Directorate General of Special Services

The Directorate General for Special Services (DGSS) is the special service of the Fighting France , created in October 1943 as a result of the merger of competing intelligence services subordinate to C. de Gaulle and A. Giraud .

The need to create a united intelligence was caused by fierce rivalry between the intelligence services of de Gaulle and Giraud, who actually fought with each other: they closely monitored each other, tried to recruit officers and agents, which impeded the implementation of their main activity - the fight against the Germans ^[1] . In October 1943, a formal association took place, and on December 27, 1943, he appointed the specialist in ancient cultures of Central America, Jacques Sustel , to the post of the head of the new special service, who was the Information Commissioner in the “Fighting France” before being appointed to this post. The appointment of Sustel, who had never previously been involved with intelligence and had the rank of reserve lieutenant, provoked resistance from Giraud, to which de Gaulle replied: "If this bothers you, we will put on his general's uniform." According to the historian of special services I. Lander, Sustel was an agent of the illegal residency of Soviet military intelligence in the UK ^[1] .

The Directorate General of Special Services in 1944 was reorganized into the Directorate General for Research and Analysis ( Fr. Direction générale des études et recherches , DGER), which, in turn, was transformed into the External Documentation and Counterintelligence Service ( Fr. Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage , SDECE), which lasted until 1982.