France Probing Charges Its Agents Sank Protest Ship

The government, on orders from President Francois Mitterrand, opened an investigation Thursday into allegations that French intelligence agents bombed and sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand last month.

The importance attached to the case was underscored when Premier Laurent Fabius appointed Bernard Tricot, 65, a highly respected member of the Council of State and chief of staff to late President Charles de Gaulle, to head the inquiry.

According to the mandate laid down for Tricot by Mitterrand, any guilty French officials, “at whatever level they are found, must be severely punished.”

The Rainbow Warrior, which was preparing to lead a flotilla of protest ships into the French nuclear testing area in Mururoa Atoll in Polynesia, was bombed in Auckland harbor on July 10. Armando Pereira, a Portuguese-born Dutch photographer, was killed in the blast. All the others on board escaped.

New Zealand police arrested a French-speaking man and woman who are believed to have attached two bombs to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior. The couple, who have been charged with sabotage and murder, carried Swiss passports that identified them as Jacques Turengue and Sophie Claire Turengue.

But the Swiss government described the passports as false, and two French magazines accused the Turengues this week of working as agents of France’s General Directorate of Foreign Security (DGSE), the French equivalent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

In setting up the investigation, Fabius said it is necessary because a “link had been claimed” between the couple arrested in New Zealand and French intelligence. The premier did not say who made the accusation, but it is doubtful that an investigation of such a nature would have been undertaken solely on the basis of magazine articles.

For this reason, it is considered probable that the accusations that prompted the investigation came from the New Zealand government. Fabius, in fact, promised that the French will cooperate fully with New Zealand police on the case. And Mitterrand, according to his office, sent a letter to New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange Thursday pledging “the determination of France to shed all light on the affair.”

Agence France-Presse, the French news service, reported that the New Zealand police are convinced of a link between French intelligence and the bombing, and that the French police, after making their own inquiries, have agreed with their New Zealand counterparts.

The announcement of a high-level, independent French investigation came after midnight, with the publication by the prime minister’s office of an exchange of letters between Mitterrand and Fabius. Mitterrand said that in accordance with a suggestion made by Fabius he was ordering “a rigorous investigation.” Fabius replied that the investigation will determine whether “French agents, services or officials were kept informed of the preparation of a criminal attack or even took part in it.”

Greenpeace, a private organization founded in Canada but supported throughout the world, pursues in dramatic fashion two programs--disarmament and environmental protection. It intended to steam into the French nuclear testing area in the South Pacific and disrupt the tests.

A sailboat, rented in the French South Pacific territory of New Caledonia, was seen near the Rainbow Warrior in the days before the attack. According to the New Zealand police, four Frenchmen were aboard the sailboat. There is speculation that this sailboat was used as the supply ship for the Turengues.

In its report on the case, the newsmagazine L’Evenement du Jeudi said that the New Zealand police suspected that the Turengues were agents of the French intelligence organization. The magazine said the French agents bombed the ship because they wanted to keep it from finding out about the construction of a new airstrip on the island of Hao, a base for the Tahiti nuclear experimentation station.

In its report, VSD, a magazine with a reputation for sensational reporting, identified Sophie Claire Turengue as a captain in the French intelligence service. According to VSD, the agents attacked the ship because they believed it had equipment capable of detecting French testing of a neutron bomb in the South Pacific. France is reportedly planning such a test this fall.

‘Never Engaged in Spying’

A Greenpeace spokesman, Thierry Maus, denied that the Rainbow Warrior carried detection equipment. “We have never engaged in spying and have never carried this sort of equipment,” he said. “Greenpeace is only concerned with protecting the sea.”

Tricot, the man who will head the investigation, is a member of the special body that advises the French government on legal matters and acts as an appeals court in certain cases. He has also served as president of the commission that regulates France’s stock exchanges.

Fabius said that Tricot’s conclusions will be made public. His appointment was looked on as unprecedented because French governments in the past have not put investigations of security issues in the hands of non-military civil servants.