Ex-Mossad to create school for spies

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has decided to create a "school for spies", in the hope that it will help unify the country's intelligence community.

The school - to be based in the Ecole Militaire, near the Eiffel Tower – will admit only senior spy chiefs. Rather than teaching aspiring James Bonds how to kill people with an umbrella, it will be an espionage "staff academy", whose principal role will be to forge a single culture out of competing agencies.

French intelligence and security agencies have often been accused of fighting one another as much as France's enemies, the Independent reports.

The first head of the new "intelligence academy" is likely to be named in the next few days. According to Le Monde, the school's chief will be a woman with no previous experience of espionage. She is at present a senior figure in one of the grandes écoles, or elite university-level French colleges.

President Sarkozy is determined to create a single French "intelligence community", based on the US model. His plan for a French equivalent of the US National Security Council – the Conseil de défense et de sécurité nationale (CDSN) – took shape by official decree on Christmas Eve. The CDSN will have an intelligence arm, uniting the chiefs of the six French spying and security agencies, the Conseil National du Renseignement or CNR. The chairman of both bodies will be President Sarkozy.

There will also be, for the first time, a "national intelligence coordinator", Bernard Bajolet, 60, whose task will be to ensure that the half-dozen different intelligence and security agencies cooperate with one another.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/6964277/Nicolas-Sarkozy-to-create-school-for-spies.html