Alexandre de Marenches

Alexandre de Marenches was born June 7, 1921, in Paris. He died June 2, 1995. He served as Director of SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage), France's foreign intelligence service, from November 6, 1970, to June 12, 1981, under Presidents Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. His tenure represented a significant expansion of French intelligence capabilities and an unusually close alignment with CIA operational priorities during the Cold War.¹

Background and Appointment

De Marenches came from an aristocratic Catholic background and had served in French military and intelligence-adjacent roles before his appointment as SDECE director. He had no previous career within SDECE itself, having been selected by Pompidou as an outside figure who could impose discipline on an agency that Pompidou considered internally fractious. He held the rank of Count.

At the time of his appointment, SDECE had been weakened by scandals including the Ben Barka affair (1965), in which Moroccan opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka was kidnapped and killed in Paris with apparent SDECE participation. De Marenches moved to professionalize the service's foreign operations while cultivating personal relationships with intelligence chiefs of allied services.¹

The Safari Club

In 1976, following the Church Committee hearings and the resulting legislative constraints on CIA operations, de Marenches organized an informal intelligence-sharing and operations network that became known as the Safari Club. The arrangement brought together five services: SDECE (France), Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate under Kamal Adham, Egypt's Mukhabarat, Morocco's DST under Ahmed Dlimi, and the CIA under Director George H.W. Bush. The Safari Club's purpose was to continue covert anti-Soviet operations in Africa and the Middle East that CIA was temporarily unable to conduct openly under congressional scrutiny.²

The most documented Safari Club operation was in Angola, where the Club provided $5 million in financing and logistical support to Jonas Savimbi's UNITA movement against the Soviet- and Cuban-backed MPLA government. De Marenches later described Angola as "a theater for revolutionary wars prompted and conducted by the Soviet Union." The Club also coordinated operations in Somalia and the Horn of Africa during the Ogaden War period (1977-1978). The arrangement effectively transferred operational initiative to allied services who were not subject to the same congressional oversight as CIA, with CIA providing intelligence and coordination.²

October Surprise

Following Mitterrand's election in May 1981 and de Marenches's removal as SDECE director in June 1981, de Marenches cooperated with journalist David Andelman on a memoir: The Fourth World War: Diplomacy and Espionage in the Age of Terrorism (Random House, 1992). During the preparation of that book, Andelman heard de Marenches discuss the 1980 American election and the Iranian hostage crisis. Andelman subsequently testified before the House October Surprise Task Force that de Marenches had told him, off the record, that he had arranged a meeting in Paris between Casey and some Iranians in late October 1980.³

De Marenches himself denied any such involvement when interviewed by the Task Force. His off-the-record characterization to his biographer versus his on-the-record denial to investigators represents a pattern noted by Robert Parry and other journalists who investigated the Task Force's methods. The Task Force's January 1993 report concluded there was "no credible evidence" supporting October Surprise allegations, and categorized most principal sources as "wholesale fabricators." The report's treatment of the Andelman testimony is one of several methodological criticisms raised in subsequent years.³

De Marenches was also named in Gary Sick's October Surprise (Times Books, 1991) as having knowledge of Casey-Iran contacts, based on Sick's separate source network developed before the congressional investigations.³

SDECE to DGSE

De Marenches was removed as SDECE director on June 12, 1981, weeks after François Mitterrand's election as France's first Socialist president. He did not serve under the new government. On April 2, 1982, the Mitterrand government formally dissolved SDECE and reconstituted the foreign intelligence function as the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), under new director Pierre Marion, a former Air France CEO with no prior intelligence career. The renaming was accompanied by a structural reorganization intended to reduce the old service's institutional culture.¹

Memoirs

De Marenches published two works with journalist co-authors. Dans le Secret des Princes (with Christine Ockrent, Stock, 1986) - published in English as The Evil Empire: Third World War Continues - covered his intelligence career broadly, including his views on Soviet strategic intentions and his encounters with world leaders. The Fourth World War: Diplomacy and Espionage in the Age of Terrorism (with David Andelman, Random House, 1992) covered post-Cold War threat analysis and intelligence methodology. The Andelman memoir was in preparation at the time of the October Surprise Task Force hearings.¹