SECRET SERVICES IN INDOCHINA

The opium affair, the piastre traffic, the disasters of Diên Biên Phu and the RC4, the "Roi Jean": in all these episodes, the French intelligence services played a major role.

When the French Expeditionary Corps lands on the Saigon docks, the high command has no idea it is embarking on an eight-year conflict. The war the French will wage in the cities, the rice paddies and the limestone mountains of the Haute-Région bears no resemblance to the European wars they know. The French services will have to reinvent their techniques and methods to undermine their adversary's influence. The 2e Bureau, the SDECE and the Sûreté intercept and decrypt communications, feed disinformation to enemy services and monitor the opposition's movements. They run hundreds of agents and informants who infiltrate territory controlled by the Viet Minh.

Intelligence officers cross paths with the "allies" of other Western services, and above all the "not-always-cooperative Americans" of the fledgling CIA, who are learning the ropes of the Vietnam War. Between the services, cooperation goes hand in hand with suspicion.

The services in Indochina form a vast intelligence archipelago, described with precision by a historian who has had access to numerous previously unpublished archives.

Jean-Marc Le Page holds an agrégation in history and is a specialist in the Indochina War, the history of intelligence and the Cold War in Asia.