The Man with the Cosmic View

Britain had Burgess and MacLean, the U.S. its Rosenbergs. But for the most part Frenchmen do not spy, or at least they seldom get caught. Last week France joined the mainstream with its biggest spy case since Mata Hari. In custody for passing secrets to the Russians was a chubby, urbane press attache named Georges Paques, 49, who had served both the French High General Staff and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The case was critical because Paques held a "cosmic" security clearance--highest classification for both France and NATO. The man with the cosmic view had access to intelli gence reports, operational plans and details of France's nuclear weapons program, as well as NATO secrets.

How to Assure Peace. What made Paques a spy? It seems to have been a mixture of anti-Americanism and pacifism. The son of a hairdresser in Burgundy's Chalon-sur-Saone, Paques was educated at the elite Ecole Normale Superieure, where he majored in Italian. The outbreak of World War II took him to a broadcasting job for the Free French in North Africa. It was there that he is supposed to have developed a deep hatred of the U.S.; subsequently he blamed American policy for the loss of Algeria.

Money was not the motive for Paques' espionage, though police said he took payment from "a great power in the East." He lived modestly in Paris after the war, driving a tiny white Fiat 500, attending the opera and reading Russian and Greek classics. Though he had been friendly with Russians since 1944, it was not until 1958, when he received his cosmic clearance, that he began to spy. As he puts it to his attorney today, he chose to leak secrets to Moscow because he felt that by "informing a power of whose pacifist sentiments I was sure, I would assure peace."

Zeroing In. For four years he worked unsuspected. Then last year, French intelligence learned that copies of "extremely important" French documents had reached Moscow. Since only half a dozen people--including Paques--had access to them, the investigation finally zeroed in on him. For two months some 40 agents tailed him, tapping his phone and watching every move. Finally, they caught Paques passing information to Russian embassy personnel who have since left the country.

Paques had worked at NATO only since last October, and though he could read the minutes of secret council meetings it is unlikely that he did as much damage to that organization as he did to President de Gaulle's force de frappe. The enemy of the U.S. proved a more effective enemy of his own country.

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