Auckland: A French undercover agent who eluded police after the Rainbow Warrior attack has broken a 32-year silence - but she refuses to say "sorry".
When she was 33, Christine Cabon infiltrated Greenpeace under the name Frederique Bonlieu.
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Cabon inserted herself into Greenpeace's anti-nuclear testing projects, making friends with its directors and volunteers, sleeping on their couches, and, crucially for the French, acquiring intimate details of its workings.
She told people she was a French aristocrat and an environmental activist. The only truth was her age, and that she was from south-west France.
She was welcomed into the fold. "In Auckland, they were happy to get a Frenchie to help in an anti-French nuclear testing operation, " French historian Gerald Arboit says. "She was friendly, talked to everyone, played the tourist. People talked to her."
Cabon was chosen for the mission because she was a young woman, Arboit believes, different from what people typically thought of as a military type.
"I even helped Greenpeace draft a letter to the French president, asking him to halt nuclear testing," she says.
"I wasn't living a lie. I was playing a role. In a way, comedians would do a better job than us. It is not difficult per se. It's when we leave that it's complicated. You need 24 to 48 hours to recover."
She gathered key information ahead of the July 10, 1985, bombing that killed Portuguese freelance photographer Fernando Pereira. She left for Israel before the attack, then fled to France just as police were about to arrest her - and disappeared from public view.
!['People talked to her': Former French secret service agent Christine Cabon.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711041901im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/7/m/c/5/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gx7iuw.png/1499675493013.jpg)
There were unsubstantiated claims she had undergone facial reconstruction surgery. But ahead of tomorrow's anniversary of the bombing, Fairfax NZ tracked her down to a small village of 250 people in south-west France, where the 66-year-old is a respected local councillor.
Many locals know her past, but they know her better for her active involvement in the life of the village over the past 10 years. Mayor Aime Soumet describes her as "a very precious resource for the community".
He has discussed the Rainbow Warrior affair with Cabon: "The attack was an interference on New Zealand soil, for sure."
![The entrance to the village of Lasseubetat in south-west France, population 250.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711041901im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/7/m/c/6/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gx7iuw.png/1499675493013.jpg)
Rainbow Warrior crew members who survived the bombing said this weekend that they were still angry about the terrorist actions of the French government, but accepted that Cabon and her co-conspirators would never face justice.
First mate Martini Gotje said he would never shake Cabon's hand: "I will never forget."
!['A very precious resource': Locals in the small French village where Christine Cabon lives are aware of her past.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711041901im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/7/m/c/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gx7iuw.png/1499675493013.jpg)
After her name became public in the police inquiry, Cabon was unable to continue working in the French secret service as an undercover agent. But she was awarded France's Legion d'Honneur medal and served out her career in back-office roles. She retired eight years ago to the tiny village of Lasseubetat.
![Former Auckland detective superintendent Allan Galbraith was officer in charge of the Rainbow Warrior investigation.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711041901im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/7/m/c/i/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gx7iuw.png/1499675493013.jpg)
Though cagey at first, Cabon eventually provided details of her infiltration of Greenpeace. She stood by her subterfuge, saying military officers "can find themselves in situations they hadn't wished for" and cited her contractual obligation to the army, which forbids her speaking for 50 years after seeing active service. Yet to New Zealanders, she conceded, "we are the terrorists".
"Whoever ordered the mission, whatever the reasons, good or bad ... what we did, it's called an attack."
![Christine Cabon in 1985.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711041901im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/7/o/a/p/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gx7iuw.png/1499675493013.jpg)
Sitting down this week for a more detailed interview with a reporter for the French newspaper La Republique des Pyrenees and the Sunday Star-Times, she acknowledged the bombing - an attack by a "friendly country" - was "a trauma" for New Zealand.
The death of Pereira should never have happened, she said. "But it's too late to go back in time.
![Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior after the bombing in 1985.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711041901im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/7/l/i/k/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gx7iuw.png/1499675493013.jpg)
"My job was what it was. I entered the army to prevent international and national conflict because my family, originally from Alsace, suffered from the [Second World] war," she added.
French divers attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in a mission to disrupt Greenpeace protests against French nuclear tests on Mururoa Atoll. Numerous agents took part, but only two - Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur - stood trial. Despite receiving 7 to 10-year prison sentences, they served less than two years on Hao Atoll, a military base in French Polynesia.
![Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira, who was killed in the bombing carried out by French commandos.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170711041901im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/x/7/l/i/l/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gx7iuw.png/1499675493013.jpg)
Gotje was aboard the Rainbow Warrior when the bombs went off.
He said the bombing was an attack not just on Greenpeace but on all of New Zealand: "They come in and act as if they own the world - typical nuclear-weapon state behaviour."
Asked if he'd like to see Cabon face justice, Gotje said: "From my heart I would say yes, but from my head I would say, well, it's not going to happen."
Cabon's vague statements of regret meant little to him: "In the meantime Fernando's kids grew up without him, and she was part of the team that murdered him."
But his anger is mostly focused on the French government: "They used people to do the dirty work for them."
If he were ever to meet Cabon, "I won't shake her hand, but I also won't biff her on the nose".
Greenpeace New Zealand head Russel Norman said it was "sad" Cabon couldn't see her actions were wrong. "You have one life on this planet and it's pretty short. And is that really how you want to use it: helping to kill a peace activist?"
He said it was up to the New Zealand government whether it wanted to ask police to reopen the inquiry into Cabon.
Retired detective superintendent Allan Galbraith, who tracked Cabon to Israel, said he didn't expect to see her extradited.
But he would like to talk to her: "I'd be interested to know what she knew about what her information was leading to. Whether she knew there was going to be a sabotage of a ship or whether she knew much less than that."
"It was a surprise to find her in Israel, " Galbraith says now. "I think the Israelis were very well aware she was an intelligence agent."
On July 26, two days after New Zealand police issued a warrant for her arrest, the Auckland Star broke the news that a Greenpeace volunteer claiming to be an archaeology student was an undercover agent instrumental in the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Then the rival Herald reported that detectives were en route to Israel.
She disappeared the same day. Arboit suspects the French disguised her and flew her back home: "Once in France, she was untouchable."
French authorities would have considered the mission successful, regardless of Pereira's death, Arboit says. "If it wasn't for him, no one would be still talking about the Rainbow Warrior, " he adds, bluntly. "What went wrong was that Prieur and Mafart were arrested."
Greenpeace International executive director Bunny McDiarmid was a deckhand on the Rainbow Warrior on the night. She said justice was "never served" for Pereira's death: "We will never forget what happened that night 32 years ago. But most of all we will never give up."
To honour Pereira was to continue his work for the green and peaceful future he believed in, she said.
Sunday Star-Times