The French foreign intelligence service is the Central Intelligence Agency’s primary French counterpart. It is regarded as one of the most professionally capable services in the world and as one of the most aggressive, with a documented willingness to kill in the conduct of its operations. “They’re very talented. They’re murderous too.”[1][2]
The service is not a Five Eyes partner; cooperation with the United States is bounded by France’s NATO and European Union membership and is significantly less open than the Five Eyes relationship. “We’re good friends, but we don’t give them everything like we do with the Five Eyes.”[3]
The early-1990s incident and the De Gaulle transit ban
In the early 1990s a junior first-tour American CIA case officer in France was caught conducting an unauthorized operation — “going, pushing a little too far.” The French expelled the junior officer, the CIA chief of station, and a substantial number of additional U.S. personnel. The rupture between the two services lasted three to four years.[4]
In a subsequent incident, a CIA officer transiting Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport en route to an Africa posting — at that time the standard route into West Africa — was subjected to physical search by French security despite presenting a diplomatic passport. The officer was carrying a secure CIA laptop. He refused to unlock it, invoking his diplomatic status and the laptop’s status as U.S. Department of State property. French security removed the laptop to a back room:
They had a railroad spike fastened to a table, and they just slammed it down on the railroad spike — went all the way through the laptop. And then they pulled it off and gave him his laptop back.[5]
Following the railroad-spike incident, the CIA issued standing orders that no agency personnel were permitted even to transit Charles de Gaulle Airport. “They’re just jerks about it.”[6]
Recruitment attempt on John Kiriakou in Pakistan
During John Kiriakou’s tour in Pakistan, his station chief asked him to meet a French intelligence officer for the standard inter-service exchange of information that Kiriakou conducted with foreign services on most days. The French officer immediately set off Kiriakou’s tradecraft alarms by insisting on an unusual meeting venue — a residential street corner, rather than a restaurant or coffee bar:
He comes peeling down the street, makes a quick right, reaches over and opens my door, and he’s like, “Get in.” And I said, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t work for you, and you’re not using tradecraft on me. I parked right over here. I’ll meet you at the Pearl Hotel restaurant coffee bar — not going to fucking let you do a [pickup] on me. You’re not recruiting me.”[7][8]
The meeting proceeded at the Pearl Hotel as a routine coffee. Kiriakou never met that officer again.[8]
Operational lethality
Greenpeace
The French service is known to kill members of Greenpeace who attempt to board, occupy, or deface French vessels. “If you’re a member of, for example, of Greenpeace, they’re going to blow your brains out if you try to take over a ship or throw paint on a ship or whatever. They kill a lot of Greenpeace activists.”[9]
The Sahel
French intelligence maintains an aggressive operational presence in the Sahel — the band of West African and Central African states that were formerly French colonies. “That’s one of the reasons why we don’t have more of a presence in the Sahel right now in Africa — because it’s all French. They were all French colonies, and the French are there just killing all kinds of al-Qaeda people."[9]
"You and the French love killing people”
At a UK speaking tour delivered at the beginning of 2026, Kiriakou shared a stage in five separate engagements with a retired MI6 officer. The MI6 officer volunteered, unprompted, his service’s assessment of post-9/11 American intelligence behavior:
We really loved working with you guys until 9/11. You all became serial killers after 9/11.
Kiriakou’s response: “Yeah, unfortunately that’s true. A lot of guys just went out to just kill as many al-Qaeda people as they could find. Nobody was charged with a crime.” The MI6 officer continued:
Yeah, you and the French. My god, the French love killing people.
Kiriakou’s reply: “That was kind of my understanding as well.”[10][11][12]