can count on the Parisian maze, especially underground: Paris is the city with the most metro stations in the world. So many stations, which are connection nodes in themselves, with multiple exits that have already made more than one passing visitor lose their heads…
The Parisian subway is not the only privileged place of the spies for their secret interview: the churches, accessible to all freely, are regularly the theater of exchange of confidential information. As in December 2014, when the French counter-intelligence services photographed an envelope passing between a Russian spy and a French armaments engineer in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church.
An open secret
Not to mention the 187 embassies where each country can do what it wants as it wants. “We assume that everyone is spying on everyone else. With significant differences in resources and objectives, but that doesn’t shock anyone, it’s accepted by everyone, ”explains Eric Denécé, director of the French center for intelligence research.
Thus in 2015, the Americans installed a large tarpaulin on the roof of their embassy, located just a stone’s throw from the Elysée.
Antennas, which would also be found on the roof of the Russian Embassy as well as under the golden domes of the Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Center, “Obviously it must serve Russian intelligence in one way or another. It is impossible that this is not the case, ”says Eric Denécé.
Unesco, hundreds of diplomats of all nationalities, NGOs and guest speakers. “If we had to choose a nest of spies, that’s it”, summarizes Sergei Jirnov, a former illegal agent of the KGB from 1984 to 1992, pointing to the headquarters of Unesco where a game of dupes was played between the hundred diplomats of all nationalities, NGOs and visiting speakers.
In short, something to delight OO7 or OSS 117! So, ready to go into spy mode tonight?
> ”Paris, secrets of spies”, 90-minute documentary, this Sunday March 13 from 8:55 p.m. on France 5.