French Sinking of Greenpeace Ship

While many pieces of the Rainbow Warrior puzzle have surfaced in recent days, particularly with the disclosures by La Monde implicating government officials, one gigantic piece of this puzzle appears to have eluded the press.

To understand how this piece completes the puzzle it is necessary to remember the French need to protect their “amour-propre. “ They do not want to look foolish to the rest of the world. However, they were made to look ridiculous to other nations in August, 1984, and it was Greenpeace that placed them in that position.

Although many may have forgotten the ill-fated French cargo ship that sank in 46 feet of water off the coast of Belgium on Aug. 25, 1984, it is doubtful that the Mitterand government has either forgotten or forgiven Greenpeace for blowing the whistle on them.

This is what happened. On Aug. 24, 1984, the French ship, Mont Louis, collided with a British North Sea passenger ferry. The ship and its entire cargo sank. Officials from the French freighter company, Compagnie Generale Maritime, claimed the cargo consisted totally of medical supplies, which were on the way to the Soviet Union. Officials in the French government backed up this claim.

The world press found little interest in this collision. Then Greenpeace called the press and blew the whistle on the perpetrators of this fiction. Greenpeace informed the press that the cargo aboard the Mont Louis was actually made up of radioactive material. In addition, they claimed the collision caused some of the containers to begin leaking this radioactive material into the ocean.

For almost one week, French officials insisted the cargo was medical supplies. At last, on Aug. 31, they owned up to their deception and admited the cargo contained radioactive uranium hexafloride, which the Soviets use in refining uranium for various purposes. The French have been dealing with the Soviets since 1973, but until the Mont Louis sunk with 240 tons of this material, few outsiders were aware of this practice.

For whatever reason, the press awarded the incident a great deal of coverage. Seldom has any issue dealing with radioactive waste in the ocean received so much attention. Day after day articles appeared. The French must have been quite embarrassed by this.

Had Greenpeace not alerted the press, the cover-up would have gone undetected. This summer, Greenpeace, by now a thorn in the side of those political leaders made to look foolish in the eyes of the world, planned to insult the government again by protesting nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Rather than averting a scandal, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior on July 10 again focused attention on Mitterand’s government.

The resignation of a few key officials in the government will not end the investigations nor the questions being asked by much of the world.

It is surprising to me that other journalists have not made the connection between the sinking of the Mont Louis and the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. I have this puzzle piece because I am working on a master’s thesis on press coverage of radioactive waste disposal in the ocean during 1983 and 1984.

FRANCINE OSCHIN

Encino