This day in 2010, in a reception room at the headquarters of the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE), the French secret services, in Paris, Jean-Marie Montier is preparing to draw the curtain on thirty-seven years of the house . Few guests know that these pleasantries hide a secret: the former agent was for years branded with the worst suspicion for a Western spy, that of having been a KGB mole, the services of Soviet intelligence. In the KGB archives handed over to the British by Soviet defector Vassili Mitrokhine there is information suggesting that Montier was approached (” developed “ in the jargon) by the KGB between 1978 and 1980.
The World met in June 2024 the one the KGB had nicknamed “Sheep”. When he is informed of the contents of the Mitrokhine archives, his face freezes. After a few seconds of silence, he chose to tell his truth. Still a student at the end of the 1960s, this globetrotter taught French and Spanish in Vermont, in the United States. Then he flew to Norway before carrying out his military service at the Center for Military Foreign Languages and Studies in Paris. He was in the army when a commissioner from the Territorial Surveillance Directorate (DST) – French counter-espionage – suggested that he try the competitive examination for commissioner in the early 1970s. He failed, but then he passed as an inspector and landed at the Neuilly-sur-Seine police station (Hauts-de-Seine). In 1973, he was admitted to the External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service (Sdece), the foreign intelligence service.
Three years later, here he was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he operated for three years under diplomatic cover as vice-consul. He is closely followed by the KGB, who makes him a target. In the Mitrokhine collection, a KGB note gives a precise idea of the strategy of the Soviet intelligence services: “In 1978-1980, the most important task was the recruitment of Sdece and DST agents (…)the French special services, to obtain information, disrupt the plans and projects of these services, and disrupt their work. »
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