ATS: France Tried to Blame Rainbow Warrior Bombing on Britain

Newly released documents show France engaged in a campaign of "misinformation and smears" against the British MI6 intelligence service in an attempt to blame them for France's 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior as she lay in port in Auckland, New Zealand. The bombs sunk the ship and led to the drowning death of a Dutch photographer aboard. It was later revealed that the French government ordered the bombing of the ship to prevent Greenpeace from interfering with a planned test of a thermonuclear warhead in the Pacific Ocean.



I can't blame Mrs. Thatcher for being livid that France was trying to assign blame on them for this French covert action. It's amazing to me that Mitterand was able to remain in power after he approved this bombing.

Related News Links:
en.wikipedia.org
www.nzherald.co.nz

[edit on 11/29/2005 by djohnsto77]

Wow.
I never heard of this conspiracy before and I don't know how they ever expected to get away with it.

I'd think that once you blame MI6 for something they'll investigate and find out who was really behind it.

They'd have been better off blaming a rebel group.

EDIT:
Great article DJ.
That's ATS material right there.

[edit on 29-11-2005 by AceOfBase]

I knew about the Rainbow Warrior A sad case indeed.

I did not know there was a campaign to pin it on Britain though Thats pretty shocking.

Great find

heres a thread about it..

www.abovetopsecret.com...

and somewhere down the first page... alitte quote from me

quote]Originally posted by yeehaa
I may well be wrong here. but i seem to remember someone either telling me that the rainbow job was shall we say contracted out to "control risks" a very nice little outfit that grew out of keenie meanie in the 80`s.
Like i said i maybe wrong, it was either rainbow incident or something to do with the french nuke tests in the atolls few years back, sorry i cant find out for 100% as my informer died about 3 weeks ago.

cant confrim it for obvious reasons, and was only word and mouth but he was the kind to know if it were true, but it would be right up our street, we love to have stuff over people.. france needs it done, we do it.... Yo Mr Mitterrand you owe us bigtime... maybe we pressured/blackmailed/asked for alittle too much in return and this is way they tried point the whole op back to us brits.lol

France could try to lay the blame at MI6's door all they wanted. Kiwi cops found the bad guys in days. And they were looking for Froggies from the beginning.

I remember watching Chris Masters' report about it on 4 Corners at the time, the DGSE came off looking like a bunch of amatuer Fleming fans. Pathetic, really. The CIA plan to assassinate Castro with exploding cigars probably had a greater chance of success.

Masters even pointed the whole thing straight back to the Elysee Palace, great investigative reporter, probably our best.

By the way, it's Muraroa Atoll.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
France engaged in a campaign of "misinformation and smears" against
the British MI6 intelligence service .... It was later revealed that the
French government ordered the bombing

Wow. Excellent information!

MAN DJ ... first you debunk that memo that G.W. supposedly wrote
to Condi asking for a bathroom break, now you bring us this.
You are definately on my short list for 2005 ATS Poster of the Year!

They'll be trying to pin the German occupation of France during WW2 on the Brits next.(Tongue firmly in cheek)

With friends like this who will need an enemy?

It is really despicable for the government of a civilised western nation to resort to terrorism so that it can carries out nuclear testing on one of its colonies. Why not do it on their own backyard which others did? What's more, the people directly responsible for it most probably got away. War Against Terrorism? Oh I see you don't support it much.

Originally posted by NotheRaGe
With friends like this who will need an enemy?

It is really despicable for the government of a civilised western nation to resort to terrorism so that it can carries out nuclear testing on one of its colonies. Why not do it on their own backyard which others did? What's more, the people directly responsible for it most probably got away. War Against Terrorism? Oh I see you don't support it much.

are you suggesting we invade france then? i say let the germans have ther way with them. england too.

Originally posted by NotheRaGe
With friends like this who will need an enemy?

It is really despicable for the government of a civilised western nation to resort to terrorism so that it can carries out nuclear testing on one of its colonies. Why not do it on their own backyard which others did? What's more, the people directly responsible for it most probably got away. War Against Terrorism? Oh I see you don't support it much.

Well, I'd hardly call the Brits testing at Maralinga their own backyard. Although they didn't resort to terrorism and that idiot Menzies actually invited them to do it.

Mitterand is dead, the agents spent time in a Kiwi prison and France was seriously embarrassed by the whole thing. Plus it firmly set NZ on it's national (and international) anti-nuke policy. They even left ANZUS over it. Although that was because of Ronnie's ego, all he had to do was stop sending Nimitz's to New Zealand and it would have been alright. Even melbourne refused entry to US carriers in the '80s.

However, the more things change the more they stay the same. Ten years ago Chirac decided it would be a really good idea to go back to Muraroa for some more underground barbeques.