List of intelligence agencies of France

This is a list of current and former French intelligence agencies.

Currently active

Organization chart given on a website of French intelligence community

• DGSE: Directorate-General for External Security – Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure. It is the military foreign intelligence agency, which succeeded the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) in 1982 (itself preceded by the Direction Générale des Études et Recherches (DGER), dependent on the BCRA.
• DGSI: General Directorate for Internal Security – Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure. Founded in 2008 by the merger of the RG and the DST, it is tasked with counter-espionage, counter-terrorism and the surveillance of potential threats on French territory.
• DRM: Directorate of Military Intelligence – Direction du renseignement militaire. It was created by Interior Minister Pierre Joxe in 1992, after the Gulf War, to centralize military intelligence information.
• TRACFIN : Intelligence Processing and Action Against Clandestine Financial Circuits - Tracfin. Founded in 1990, it is tasked with tackling money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
• DRSD: Directorate of Intelligence and Security of Defense – Direction du renseignement et de la sécurité de la Défense. It is a military intelligence agency, charged with conducting counter-espionage.
• BRGE: Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Brigade – Brigade de renseignement.
• DCPJ: Judicial Police – Direction centrale de la police judiciaire.
• CNCTR: National Commission for the Control of Security Interceptions – Commission nationale de contrôle des techniques de renseignement.
• SCRT: Central Service of Territorial Surveillance - Service central de surveillance du territoire
• SNRP: Service national du renseignement pénitentiaire, a French intelligence agency for carceral security (riot prevention, surveillance of radicalized prisoners for avoid others radicalization, etc.

Former agencies

• Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA) was an intelligence agency created during World War II in 1940.
• Cabinet noir More formally, the cabinet du secret des postes. c. 1750.
• Deuxième Bureau: France's external military intelligence agency from 1871 to 1940. It was dissolved together with the Third Republic upon the armistice with Germany.
• DST: Directorate of Territorial Security – Direction de la surveillance du territoire. It was an intelligence agency of the Minister of Interior, charged with conducting counter-espionage (in particular in economic matters), and, since the end of the Cold War, also with counterterrorism issues. It was abolished in 2008 and merged into the DCRI.
• RG: General Intelligence Directorate – Direction centrale des renseignements généraux. It was the intelligence agency of the French police, directed by the Minister of the Interior. It was charged with monitoring gambling activities, criminal activities, and political radicals (far right and far left). It also used to have as a mission to monitor French political parties, but officially is not charged with this anymore. It was merged into the Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur in 2008.
• Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage (SDECE), successor to BCRA.

See also

• History of espionage
• List of (worldwide) intelligence agencies
• Club de Berne

Further reading

• Alexander, Martin S. "Did the Deuxième Bureau work? The role of intelligence in French defence policy and strategy, 1919–39." Intelligence and National Security 6.2 (1991): 293–333.
• Andrew, Christopher. The Secret World: A History of Intelligence (2018) pp 902–914.
• Andrew, Christopher. "France and the German Menace." in Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars edited by Ernest R. May. (1984).
• Armes, Keith. "French Intelligence on the Russian Army on the Eve of the First World War." Journal of Military History 82.3 (2018).
• Bauer, Deborah Susan. Marianne is Watching: Intelligence, Counterintelligence, and the Origins of the French Surveillance State (2021) online copy at Google books; also see online book review
  • Bauer, Deborah Susan. "'Marianne is Watching: Knowledge, Secrecy, Intelligence and the Origins of the French Surveillance State (1870–1914)." (PhD Dissertation, UCLA, 2013.) Online Bibliography pp 536–59.

• Canuel, Hugues. "French aspirations and Anglo-Saxon suspicions: France, signals intelligence and the UK-USA agreement at the dawn of the Cold War." Journal of Intelligence History 12.1 (2013): 76-92.

• Chopin, Olivier. "Intelligence reform and the transformation of the state: the end of a French exception." Journal of Strategic Studies 40.4 (2017): 532–553.
• Deacon, Richard. The French Secret Service (1990).
• Faligot, Roger, and Pascal Krop. La Piscine: The French Secret Service since 1944 (Blackwell, 1989).

• Forcade, Olivier. La République secrète: histoire des services spéciaux français de 1918 à 1939. (Paris: Nouveau monde, 2008).
• Hayez, Philippe. "'Renseignement': The new French intelligence policy." International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence 23.3 (2010): 474–486.
• Jackson, Peter. "French Military Intelligence responds to the German Remilitarisation of the Rhineland, 1936-A look at French intelligence machinery in 1936." Intelligence and National Security 22.4 (2007): 546–562.
• Jackson, Peter. France and the Nazi Menace: Intelligence and Policy Making, 1933-1939 (2000).
• Keiger, John. France and the World since 1870 (2001) ch 4: "French Intelligence" pp 80–109.

• Luvaas, Jay. "Napoleon's Use of Intelligence: The Jena Campaign of 1805." In Leaders and Intelligence ed. by Michael I. Handel. (Frank Cass, 1989).

• Olson, Lynne. Madame Fourcade's secret war: the daring young woman who led France's largest spy network against Hitler (Random House, 2020).

• Parry, D. L. L. "Clemenceau, Caillaux and the Political Use of Intelligence." Intelligence and National Security 9#3 (1994): 472–494.
• Porch, Douglas. The French Secret Services: A History of French Intelligence from the Drefus Affair to the Gulf War (Macmillan, 2003). online

• Soll, Jacob. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System (U of Michigan Press, 2009).
• Tanenbaum, Jan Karl. “French Estimates of Germany’s Operational War Plans,” in Ernest May, ed., Knowing One’s Enemies (1984)
• Van Puyvelde, Damien. The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service (Georgetown University Press, 2026).

• Warner, Michael. The Rise and Fall of Intelligence: An International Security History (2014)

• Whitcomb, Edward A. "The Duties and Functions of Napoleon's External Agents." History 57.190 (1972): 189–204.
• Young, Robert J. “French Military Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1938-1939,” in Ernest May, ed., Knowing One’s Enemies (1984) pp 297–308.