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Exclusively on AMC and amc.
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There's a black cloud that hangs over our family.
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Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches return. Slash is out there hunting Mayfair women. You're gonna have a battle on your hands. Starring Alexandra Daddario.
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I'm gonna take care of it.
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Of him. Surrender to the darkness.
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It's not a sin to kill the devil.
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Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches Sundays Exclusively on AMC and amc. Plus oh, sheet. Honey, chill. It's just laundry. Not that I'm talking about these Arm and Hammer Power Sheets. All the power of Arm and Hammer laundry detergent and a convenient tossable sheet. Oh, sheet.
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That's what I'm saying.
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And Arm and Hammer Power Sheets deliver an effective clean at a great price. Think of all the laundry we'll do and all the money we'll save. Oh, sheet, Arm and hammer. More power to you. This episode is brought to you by Paramount. The new season of the Paramount original series School Spirits is here, but the mystery has only just begun. Maddie is still trapped in the afterlife. Now she must work together with her friends in the spirit and living worlds to find a way back before it's too late. Stream the new season of School Spirits now on paramount. Head to paramountplus.com to get started.
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C
We were not cold blooded killers. We have done. We did what we were ordered to do. Our first intention was to neutralize the boat without hurting any people or killing anybody. And it was considered a failed operation. Nobody wanted to kill anybody. That is the testimony of Jean Lucister, a member of France's External Security Service, La Direction General de la Security. Exterior, the dgse. And he is the. The frogman, the member of the dive team who has planted an explosive, two explosives actually, on the underside of the hall of the Rainbow Warrior, a ship owned by Greenpeace, the environmental activist group. And we were talking about this battle for the Pacific between France and Greenpeace over nuclear testing and Greenpeace's efforts to disrupt those. And French intelligence decided last time that they were actually going to take batters into their own hands and send Greenpeace a message and put a hole in the side of the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace's sort of flagship boat, I guess you could say, in Auckland Harbor. And when we left them last time, it was just after midnight and the Rainbow warriors on its side, sort of half submerged in the dock in Auckland, thanks to these limpet mines, these explosives that Jean Luc Quister and the DGSE have planted.
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B
That's right. And the crew of the Rainbow Warrior realized that one of Their team is missing the photographer, Fernando Pereira, and. And they realize he might have been on the boat. So they try and shine a light down to the engine room, but this thick, black water because the fuel has been, you know, leaking everywhere. They can't see anything. They can't see him. Police divers get there pretty quickly and they arrive, but it's too difficult for them to go into this water. It's so kind of thick with oil. I mean, the terrible irony of a kind of Greenpeace boat polluting that harbour, thanks to French intelligence. So they have to wait for a navy team to come, and that takes hours. But by about 4am, that Navy team arrive and they go down into the Rainbow Warrior. And there they find Pereira's body. And it seems he drowned in his cabin with the straps to his camera bag tangled round his legs. And it looks like he went down to get his camera after the first bomb went off, and then is trapped by the second bomb. And obviously kind of deep shock, you know, the kind of tragedy for the Greenpeace movement and for New Zealand, I think, to have something like this happen there. And one of the policemen says, we'll get them. We don't like this sort of thing happening here. So immediately you have a manhunt going on.
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C
It's clear that it's not mechanical failure or the fuel in the ship combusting. There's two massive holes punched in the side of the boat. So it's clear that this is sabotage.
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B
And, I mean, in some ways, it's pretty obvious that they were about to head off to protest against French nuclear tests. So the finger is pointing, in some senses, at France. But of course, that's different from being able to prove it. And the French, you know, follow the first rule of intelligence operations, deny everything. But, you know, the police are on the case. They're led by a kind of dour Scotsman called Alan Galbraith, you know, in that kind of British detective style, you know, like a kind of detective drama. Like an Inspector Morse. I don't know if you know Inspector Morse.
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C
We don't have him in Texas.
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B
No, you got different type of police officers there, I think, and they start to follow the clues. And it's fascinating because they get some lucky breaks because there's a local yacht club right by the dockside where the Rainbow Warrior had been. And they'd been worried about thefts overnight. And so some of them had stayed up overnight that night keeping watch for anything that might happen. And they'd seen people getting off a small Dinghy. And this had been Jean Lucister, amongst others, and Neighbourhood Watch style, they'd got the license plate of the camper van that had been used to escape. So these are literally, you know, the local community, you know, watching out for crime. And they've got French intelligence in the act, and by getting that license plate and then they're able to kind of trace the license plate and they work out, well, this has been a rental camper van and it had been hired by a couple. And then by chance, the next morning, the couple turn up at the rental office and they're there to return their camper van early.
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C
Seems like a bad decision to go back to the rental office, doesn't it?
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B
Yeah, it does, it does. And the office have already been alerted by the police. So they call the police and say, look, you know, we've got the people here. And the police say, we'll stall them, don't let them get to the airport, don't let them get out of here. And so the office say, well, we owe you some money. If you hang on, we can get you the money. And again, you know, the couple make the mistake of waiting, but that's crucially give the police time to arrive and arrest them.
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C
Now, do you have the Keystone Cops in the uk? Okay, before we go treating French intelligence, I think, somewhat appropriately as the Keystone Cops here, it is worth saying, I think at this point it's unlikely that anyone inside the DGSE, because this is within 24 hours or even less of the explosion, they probably don't know that someone has died. So from their perspective, they've got the boat obviously sunk, They've probably got photographs of that. This is a successful operation. And then it begs the question of, well, why are they doing things like going back to the rental office? And I do think there's a tradecraft point here which is somewhat subtle and it's still actually debated in operational circles here, you know, at CIA and imagine across a lot of other security services, which is, after you conduct an operation like this, do you get off the yaks? Do you immediately just get out of New Zealand and therefore allow your travel patterns to be correlated to the attack? Or do you stay and continue in pattern and leave as a vacationer and not have your travel linked to the attack? And I think what's going on here is that the DGSE officers have made the choice to stay in pattern and to continue living their cover as normal. And that's why you're back at the rental office.
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B
That's really Interesting. And it does make perfect sense because actually quite a few of these teams are still in the region. And even Jean Lucquiste, who's planted the bombs, he actually stays in the country for a week or two. He goes skiing on the south island of New Zealand before he goes. So, you know, it does look as if they're just kind of trying to kind of maintain their cover and not blow it by suddenly kind of running and escaping.
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C
When you think about one of your favorite stories, Gordon, in old Salisbury, as we'd say in Texas, I mean, you could pretty much cleanly map their travel and movement to the poisoning. Right. And so there's no clear answer on what the right tradecraft move is here. But you know, security services make different decisions in different circumstances. And I think that in this case, yeah, the French have decided, look, Jean Luc, he's there, is going to stay and ski for two weeks because he's there as a tourist.
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B
But the problem is that now the New Zealand police have got this, this couple and they're supposed to be a Swiss honeymooning couple and they keep them apart, they question them, you know, they start asking the question, they're getting kind of shrugs. They claim they help to a stranger pull a dinghy out of the water. When they're asked about it, it doesn't quite seem entirely like the kind of thing you do on a honeymoon. Maybe you would help people, I don't know.
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C
You wrote Gaelic shrugs here, Gordon. What is a Gallic shrug? I wrote question mark next to this.
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B
You know what a Gaelic shrug is? Kind of. It's like a pear, it's like a kind of, you know. Yeah, it's that kind of thing. So that, you know, even though they're trying to be Swiss, they're giving Gaelic shrugs, I think. But the problem is their stories don't quite match up. And crucially the documents don't quite work and the documents don't match, which is a kind of the real problem for them because then obviously it's falling apart and the New Zealand police are, are working out. We actually now have in custody two French intelligence officers, it looks like.
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C
Did the names not match the names they gave the police?
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B
They went to the Swiss government and said, are these legitimate documents? And they were able to check and the Swiss said no. So at that point they've got a problem. Interesting enough if you remember from last time, our party loving yachting DGSE team who'd been kind of living it up, bringing in the explosives, they're still in the region as well, and they're actually located on Norfolk island, north of Australia, another very nice place, still kind of clearly enjoying their cover. And they're arrested there, but because they're on Australian territory, they can only be held for 24 hours and they haven't got enough evidence on them, so in the end they get released. Meanwhile, Jean Lucista himself eventually escapes on his false passport. But there's clearly a problem now for Paris because they've got two agents who are in custody.
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C
How did our dour Scotsman investigator find them on Norfolk Island?
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B
So it's interesting, they actually manage to match up the camper van with meeting another vehicle and with the yacht. And then they also find traces of explosives in all the different places. So it's, you know, it's real detective work, which takes. Takes a bit of time. But they managed to connect effectively, those two teams together, the couple and the kind of yacht support team, and the.
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C
Yacht meets an interesting fate, doesn't it? Because it actually, I believe that some of the officers are on the yacht, actually meet up with a French submarine in international waters off of New Zealand, board the submarine and then they scuttle the yacht.
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B
Yeah. And I mean, it's a proper escape, you know, escaping on a French sub, which I guess is, you know, at this point, they need an extraction plan. And actually what's going on in Paris is because there's panic in Paris. I mean, there's panic because of, A, someone has died and B, you've got these arrests and you've got these teams in the region. And so they're effectively, in the first few weeks, trying to stall any inquiries or any sense that they might be responsible, because they've got to get these teams out. You know, they've got to extract them whatever way they can. And they start planting stories around to kind of divert the attention that it might be French intelligence. I mean, there's one story they plant that it was actually MI6, and the story is that French agent provocateurs had strewn the beaches of Auckland.
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C
You don't pronounce the S. Yeah, the S is silent.
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B
Thank you very much. I'm really enjoying these lessons. By the way, they stream the beaches with diving gear saying Made in France because they find some kind of like, oxygen bottles with French labels and rebreathing gear. And the claim is that this is so obvious that it couldn't be French intelligence and it's actually MI6 planting stuff saying made in France, and that this is all part of a kind of clever British plot to get back at the French over having supported and sold some military hardware to Argentina in the Falklands War.
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C
Was Made in France printed in French or in English.
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B
I think there were some French labels, at least. I'm not sure it actually said Made in France on the. On the kit. But there were just all these kind of clues which had been left at the scene which start to get discovered. You know, oxygen tanks are found in the bay and things like that. But it's unraveling, and that's the problem for Paris.
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C
The other element we haven't really discussed is the, I guess, risk tolerance of doing something like this in New Zealand, which is nominally a western ally of the French. Right. I mean, they're not doing this in kind of a hostile environment. And it's. It's got to be really embarrassing for the Kiwis, I would think, to have the French marauding around Auckland, you know, sleeping with policemen's wives and blowing up Greenpeace boats. So I don't know how much real kind of fallout there was between, you know, New Zealand and France over this, but it seems like it's pretty embarrassing to do this kind of on the turf of an Allied state.
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B
And I think there's going to be a lot of anger about it and a lot of fallout precisely because of that. Keister himself goes back to hq, and it's interesting, in Paris, he says, actually there wasn't really a debriefing about it because the bosses are so kind of panicky, you know, they're so preoccupied with this fallout of the operation and the fact that it's a growing story. And crucially, pesky investigative journalists, David, are kind of, you know, are starting to look into this and starting to kind of unravel on the French side as well, what really happened and who was responsible. And they're going to get to the story.
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C
Leave it to these bothersome journalists to ruin a perfectly good piece of botched covert action work. You know, I mean, give me a break. But there is a downside, which is, of course, that they are French investigative journalists who are. Who are going to break this story.
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B
So there's the French investigating their own secret service. It's interesting. It's like the kind of crime reporters on some of the French newspapers, and they are digging away. I mean, they sense straight away that there's something to this and that, you know, this is a story. I mean, this is one of those big stories as a journalist, you get and where everyone is racing to kind of get the latest lead, and you can see what they're doing is they're kind of talking to all their contacts in the French state, in French officialdom, things are starting to leak. And also when you get something which goes wrong like this, you know, typically you get a blame game, don't you? And people want to point the finger at someone else, so then they start leaking. And so at that point, you know, things are starting to come out. And crucially, Le Monde, the French newspaper, reveals that there was what they call the third team there, that there was a French operation, this third team from the DGSE was part of it and that Jean Luc Kista himself was part of it. Eventually, his name is going to come out as linked to it. He actually thinks it's been leaked by someone, you know, deliberately, almost as part of the kind of machinations in Paris. But through whatever way, his identity is being revealed as part of that dive team who've carried out the operation. And it's growing, you know, as a political scandal at this point, and, you know, the journalists are piling in and. And of course it gets a name because you've got to give a scandal a name.
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C
Yeah. What's the. I was going to ask, what is the nickname given to this horrible piece of work?
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B
What would you think it would be? We're about 10, 15 years after. After Watergate. So this becomes Underwatergate, or as some people put it, Blunder Watergate is the way they call it.
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C
That's clever. Although I don't know how that. That would probably not translate well into French, but I guess Watergate was so. Yeah, Watergate was so well known, I'm.
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B
Assuming they use the English. And as with Watergate, it's similar in a way, because, you know, Watergate is a burglary which gets exposed because the burglars get arrested. And the question becomes, who authorised it? Exactly the same with Rainbow Warrior. The question is, who authorised this? Where does the blame lie? How high up in the French state does it go? And pretty quickly it's rising up the ranks of the French state. So within days of that kind of first Le Monde report, you know, the head of the dgsc, Admiral Lacoste, is sacked and the French Defence Minister, Charles Henou, is forced to resign. So it's pretty clear at that point that this is rising up. But the question is, how high is it going to rise? Where's it going to get to?
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C
If I'm. Jean Luc is the diver, you know, who's had his name put out in the papers as a result of this. I mean, this is a classic case, I think, of investigative journalism, sort of, at least from the perspective of a spy agency. The journalists going after the spies for a decision that their political masters made. I mean, it is keystair. And frankly, the officers of the DGSE who were on the ground, who were the ones who had the real skin in the game, and they're the ones kind of being tarred and feathered, and they were more or less told to do this, right? I mean, they were told the KGB was behind Greenpeace, go blow up this boat. So I think, you know, there's obviously a very complicated relationship between spy services and investigative journalism and the press more generally. But, I mean, there are elements of this that are quite admirable and, you know, Le Monde revealing that this decision had actually been made in Paris. But at the same time, you've got the people down the line who are being told to do this, who are also being raked through the mud.
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B
You're right, But I think this question of who is responsible is the central one for something like this, you know, who gives the green light. And once the kind of journalists have got. Have got the bit between their teeth, you can see them kind of pushing up to ask, you know, did this go up to the President's office, the Head of State, had he given the order? Had he approved the plan? And what it looks like is, to some extent, you know, the other resignations are partly to protect the President. They are the fall guys. I mean, the fall guys are the head of the dgse. And, you know, at the time, there was never any proof about it. But we can now kind of reconstruct, I think, a little bit more about what happened, because La Coste, more than a decade later, writes his memoirs, and he says he checked with Mitterrand, he checked whether the President wanted to see preparations continue with a view to satisfying the request of the Minister of Defence, and that he'd studied the request of the Minister of Defence. And Lacoste says, president Mitterrand gave me his agreement expressing the importance he attached to nuclear tests. And he says, I didn't go into further detail about the project, meaning the sinking. The authorisation was sufficiently explicit. And Lacoste, the head of the dgse, suggests you wouldn't have launched an operation like that without the personal approval of the President, The Republic. Now, there's a bit of ambiguity there.
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C
He knew. He knew. There's a great line from a friend of mine who served in MI6, who's talking about sort of the French system and the French spy services. And he's this anecdote of, you know, this is a British spy speaking to a French spy and says, you guys have it easy. You can whack anyone. And the French spy replies, you have no idea. We have to fill in so much paperwork every time we do it. And I think two elements relevant here. One is the maybe somewhat surprising propensity for action in the French system and the attraction of these kind of COVID action operations. And then two, the reality that this is a Western bureaucracy that's got paperwork and lawyers and all this stuff attached. So I think it seems almost implausible that the President, and especially if you're Admiral Lacoste, who's running the dgse, you, you need certainty that you were doing this at the request of the President.
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B
Although I can also imagine the conversation goes, you know, we're planning to take definitive action against the Rainbow Warrior. And the President goes, yes, you know, you wonder whether it was papered, because, you know, I think one of the lessons from Rainbow Warrior that French intelligence learned is you need the paper. So I think that's where maybe there's a bit of ambiguity. But I think you're right. I think Mitterrand, I'm sure, you know, was informed, told and authorized it. Exactly how explicitly? Hard to be sure.
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C
Well, maybe Gordon there we should just take a break and when we come back, we'll get more into who was exactly responsible for bombing the Rainbow Warrior. This episode is brought to you by our friends at NordVPN. Now, Gordon, what do you find most useful about Nord?
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B
David, One incredibly useful feature I find is the ad blocking software that stops you you being targeted. We all know about that by intrusive ads whenever you're browsing the Internet. Along with the fact NORD blocks unwanted parties tracking me, it makes me feel much safer and confident that my privacy or my privacy is protected online.
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C
And you know how much I care about your privacy, Gordon. And you know that one feature from NORD that I really appreciate is that it also has offline protection, which works even when it is not connected, meaning you can be consistently secure.
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B
So to stay secure online, you should take advantage of our exclusive NORDVPN discount. All you need to do is go to nordvpn.com restisclassified when you sign up, you can receive a bonus 4 months on top of your plan. And there's no risk with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee. The link's also in the episode description box.
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A
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C
Welcome back to the Rest Is Classified. We are talking about who is actually responsible for this tragedy, this tragic death of photographer Fernando Pereira on the Rainbow Warrior. And I think it's a kind of evergreen question, right? Are the operatives who carried out the orders or are they the political masters who actually issued the orders? I mean, who's ultimately to blame here for this debacle?
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B
Well, it's really interesting because the officers are the ones who are, if you like feeling that they're being hung out to dry, because remember, there's actually two French intelligence officers who've been arrested in New Zealand. So you've got two who are going to stand trial for the Rainbow Warrior. And, you know, the world's press gather for what they think is going to be the kind of big trial. And at the last minute, literally on the day, they switch their pleas to guilty to manslaughter rather than having to stand trial for murder. And the result is they get sentenced. And then it's fascinating because then there is a huge campaign by France to get them back. And actually, even though they're sentenced to 10 years, within a year or two, they are sent off to a French prison and then basically released. And the French put quite a lot of diplomatic pressure on New Zealand and commercial pressure on New Zealand to get those two people out. I mean, even though, you know, they were part of an operation which. Which killed someone and blew up a boat. And so there's quite a lot of tension between kind of France and New Zealand over this, even though France can't deny it. And there's a claim in international court brought against, you know, France for compensation as well for it. And in the end, they have to Pay, I think, $8.1 million, you know, in compensation for the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, which is then used by Greenpeace to buy a new Rainbow Warrior, Rainbow Warrior 2. It's a tragedy, obviously, for Fernando Pereira, but from Greenpeace's side, you know, they get through that tragedy and their reputation is enhanced. As, you know, the people are willing to kind of take on the French state and they're able to go about their mission.
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C
The French will later in the 90s, storm and tear gas the Rainbow Warrior 2 in the south Pacific also.
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B
Okay? So they don't let it go.
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C
They don't let it go. The battle continues.
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B
But I think your question about, you know, who really bears the brunt of it and who takes responsibility is a really interesting one because Jean Luc Quister himself, you know, his name has kind of come out at the time, and he feels deeply bruised by it. And then many years later, he's tracked down by a New Zealand TV reporter called John Hudson and interviewed about it. And you can see, I mean, he looks quite haunted. And there's another documentary called Murder in the Pacific where he's interviewed about it, which is more recent. And in both of them, you can sense that this is a man kind of haunted by what happened. He did not want to be a killer. He did not want to kill anyone. And yet that is how he is branded as a kind of murderer. And of course he did. He planted a bomb that killed someone. He admits that role, but in his mind, he was one of those people who was there to do the state's dirty work, but would be protected in return for doing that. He's taking the risks. He's out there getting exposed, and yet he's the one who is then branded a kind of murderer in the aftermath and whose reputation is destroyed. And he feels really kind of angry, clearly, and let down. Certainly some of the politicians pay a price, like Charles Anou, the Defence Minister, but Mitterrand certainly doesn't. And I think it's an interesting one, isn't it? Those people are on the front line. I mean, he is the guy who planted the bomb, and yet is he the one who's responsible morally?
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C
Do we feel that this is one of the. I guess maybe Hollywood lies really, about COVID action or these kind of operations is there's a tendency to see them as originating inside the security service. Right. For these to be guys like Jean Luc Kistair, others are the ones coming up with the proposals to do these sorts of operations. And I think the reality in the French service, as it is in the CIA now, and probably across most Western services, is that covert action ideas typically come from outside the organization because it's really its policy. You know, in this case, it's not the French service trying to steal secrets about what the Prime Minister of New Zealand is thinking. It is we're going to blow up a boat in the harbor so that Greenpeace won't, you know, try to protest our nuclear tests anymore. And that's a policy function. And the DGSE the CIA, MI6, you know, these are intelligence services that they don't make policy. And so frequently you have these really. And I'd say in this case, this was a terrible idea. This was a terrible idea, it was a bad idea, poorly executed on top of it. And this was essentially a disaster handed to the dgse, who was then told to do it and really didn't have any choice by Mitterran and Jose Nu, the Defense Minister.
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B
Right.
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C
So it's coming from the politicos to the spy guys and they're probably looking at this and saying, oh boy, really, you know, I got it, I got to do this.
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B
Yeah, I mean, you're right. In the Hollywood version, it's often the spies who are driving this. But actually the history suggests, I mean even in Britain, the few times where there have been discussions, you know, know, in the 50s, 60s, 70s about assassination, it was actually a politician saying to MI6, could you do this? We want to get rid of this person. And I think it's the same often that it's the politicians telling their spies to do it. And so they are the ones who are carrying out that work on behalf of the state. So it's an interesting question of moral and political responsibility, you know, and where it lies and especially if it gets exposed.
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C
Right, well. And in CIA I just say that there'd be a whole crop of people who would look at covert action in general and say, I don't want to touch that with a ten foot pole. It's risky. It's the kind of thing where, you know, oh boy, do we have to take out personal liability policies? There's going to be a bunch of lawyers involved. If you're an operations officer, that's the kind of thing like, ooh, you know, this thing could go south. And I'm going to be the one like Jean Luc, he's there holding the bag, being interviewed and on the front.
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B
Page of the New York Times.
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C
Yeah, exactly.
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B
And I think it's why, I mean, it's why you get this authorization process, isn't it? Why you have the paperwork. And in Britain if they're doing something risky, they get the politician's signature. The Foreign Secretary is normally signature to say, here are the risks of doing this operation. Do you understand them? Are you signing off on this? Are you the politician willing to take ultimate political responsibility for this? And I think after Rainbow Warrior got tightened up in France, precisely because it was messy and informal and a bit.
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C
Unclear, who do you think Gordon bears ultimate responsibility for this? I'm sure there's blame to go around, but who's most to blame for this disaster?
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B
Let me turn the question back to you and say if the Defense Minister who runs DGSE says do this, and if you're Lacoste, the head of the dgse, I mean, forget keister, because he's kind of down the chain. But if you're the head of. Of the djc, can you say no? I mean, maybe you should, you know, maybe you could go, I don't think that's the right thing to do. I mean, but you might get sacked. I guess that's the call you've got to make at some point. And same for Keystair, who's going, am I going to plant a bomb on. On this boat? You know, he didn't think it would kill anybody. He thought it wouldn't. But there's bound to be a risk. You know, there are people on it at some point. I guess you're following orders. That's the truth. And this is, you know, as we said, is a kind of military, hierarchical organization. And so your only option, really, at that point, if you've got a problem, I guess, is to quit.
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C
I think the Defense Minister is responsible here. That's my hot take, is that it's new. I think Mitterrand probably knew what they were going to do. I think that's pretty clear from the leaks that have come out in the 30 year since. But I think it feels to me like there was a menu of options to deal with Greenpeace that the French had been using for going on a decade at that point, that had been successful in allowing the French to continue testing nuclear weapons.
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B
And he wanted to dial it up.
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C
And he's the one who dialed it up and insisted on sinking bombs, things like that, that were adding layers of risk to this operation. So I think ultimately the buck stops with Ernoux, who's the decider here, I believe.
- [30:30]
B
And as the former CIM end, I mean, do you look at this operation and say this was crazy, or is it just because it went wrong? Is it just because someone died and the. The two people got caught? I mean, you know, I've read some French accounts which go, if Fernando Pereira hadn't been killed and if those two people hadn't been caught and got away, the boat would have been sunk. No one would have kind of. There'd been no trail back to France. Successful mission, I don't know.
- [30:53]
C
No, I think this is a. This was nuts. That'd be my View.
- [30:57]
B
That's a technical term.
- [30:58]
C
That's a. Exactly. It's a terrible idea, and it was poorly executed. But ultimately it's a terrible idea. And I think it is worth pondering a little bit of how you have very intelligent people who have a lot of experience in the world of national security or in political decision making. These are smart people who made an atrocious decision. And it's worth pondering why that is. I mean, and I think it really gets to. There's groupthink going on inside this small group who have decided that Greenpeace is the enemy. And if, you know, all of a sudden, you think about. You're in a small meeting probably in the Elyse, right, Or at the Defense Ministry in France, and someone says, these Greenpeace guys and girls, this, you know, freaky love boat floating around in the South Pacific is standing in the way of our ability to protect France from being potentially overrun by the Soviets. We've got to do something. Do you want to be the Frenchman to stand up and say, let's not use a bomb? So there's a group think element. It's a small group. It's obviously a highly classified operation. So there's no sort of Team B, there's no editor, right? Who's. Who's saying, maybe we just continue tear gassing them when they come out to, you know, with these flotillas and no one's died. I could also see a little bit conspiratorially, I could actually see Avnou or Lacoste saying, look, you know, eventually we're going to have a bigger confrontation with Greenpeace and more people are going to die. They might kill some of our marines. We're actually saving lives in the future by sinking the Rainbow Warrior.
- [32:49]
B
That seems a bit of a stretch.
- [32:51]
C
That's the point is it doesn't make any sense. It's terrible decision making. But you can see how you quickly get to a point where it makes sense.
- [32:57]
B
I think they work themselves up into a frenzy about Greenpeace and about that boat. I think that's right. And I think it is worth saying as we come to an end, I mean, what the French codenamed the operation Operation Satanique. Operation Satanic.
- [33:10]
C
Satanic.
- [33:11]
B
I mean, you kind of go, either that's a random codename for an operation, in which case it's kind of. Of weird. But also, otherwise, someone kind of knew this was dark stuff, I feel, you know, giving it that or keeping that name.
- [33:22]
C
It reminds me of the. Well, this is going to be a Good British reference for me to establish my bona fide as Gordon. It reminds me of the Mitchell and Webb sketch where the, you know, two guys are outfitted like Nazi stormtroopers and they're looking at the death's head skull on their, on their sleeve and saying, like, are we the bad guys here? You know, I mean, we're, we're, we're dressed like this. We must be the bad guys. And I think it does. You named this Operation Satanic, so you're kind of giving it away from the gig up.
- [33:52]
B
But I think just to close, I also think the bit also with contemporary relevance is it does make me think sabotage operations can go wrong. And we're hearing about Russian sabotage at the moment and that they're, you know, putting incendiary devices on planes and are they trying to bring down the planes? Maybe, maybe not. But you can kill people without planning it because a bomb or an incendiary device can do something much worse than you'd expect it. And then suddenly you're in an escalatory situation which can actually kind of literally blow up pretty quickly and head towards conflict. So, you know, these kind of covert operations are risky and dangerous. And I think it's pretty clear in this case Rainbow Warrior and Operation Satanic was a disaster.
- [34:33]
C
Or maybe, Gordon, that is a good place to leave the tragic story of the Rainbow Warrior. With this sort of shadow of COVID action and sabotage hanging over the world of spy services and intelligence operations even today. We will see you next time on the Rest is Classified.
- [34:51]
B
See you next time.
- [34:58]
C
There's a double agent. A mole working for Moscow inside the upper reaches of CIA. Hi, I'm David McCloskey, co host of the Rest is Classified. And in my latest novel, the Seventh Floor, an operation gone wrong has CIA officer Artemis Proctor convinced there is a mole working for the Russians. But who is it? To find the answer, she will have to dredge up her checkered past in service of CIA, investigating a short list of her dearest friends and most cherished enemies. This is a story of modern day espionage tradecraft, a peek at the actual spy war between Washington and Moscow. And most of all, it's a story about what friendship means in a faithless business. The book is available now in hard copy and all good bookshops and also online in ebook and audio formats.