DSK, the Sofitel... and a short history of French spooks

IS DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN a nasty piece of work who finally got his comeuppance in room 2806 of the Manhattan Sofitel, or the "target of a deliberate effort to destroy him as a political force" as his American lawyer has put it in the light of revelations unearthed by Edward Jay Epstein in the New York Review of Books?
 
The conspiracy theorists make much of the apparent links between Sofitel and the Elysee Palace, who seemed to know about the incident before anyone else in France. The head of security at Sofitel immediately informed "his old friend" Ange Mancini, intelligence co-ordinator at the Palace. But on examination the connections look less sinister.

Mancini is a 66-year-old career policeman - un ex-super flic - whose task is to co-ordinate the three fractious French intelligence services and brief President Sarkozy. He joined the police in 1963, so it's hardly surprising he knows all the ex-coppers in the hotel security business who no doubt understand on which side their brioches are buttered.  
 
The conspiracy anoraks had a field day with the death of Diana Princess of Wales for exactly the same reason. Her driver that night, Henri Paul, acting head of security at the Ritz Hotel, was an occasional agent of DST (Direction de la Surveillance Territoire) the old name for the French MI5 (until re-organised under Sarkozy).

Lord Stevens, former Commissioner of the Met, in his lengthy investigation into the tragedy found this unremarkable; connections with the intelligence services among security staff at upmarket hotels across the world are the norm, not a sign of conspiracy. Quite.
   

Nevertheless, it is fair to say that French spooks, serving and retired, have a tendency to get involved in politics and French politicians are often complicit. Incidents from the lives of two French presidents give a flavour.    

 
Late on the night of 15-16 October 1959, then Senator Francois Mitterand was driving home in Paris. Noticing a suspicious looking car was tailing him, Mitterand skidded to a halt and leapt over a hedge into the Luxembourg Gardens. The suspicious car drove by pumping a burst of machine gun fire into his dark blue Peugeot – eight bullet holes including one through the driver's seat.  

It looked like an assassination attempt on a decent politician by rogue elements of the intelligence services – the sort of men with leather coats and sten guns who appear in the pages of The Day of the Jackal. Mitterand was the hero of the hour. But the police smelt a rat. Shady intelligence types had indeed organised the attempted assassination… at the request of Mitterand as a political stunt.  
 
He narrowly avoided being put on trial. 'L'Affaire Observatoire' as it was called - because the hedge Mitterand vaulted was opposite Paris's Old Observatory - was just a taster. He kept his hand in once he ·