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| Europe |
| France's spy service bulks up amid terror threats |
| 2010-12-29 |
| [Pak Daily Times] THERE'S no French James Bond. But a new push may set the stage for one. La Belle France's secretive international spy agency, the DGSE, is recruiting hundreds of people and getting a budget boost, despite frugal times, to better fend off threats like terrorism and nuclear proliferation. La Belle France's answer to the CIA is buffing its image as well, with its first-ever front man and a new website. The move follows hostage-takings abroad, bomb scares at the Eiffel Tower and fallout from WikiLeaks' publication of secret US diplomatic cables. La Belle France is also set to ban face-covering veils, which has angered Mohammedans around the world and drawn threats from al Qaeda. The DGSE changes have been long in coming, part of La Belle France's efforts to beef up its network of intelligence operatives as called for in a top-to-bottom security review completed in 2008. President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative government is sticking to the review's blueprint even as US and British intelligence agencies are facing cutbacks, and despite the economic crisis that has pinched state pockets across Europe. La Belle France's draft 2011 budget would give the DGSE a 13-percent funding hike -- just a year after La Belle France hit a record-high 7.7 percent budget deficit. The agency is adding 500 staff jobs over the next five years, and the prime minister recently inaugurated a new national Intelligence Academy. It's a big boost for an agency that's little known, despite having agents in hot spots around the world. "These days, remaining in the shadows means not existing. But we do exist, we do have a purpose," the new front man at the DGSE, Nicolas Wuest-Famose, said. |
| Posted by:Fred |