Intelligence Expert Plans Second Winter Term Visit

Author: Tim McCahill Assistant News Editor

Former French Ministry of Defense Official Alexis Debat will return to Middlebury this Winter Term to teach a course entitled "Spies for the New Disorder: The C.I.A. and U.S. Intelligence in the 21st Century." Debat taught a similar course last Winter Term, which had a waiting list of 70 students, according to administrators.

Debat, who also teaches at the Ecole Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan and the Ecole de Guerre in Paris, served at the French Ministry of Defense for "approximately one year" as the United States desk officer, "advising the [Minister of Defense] Alain Richard and the various parts of the French [Ministry] on U.S. foreign and domestic politics," Debat wrote in an e-mail to The Middlebury Campus.

Debat is an expert on U.S. intelligence, and wrote his doctoral thesis on the Central Intelligence Agency while a student at the Sorbonne. He is also author of the book "The Secret History of the C.I.A.," slated for publication this fall.

Arranging Debat's return to campus was especially prescient this year, given the increased academic interest and rising political necessity for foreign and domestic intelligence as a means of combating global terrorism after the events of Sept. 11.

"My course will touch upon intelligence as an instrument of policy, and how the two interact, policy-makers often manipulating intelligence to serve their political goals," Debat wrote in his e-mail. "Most important, it will also focus on how national civilian intelligence — namely, the C.I.A. — imposed itself upon a reluctant democracy (secrecy as a threat to U.S. democracy) that found itself under siege by the Soviet threat, and upon the military, which considered the C.I.A. as a bureaucratic threat to its agenda and interests."

Debat said he plans to divide the course "in two unequal parts," the first "third" dealing with the history of the C.I.A. and its connection to American foreign policy.

The latter two-thirds will be "devoted to the study of intelligence as a broader concept today: its strengths, shortcomings and limitations, as well as the many forms of intelligence."

In addition to detailing his hopes for the course, Debat also commented at length on the French reaction to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and the subsequent military response.

"There was a tremendous sense of shock in every quarter of French society: you could see people cry in the streets, for example, and the demonstrations of solidarity were absolutely mind boggling," Debat explained. "I mean, [the French newspaper] Le Monde — traditionally the most anti-American newspaper in France — actually wrote, 'We are all Americans,' for crying out loud!"

Public displays of support underscored what Debat termed "the traditional biorhythm of French-American relations," defined primarily by a "guarded" friendship in times of relative peace and unquestioned allegiance in moments of war or conflict. While Debat wrote that he predicted some changes occurring at the governmental level in France as a result of Sept. 11 — including greater cooperation in the intelligence arena — he concluded that "the deep mutual perceptions will quickly go back to normal."

Since the Sept. 11 attacks Debat has risen to some prominence in European and American media, appearing in early October on ABC's "Primetime Thursday" after French authorities discovered a codebook used by a man connected to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. He has also been interviewed by the French newspaper Liberation.