The author of the following contribution to the 2009 MIVILUDES report is Brice Hortefeux, who was Minister of the Interior at the time and is one of many charming characters we find in high places in France today. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Hortefeux is a friend and longstanding ally of President Nicolas Sarkozy. In June 2010, Hortefeux was fined 2,750 euros for racial insults against a party activist of Algerian descent. The incident went like this:

BBC 4 June 2010

Mr Hortefeux was joking with a small group of activists from the ruling UMP party in south-west France.

Immediately before Mr Hortefeux's controversial remark, one activist is heard saying: "Amin is a Catholic. He eats pork and drinks alcohol."

Mr Hortefeux then says: "Ah, well that won't do at all. He doesn't match the prototype."

A woman is then heard to say: "He is one of us... he is our little Arab."

The interior minister then says: "We always need one. It's when there are lots of them that there are problems."

That's just a little background into one of the people leading France's modern-day militarized 'Department of morality and normality'. Here is Hortefeux, in an appendix to the 2009 MIVILUDES report, describing the organisation and role of CAIMADES, the 'anti-cult' special police unit created to give MIVILUDES some teeth:

The services of the DGPN [General Directorate of the National Police] (DSCP/SDIG [the Sub-directorate for General Intelligence]) produced a general study on new therapies (already sent to MIVILUDES). This same service has continued its work of collecting information and intelligence for operational purposes, notably of the investigative services, thanks to a network of support staff within each departmental service which reports on cultic activities. This work is ultimately destined to feed CAIMADES, a group specializing in this area and newly created within the 'Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons' (OCRCVP) at the DCPJ ['Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire'].

Operating within the DCPJ, the OCRCVP, created by the decree of 6 May 2006, was empowered to fight against cultic abuses constituting criminal offenses. Until 1 September 2009, one of the criminal investigative groups of this service was specifically charged with centralising information and processing court records related to this matter. The Minister of the Interior, in two memos circulated on 25 February 2008 and 23 January 2009, reminded officials of the new legal arsenal at their disposal for fighting against cultic abuses. He committed to a coordinated action on the matter, established specific guidelines in the fight and expressed a wish to bring new impetus to the activities of the various state services in this matter. [...]

MIVILUDES can rely on scores of Gendarmerie to protect France's children from eeeevil 'cults'

The main objective of this unit is to ensure compliance with the provisions of the About-Picard law of 12 June 2001 relating to subjection to mental manipulation, facilitate meetings for characterizing these notions [of what constitutes "subjection" and "mental manipulation"] and the relevant elements of criminal offenses. To this end, CAIMADES is at the disposal of the territorial services of the police and gendarmerie to provide them with methodological (training, experience sharing, situational analysis) or operational assistance. These interventions can take the form of tips and expert advice in order to evaluate whether registered complaints or information received meet legal qualifications.

The unit is intended to facilitate the implementation of specific techniques in conducting investigations relating to acts that may constitute cultic abuses. It is capable of acting alone or in co-referral with those services initially involved during a criminal investigation. Experts assigned to the unit act in these proceedings under the guide of requisitions made by the prosecution or 'rogatory commissions' initiated by the investigating judge. It is certainly desirable that the cell intervenes alongside investigators from the beginning of inquiry, but its assistance can be obtained at any stage during the inquiry and especially during arrests and while in police custody. Such cooperation of experts, on the fringes of the investigation, is readily available and naturally enables better management of cult followers or minors as the situation requires. The implementation of CAIMADES as an entity of the OCRVP enables it to equally benefit from the operational capacities of the overall central and territorial services of judicial police.

A few months ago, the above mentioned Brice Hortefeux, now a senior adviser to Sarkozy, was pulled in for questioning by police after he phoned another comrade of Sarkozy's, Thierry Gaubert, to warn him that the police were onto his role in collecting suitcases of cash from banks in Switzerland to finance Edouard Balladur's unsuccessful 1995 presidential election campaign. Balladur's campaign spokesman? Nicolas Sarkozy. Dubbed 'Karachigate' by the French press, the Swiss cash was kickbacks from illegal arms sales to Pakistan in the 1990s. For Hortefeux to have been able to warn Gaubert - and therefore Sarkozy, we presume - he must have had inside knowledge of the advanced stage of the judicial investigation... being former Minister of the Interior probably helped. Just about everyone in Sarkozy's entourage has been implicated or officially charged in this latest major corruption scandal to hit France, including the president's best man, Nicolas Bazire, who was Balladur's campaign manager in 1995.

'hmmm... now where did I leave that suitcase of cash...' Brice Hortefeux

We say "latest major corruption scandal to hit France" because the current fallout from 'Karachigate' is practically a rerun of another kickbacks-for-arms scandal involving the country's top brass in the 1990s. 'Angolagate', aka the 'Mitterrand - Pasqua affair', saw just about everybody and his dog in the docks over the illicit sale of $790 million of Russian weapons and equipment to Angola from 1993 all the way up to the year 2000, fuelling a civil war that killed over half a million people, left the country in ruins and ensured that French companies, in league with dictator Dos Santos against the Unita rebels, could continue to plunder Angola's vast oil and diamond wealth. Despite a UN embargo blocking the sale of weapons to Angola, Pierre Falcone, a French businessman, arranged deals through his company Brenco with none other than the Israeli 'Lord of War' Arcady Gaydamak to ship enormous quantities of military hardware to the dictator - it remains the single largest racket of illegal arms trafficking ever (well, that we know of).

Of course, this couldn't be done without opening doors, so Falcone showered millions of dollars (in more suitcases of cash) upon power brokers in France. Guess who was named by Falcone as one of the more than 40 French politicians to win a lucky potluck suitcase? That's right... Georges Fenech, who was a magistrate in Lyons in 1997 at the time, soon to be made a judge, and was busy prosecuting his war on minorities. He denied everything of course and, like most of the French Mafia implicated in Angolagate, got away with it.