France sent elite secret agents halfway around the world to silence a protest ship. Instead, they killed a photographer, exposed their own spies and handed Greenpeace its greatest publicity victory.
It was intended to be a discreet act of sabotage. Instead, the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior became one of the most spectacular intelligence own goals of the Cold War.
Shortly before midnight on July 10, 1985, two explosions ripped through the Greenpeace flagship while it was moored at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf. Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira drowned after returning below deck to retrieve his camera equipment.
The ship had been preparing to lead a protest flotilla against French nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll. Determined to stop it, France’s foreign intelligence service, the DGSE, launched the ominously named Operation Satanique.
It was an extraordinarily elaborate operation against an unarmed civilian vessel. More than 10 agents were reportedly involved, including an operative who infiltrated Greenpeace, a yacht crew carrying explosives, combat divers and a supposed honeymooning couple travelling on false Swiss passports.
Yet the operation began unravelling almost immediately.
Members of an Auckland boating club spotted a man in a wetsuit being collected by a campervan and recorded its registration number. Police traced the vehicle to “Sophie and Alain Turenge”, who were soon identified as DGSE officers Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart. Their forged passports and implausible cover story turned a murder investigation into an international scandal. Greenpeace’s account of the investigation details how the campervan sighting broke the case open.
France initially denied involvement. An official inquiry claimed its agents had merely been watching Greenpeace. But investigative reporting in France exposed the wider operation and demolished the cover story.
Defence Minister Charles Hernu resigned, DGSE chief Admiral Pierre Lacoste was dismissed and, on September 22, Prime Minister Laurent Fabius finally admitted the truth: French agents had sunk the vessel and acted under orders.
Years later, Lacoste acknowledged that President François Mitterrand had authorised preparations for the operation. He also conceded that the sabotage was excessively complicated, dangerously risky and fundamentally indefensible. The subsequent strategy of denial, he wrote, trapped the government in an impossible position. Le Monde’s account of Lacoste’s admissions confirmed how high the approval chain reached.
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| French foreign agents Dominique Prieur, left, and Alain Mafart, who were arrested over the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Source: theaustralian |
Prieur and Mafart pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received 10-year sentences. France later pressured New Zealand into transferring them to Hao Atoll, but both were returned to France within two years.
The final irony was crushing. The bombing failed to stop the Moruroa protest, brought worldwide sympathy and donations to Greenpeace, strengthened New Zealand’s anti-nuclear resolve and forced France to pay compensation. New Zealand History records a French payment of NZ$13 million to New Zealand, while Greenpeace later won US$8.1 million in arbitration.
Operation Satanique sank the ship, but the greater casualty was French credibility. What was planned as covert sabotage became a lethal advertisement for the very cause France wanted silenced.
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