Henri Biard was the director of the

Direction de la surveillance du territoire The Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST; en, Directorate of Territorial Surveillance) was a directorate of the French National Police operating as a domestic intelligence agency. It was responsible for counterespionage, counterterro ...

(DST), the French counterintelligence and domestic intelligence service from 1972 to 1974. Biard ordered DST agents to illegally

wiretap Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...

the offices of

Le Canard enchaîné (; English: "The Chained Duck" or "The Chained Paper", as is French slang meaning "newspaper") is a satirical weekly newspaper in France. Its headquarters is in Paris. Founded in 1915 during World War I, it features investigative journalism a ...

, a French newspaper. When this decision was made public, Biard was forced to resign.

References

*Wendell L. Minnick. ''Spies and Provocateurs''. p. 17 French spies {{France-bio-stub