@electronic{davies:2010,
  abstract = {Allies of Nicolas Sarkozy came under mounting pressure today to explain how and why the French counter-intelligence services were used in an allegedly illegal investigation into damaging leaks to one of the country's most respected newspapers.  Paris prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said today he had written to the DCRI, France's equivalent of MI5, asking it to explain its role in exposing the source of leaked police interviews which reflected badly on labour minister Eric Woerth. "I am awaiting a response," said Marin, who said he wanted to know what the operation consisted of in concrete terms.  Authorities attempted to distance Sarkozy from the allegations, reiterating denials that the president had been involved with the decision to bring in the spies.  But observers said the latest controversy to emerge from the multiple investigations now being carried out surrounding the fortune of France's richest woman, L'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, could prove one of the most damning yet. In this afternoon's edition, Le Monde said it would take legal action over what it says is a flagrant violation of journalist-source confidentiality "in the coming days".  In a stormy session of parliament today, opposition MPs harangued government ministers over the allegations. "Were the secret services investigating legally or were they used by the powers that be to protect the individual interests?" asked one MP, Elisabeth Guigou, keeping up the pressure over a scandal which her fellow Socialists have called "the French Watergate".  But the official line was clear: the DCRI had been commissioned in order to "protect the state" from a rogue employee, and the Elysée had had nothing to do with it. "It is normal and natural that journalists investigate and work with informants," conceded government spokesman Luc Chatel. "But ... it is absolutely unacceptable that a senior civil servant, a member of a [minister's] office, should be divulging confidential information, violating both professional secrecy and the secrecy of the [police] investigation."  The leaks in question, which formed the basis of an article in Le Monde in July, concerned the content of a police interview carried out with Patrice de Maistre, Bettencourt's financial adviser, as part of inquiries into illegal party funding and tax evasion.  In testimony that fed conflict of interest claims, Maistre was quoted as saying that Woerth had asked him to hire his wife – a claim the minister vehemently denies. Sarkozy's office was said to have been "particularly irritated" by the report and, by the end of the summer, David Sénat, a justice ministry employee "outed" as the apparent source, had been demoted and sent to French Guiana.  Yesterday, in an official explanation for the use of the DCRI, a chief of police known to have close ties to the president insisted that the "brief and isolated technical check" on phone records had been ordered by him and not the Elysée.  Frédéric Péchenard also said he had first checked the legal validity of the move with a national security body, the CNCIS – a claim flatly contradicted today by that body's director. Rémi Recio denied that such a request for approval had been made, saying such a matter would "not fall within our remit" as the CNCIS was "only able to act in the context of the prevention of terrorism".  Asked whether the practice of combing through phone records in such circumstances worried him, he replied: "It worries me, on an institutional level and as a citizen."},
  author = {Davies, Lizzy},
  day = 14,
  interhash = {c5b22853ad8c493bd7d716984ca48fa6},
  intrahash = {c23886cc1002e240980ca3d905c4ccc4},
  journal = {The Guardian},
  month = {9},
  title = {French secret service asked to explain investigation into Le Monde leak. Spies were used to trace source of newspaper story linking Sarkozy's minister to Bettencourt affair},
  url = {http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/14/france-spies-le-monde-leak/print},
  year = 2010
}