Catch Hold Of The French Secret Services: A History Of French Intelligence From The Drefus Affair To The Gulf War Conceived By Douglas Porch Ready In Copy

groundbreaking work of research, The French Secret Service tells the dramatic, untold story of the transition of

France's spy networks and "black chambers" of the ancien regime and Napolean into modern intelligence services.
Ranging from diplomatic and military intelligence to covert operations and industrial espionage, Porch's book explains the sometimes bizzare operations of French intelligence in the context of France's divided political culture and of her selfimage as a world power.
Douglas Porch does an intriguing job of explaining the journey of the French Secret Services from thes until thes, The first half the book seems tedious, Porchs prose is dry but still insightful, The pace of the book picks up after World War II when he outlines the various factions that formed in the Secret Services and their role in French Indochina where Porch elaborates on the role of opium and currency speculation, and their resulting effects on French strategy.
The book then ventures on to Algeria and various Secret Service generated scandals including the Ben Barka affair and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.


A parliamentary review inof previous operations lists “failures, scandals, and doubtful operations” as a hallmark of operations under theth republic.


The French government leaders feared with justification that the services were spending more energy embarrassing leaders with scandals than protecting the Republic.
Much of this was rooted in factionalism within the services that stemmed from the end of World War II when the intelligence agencies absorbed people from a variety of post war political blocs into their ranks.


Since government leaders did not trust the intelligence agencies they would form “parallel networks” of their own supporters to conduct intelligence operations which only exacerbated the fragmentation of intelligence work.


These issues, combined with the French proclivity for reading each others mail, created a situation where amateur actions would be carried out by actors with interests that were not truly aligned with the state, while the analysis and coordination of intelligence was frequently treated as an afterthought at best.


While this book can come across as “dry” I would still recommend it,
Not that well written or sourced, but illuminating, An extraordinary history presented by an acknowledged expert on the French military see Douglas Porch's remarkable history of the French Foreign Legion which reads like an historical novel.
Well worth studying for the lessons he teaches that would be relevant to today, Douglas Porch is an American historian, academic and a Professor and former Chair of the Department of National Security Affairs for the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California.
He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee inand a Ph, D. from Cambridge University in. He has been a professor of strategy at the Naval War College, a guest lecturer at the Marine Corps University, a post doctoral research fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and the Mark W.
Clark Professor of History at The Citadel, .