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France: spying for Bull

01 September 1993

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The French intelligence service, Direction Generale de la Securite Exteriure (DGSE) has been systematically targeting US computer firms in order to pass information to Groupe Bull, the ailing state owned computer company. The techniques used include offering military deferments to graduate students if they get jobs with high-tech US firms; recruiting senior managers in French subsidiaries of US firms (including IBM); and in one instance stealing prototypes of a "smart pen" left in hotel room in Paris by visiting American businessmen. The gathering of industrial espionage has become a major responsibility of western overseas intelligence agencies in the post-Cold war period.

Covert Action Fall 1993.

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