Magazine Points Finger at Mitterrand in Ship Bombing

PARIS —  The French news magazine L’Express accused President Francois Mitterrand on Friday of personally approving the secret plan for bombing the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior last year in New Zealand.

The accusation marked the first time that any major French publication has tried to implicate Mitterrand directly in the scandal. There was no comment Friday from Mitterrand or anyone else in his office.

Long after the July, 1985, bombing, and after months of denials, the French government admitted that its agents had blown up the ship to prevent it from leading a protest flotilla into the French nuclear testing area in the South Pacific. A Portuguese photographer was killed in the bombing.

Little Political Damage

The latest revelations are not likely to damage Mitterrand politically. The Greenpeace affair is generally looked on in France as a dead issue. Most French were obviously less upset by the bombing than by the fact that their agents bungled the job and got caught.

In an article titled, “Greenpeace: Mitterrand Knew,” Jacques Derogy and Jean-Marie Pontaut, the magazine’s two investigative reporters, wrote that Adm. Pierre Lacoste, then head of the French intelligence agency, had met frequently with Mitterrand and kept him informed of the secret project.

“The president was not told all the details,” the reporters said, “but the broad outlines and the final objective of the plan were presented to him.”

Lacoste, according to the L’Express account, assured Mitterrand that “there would be no victims, no trace, no implication of France.”

“That was enough,” the account went on, “for the president to give his approval.”

No Sources Cited

Derogy and Pontaut cited no sources for their account, an expanded version of which is to be brought out next week as a book. The two reporters said that no notes were taken of the decisive conversations between Mitterrand and his top officials.

According to the reporters, the plot was spawned after Adm. Henri Fages, commander of the French nuclear testing area, complained to Minister of Defense Charles Hernu that it would be difficult for the French navy to stop the Rainbow Warrior, a 160-foot converted trawler, without firing on it.

Threat to Image

France had long been troubled by anti-nuclear protests from Greenpeace, an international environmental and disarmament organization, and French officials felt sure that firing on the Greenpeace ship would darken France’s image.

Although Lacoste, according to L’Express, believed that the navy should try to halt the Rainbow Warrior on the open seas, Defense Minister Hernu decided to try to get rid of the Greenpeace problem by destroying the Rainbow Warrior before it left port.

The French managed to do this on July 10, 1985, when French frogmen placed two bombs against the hull of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbor in New Zealand. The results were disastrous. The Greenpeace photographer was killed, and New Zealand police quickly captured two French agents, Maj. Alain Mafart and Capt. Dominique Prieur, who had been sent to Auckland to spy on the ship and provide information and explosives to the frogmen.

Fabius Unaware of Plot

Laurent Fabius, then the premier of France, did not know anything about the plot, according to L’Express, and was furious when he realized that French agents were involved in the bombing. But Hernu, according to the reporters, lied to Fabius and denied that the Ministry of Defense or the French intelligence agency was involved.

Eventually, as French newspapers disclosed more and more about the case, it became clear that Hernu had lied, and Fabius forced him to resign as minister of defense. The premier dismissed Lacoste as director of the intelligence agency at the same time.

A month ago, New Zealand released to French authorities the agents Mafart and Prieur after France agreed to make a written apology and pay New Zealand an indemnity of $7 million. Most French then concluded that the Greenpeace affair was over. The article and book by the two reporters, however, have revived the affair.

‘The French Watergate’

Throughout the affair, many French journalists congratulated themselves for the role the press was playing in exposing the bungled operation, forcing the government to give up its attempt at a cover-up. Many analysts called the affair “the French Watergate.”

But after the ouster of Hernu as minister of defense, the press coverage diminished and finally stopped. It became obvious that any further digging might take responsibility for the affair to the office of Mitterrand. Despite all the comparisons with Watergate, the French press seemed incapable of letting itself go that far. The office of the presidency was regarded as somehow too exalted.

From time to time, there were hints in the press that Mitterrand or some of his key aides might have been involved in the planning of the Greenpeace plot. But no publication accused Mitterrand, whose power was diminished by the victory of the conservative parties in the parliamentary elections of last March, of direct involvement in the affair until L’Express reached the newsstands Friday.