France/Military

France/Military  (Armed Forces)
Subpage(s)	•France/Military/Chief of Defence Staff

The armed forces of France.

Counterinsurgency training

The methods of counterinsurgency used by the French army during the Algerian War until 1961, including the use of torture and death squads, were then taught in the United States (in particular to the special forces at Fort Bragg) as well as in South America, at the Manaus Jungle Warfare Training Center in Brazil.

Exposed in 2008 by a book and documentary by Marie-Monique Robin, she showed the existence of a secret military cooperation agreement between France and Argentina. This agreement, signed in 1959, concerned the creation of a "permanent French military mission" which lasted until 1970. This military mission, "French military assessors", was active from 1960 to 1963 in Buenos Aires; and then again from 1973 to 1976.

Following this discovery, Robin interviewed Pierre Messmer, Minister of the Armed Forces at the time of the signing of the agreement, who confirmed the existence of the secret agreement. He declared:

It was General de Gaulle himself who decided that there would be a mission, on the proposal of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. That said, already before the Second World War, French military missions in South America were quite numerous. There was one in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela. It was a tradition. The United States had not yet, at that time, put its hands on the training and supply of equipment to the South American armies. But in 1960, I think that Argentina was especially interested in France's experience in the field of revolutionary war."

Published by the French Embassy, the list of agreements concluded between 1853 and 2016 between the two countries, France and Argentina, does not show any military cooperation agreements, either in 1960 or in 1973; the only agreement on defense dates from 1998.

According to the testimony of American Colonel Carl Bernard to Marie-Monique Robin, it was from a summary of a book, not yet published (it was published in 1961), by Colonel Roger Trinquier, The Modern War, made by Paul Aussaresses and Colonel Bernard, that Robert Komer, a CIA agent who became one of President Lyndon Johnson's advisers for the Vietnam War, "designed the Phoenix program, which is in fact a copy of the Battle of Algiers applied to all of South Vietnam. [...] For this, prisoners were turned over, then they were put into commandos, led by CIA agents or by green berets, who acted exactly like Paul Aussaresses's death squad."

FFL

The French Foreign Legion is an elite corps of the French Army that consists of several specialties: infantry, cavalry, engineers, and airborne troops. It is open and promotes to foreigners outside France, the EU or even Europe. People, if Interpol does not have them on a red notice are legally allowed to receive a new identity.

 

Employees on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End	Description
Stéphane Abrial	Chief of Staff of the French Air Force	2006	2009
Paul Stehlin	Chief of the French Air Force	1960	1963	Opposed the defense policy of General de Gaulle, which called for French room for independence, and campaigned for a close alliance with the United States. Later exposed as secret "consultant" for US arms companies.
Didier Tauzin	Soldier	1971	2006

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References

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