Nation Distressed by Folly of Greenpeace Operation : Ship Episode Unnerves French

In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte, then first consul of France, executed the Duke of Enghien on trumped-up charges of treason. When the death provoked revulsion throughout Europe, a French politician described the execution as “worse than a crime. It is a blunder.”

Most French politicians these days would describe the Greenpeace affair of 1985 in a similar way. They are far more amazed at the stupidity than the morality involved in the case.

With hindsight, the blunder of the bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor in New Zealand last July 10 seems so enormous that it is hard now to imagine how an intelligent and subtle government could have enmeshed itself in such foolishness.

Yet, a few steps back in time and a little understanding of the festering French frustration with Greenpeace makes the blunder a little easier to comprehend. The Greenpeace affair has an inner logic of its own.

Since 1972, Greenpeace has been a pesky, maddening irritant to France. The environmental and peace organization, founded in Canada but now international in scope, targeted France because it had refused to join Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union in signing the treaty banning atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs.

Greenpeace sent a 38-foot ketch, the Vega, into Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific in 1972 to protest French atmospheric testing. The Vega was rammed by a French Navy minesweeper.

Greenpeace Members Beaten

The ship tried again in 1973. This time, the French navy stopped the Vega by boarding it. Greenpeace members were beaten, and David McTaggart, the president of Greenpeace, suffered a serious eye injury.

Greenpeace militants may have seemed foolhardy for sailing a yacht into a zone where nuclear bombs were fired into the air, but the resulting publicity, especially the photos of French sailors roughing the Greenpeace crew, embarrassed France.

The irritating attacks also touched a sensitive French nerve. Perhaps to compensate for a military record that was so dismal during World War II and during the Vietnam and Algerian wars that followed, the French often display an exaggerated sense of respect for the honor of their military forces. That makes embarrassments of the military doubly upsetting.

On top of this, the French nuclear arsenal was a cornerstone of the attempt by the late President Charles de Gaulle to give France independence and pride in its international relations. Greenpeace directly attacked this source of pride.

In 1975, the French shifted from atmospheric to underground testing at Mururoa Atoll. Yet, in a few years, Greenpeace was back, the Vega heading into the testing area in 1981 and 1982, setting off more embarrassing publicity.

The French became even more resentful, feeling singled out. Greenpeace, they said, was not trying to disrupt the underground testing of the United States and the Soviet Union.

There might have been even more Greenpeace protests, according to French press reports, if agents of the General Directorate of External Security, the French intelligence agency, had not managed to sabotage some protest sailings with comic opera techniques.

According to these accounts, agents put sugar into the fuel tanks of Greenpeace ships, sprinkled powder on food to sicken Greenpeace crew members, tampered with delivery of documents, and induced some crew members to desert.

In 1985, however, Greenpeace presented the French government with a new threat. The organization was not only sending the sailing yacht Vega this time but also had spent $1 million to refit a 160-foot trawler, the Rainbow Warrior, as its flagship. The Rainbow Warrior was to lead a protest flotilla of smaller vessels into Mururoa Atoll in the fall of 1985.

The French military panicked. Admiral Henri Fages, the commander of the nuclear testing site at Mururoa Atoll, demanded that something be done to stop Greenpeace. Members of the French government gave into his demands.

There are two theories about the reasons for the panic. The military reportedly intended to test two new kinds of French nuclear weapons this year and did not want these tests disrupted.

Other analysts suspect that there was another important motivation. The Rainbow Warrior was equipped with photographic and television equipment that could transmit photos to news agencies immediately.

Because the Rainbow Warrior was much larger than the Vega, the French navy would find it far more difficult to board. Greenpeacers might try to leave the Rainbow Warrior and head toward the atoll in dinghies. French sailors might have to be rougher with the Greenpeace crew than in the past. The resulting photos, beamed throughout the world, would be more embarrassing than ever.

Skepticism Over Responsibility

There is great confusion about what happened next. The French government insists that the plot to sink the Rainbow Warrior was concocted by Charles Hernu, who was forced to resign as minister of defense, and Admiral Pierre Lacoste, who was dismissed as director of the intelligence agency.

Most French journalists are skeptical about this version and are persuaded that the order came from an even higher level than that of Hernu and Lacoste. But the journalists are not sure whether President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Laurent Fabius were involved.

There have been press accounts of a meeting last spring in the Elysees Palace, the office complex of the president, to decide what to do about Greenpeace. The accounts differ about who was there, and none mention the president or the prime minister.

One French editor, musing over lunch recently, sketched a possible scenario for the meeting that resembled that moment in the 12th Century when Britain’s King Henry II unwittingly ordered the murder of St. Thomas a Becket by blurting out, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”

“I can imagine someone very important telling those around him, ‘I don’t want to read one word about France and Greenpeace in the newspapers this year,’ ” the editor said.