The writer wonders about his “constant interest in favor of intelligence”, but also on the psychology of spies, on their commitments. In this interview for “Le Monde”, he explains the link he establishes between truth and reality.
words collected by Michel Lefebvre and Gaïdz Minassian
As Max Weber said (1864-1920), the State holds the monopoly of legitimate violence, and the intelligence services and action services exercise violence. But to do it, it must be legitimate. This violence cannot be exercised outside the state. If we leave the state, we enter crime. This monopolization process has always pushed towards this centralization. Which has never really prevented powers, like that of the Kurds, for example, from having their own intelligence service. These dissident powers have their own information service and their own action service, although it is not legal. Legality is the CIA in the United States, the FSB (ex-KGB) in Russia or the DGSE in France, who have the right to kill, but not the Kurds.
the spy Is it linked to power or the State?
The spy is linked to power. In the largest companies, the director of security often comes from the intelligence services, like Bernard Squarcini at LVMH, for example. Multinationals have developed a “security” department linked, in fact, to the services that subcontract private information pharmacies that the intelligence services cannot legally perform. Espionage is also related to power. These are services that want to have one step ahead and who want to know what we do not want to tell them. This is the starting point for intelligence. This work is common to any form of power which is expressed.
globalization upsets the foundations of the State. Is there in this evolution an deconstruction of state secrecy?
We saw, with WikiLeaks, that the risks of propagation of secret elements are very high. With technological means, information has never circulated as much as today. This phenomenon is considerable. On the one hand, there have never been as many risk of leaks and disclosure of secrecy as today; On the other hand, spying has never been so strong, thanks to digital instruments, listening technologies and cyber attacks. Remember the Sony series or film project on North Korea: two days after the announcement, Sony was devastated at the IT level and finally had to give it up. Some individuals develop surveillance means, others develop ways to penetrate them. It is a huge market in which private companies are used because they develop technologies. Then, the intelligence services are inspired by it and are advised. We are at the heart of the machine, and this is the big difference with the Cold War. Intelligence services are very involved and no one knows, since you never know when a military computer site has been attacked or penetrated.
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