France the Captain Who Caused a Furor

A hush fell over the ornate 19th century French Senate chamber as Charles Pasqua, Senate whip for the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic party, stepped up to the rostrum. Shaking one fist in the air and pointing his other hand accusingly at the government's front bench, Pasqua launched into one of the strongest attacks yet against President Francois Mitterrand's four-year-old Socialist government. "If it is proved that the French secret services are | implicated in this affair," he proclaimed, "then the responsibility could not be sought anywhere except at the level of the Premier. Who is to believe that the military can act without orders? France is not a banana republic."

The cause of the uproar was the scandal that has been steadily increasing since the Rainbow Warrior, the flagship of Greenpeace, the 1.5 million-member environmental protest group, was bombed and sunk on July 10 in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand, killing a Greenpeace photographer. The ship, which was sunk by two bombs attached to its hull, was about to lead a protest against French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, 700 miles southeast of Tahiti. The evidence, trumpeted across the country last week by a French press in full cry, strongly suggests that France's secret service, the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, was responsible for the sabotage.

In Auckland, police confirmed that Sophie and Alain Turenge, the French- speaking couple they arrested, are actually Dominique Prieur, a captain in the DGSE, and an as yet unnamed commander at the French naval commando center in Corsica, where underwater demolition divers are trained. The two are being held on charges of murder, arson and conspiracy. Police are searching for four alleged accomplices. More damaging evidence emerged last week from Politician Bernard Stasi, a member of the centrist opposition who was France's Minister of Overseas Territories in 1973 and 1974. Stasi told reporters that the intelligence agency had begun plotting as long as ten years ago against Greenpeace, which opposes, among other things, nuclear testing and the killing of whales.

In response to the scandal, President Mitterrand appointed Bernard Tricot, 65, a highly respected aide to President Charles de Gaulle 17 years ago, to head an official commission of inquiry. As the accusations and conjectures multiplied, Tricot discreetly interviewed Premier Laurent Fabius, Vice Admiral Pierre Lacoste, head of the DGSE, and other high-ranking government and military officials. Tricot's mission is to find out who sank the Rainbow Warrior and who gave the orders to do it. His eagerly awaited report is expected to be issued this week.

Mitterrand has promised to punish those found responsible, and there is wide speculation that among them will be Defense Minister Charles Hernu, one of Mitterrand's close friends and asso ciates. Hernu, whose ministry has responsibility for the security agency, told journalists last week that his "conscience is clear." He was not, he later told intimates, "even dreaming of the possibility of resigning."