Mark Bent is not in a good mood. He has just finished a mission in South Carolina, and a five-hour drive awaits him to return to Florida, where he lives. This private detective is used to logging the miles; his profession demands it. He forged this routine during years of clandestine operations. Until July 2001, Bent worked at the CIA. He was a “case officer”, a field agent for American intelligence.
Familiar with airport corridors and underworld locations, Bent has worked in Africa and the Middle East. He also regularly passed through the French capital – his ex-wife lives there, his children grew up there – and met his sources there. This is his Paris, a city which, according to him, is “in the top 3 in the world of places where the greatest number of foreign spies circulate.”
The Paris locations of Mark Brent, ex-CIA agent.
© / Google MyMaps
7 rue Nélaton, 15th
The headquarters of the Territorial Surveillance Directorate (DST), ancestor of the DGSI. “I was a declared agent with the French services, even if I was never officially attached to the American embassy in Paris,” says Mark Bent. Most of the time he cooperated with French secret services in other parts of the world, notably West Africa.
“When I was in Paris, it was often because I was working on a joint operation with the DST,” he explains. “Usually, I was there to meet one of my contacts from the Middle East.” He went to the DST headquarters beforehand: “They gave me the questions they wanted me to ask, and I shared my own questions with them.” On the way out, Bent carried out an IDS (for surveillance detection route) to be certain that he was not being followed by anyone.
La Motte-Picquet Grenelle metro station, 15th arrondissement
“This place has a lot of entrances, exits. An interior corridor and the skytrain,” he explains. With its five access points, the station is large enough to disappear when the situation requires it. “When you are being followed, you should definitely not do like in spy films and start running. You just have to walk as normally as possible, and blend into the crowd at the corner of a corridor,” he advises.
Away from tourist sites, the station brings together three metro lines which serve several districts of interest: that of the DST, the embassy district, as well as several hospitals. “Ideal, when many of my sources came to be treated in France,” continues the American. It also has the advantage of being on the border of the seventh arrondissement. The Military School is a few meters away, as is UNESCO.
A coffee near the La Motte-Picquet-Grenelle metro station
“Never very conspicuous, always a different place. My contacts were not used to Paris, and I know this area very well. The detours, the small side streets. Where the churches and the dead ends are, continues the former CIA agent. Knowledge necessary to carry out surveillance detection.” With the help of French agents, Bent always ensured that the meeting place was not spied on by a third party. “There are so many spies in Paris, especially Russians and Chinese,” he remarks.
If his source wasn’t being watched by anyone, Bent would take him to a hotel, or slip him the key to a room a few blocks away. “Once in the room, we spent several hours exchanging information. I listened a lot. Recruiting someone for this type of mission creates a unique bond. We have to hear the person’s fears, their doubts, reassure them. We have to show them that we care about them.” Discussions could last for more than four hours at a time, before they parted ways.
2 Avenue Gabriel, 8th arrondissement
The United States Embassy in Paris. “It was the place I had to avoid, no matter what,” says Mark Bent. The spy always stayed away from the area around Place de la Concorde, so as not to arouse suspicion. “I did not meet the embassy agents. I did not interact with the French DST agents outside of work either,” he relates. “If I had been stationed in Paris, things would have been different. But in my situation, I had to be discreet.” Slip through the mesh, be forgotten. “The price of the profession,” he whispers. Somewhere along the road between South Carolina and Florida, Mark Bent never stopped being a shadow.
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