Le Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE) had been an important organ of French intelligence since the Liberation, but there was a considerable concern that French intelligence could be compromised after five years of socialist or, at one point, communist rule. At a critical moment, even, in the aftermath of the Indochina Affair there was a scare about communist agents in French intelligence compromising the entire intelligence network of SDECE to the Soviets, which had fortunately proven to be a false alarm.

Still, the new Laniel government took the lesson to heart. SDECE as of 1953 reported directly to the President of the Council, a state of affairs that Gaullists believed impossible to sustain-- with the instability in the Fourth Republic, the President of the Council was a seat that changed hands frequently. While now occupied by RNR, at the whim of the National Assembly it could be occupied by Benoît Frachon in a week's time and a list of French agents in Europe could be mailed to Stalin himself.

The decision was thus made to suborn the SDECE to the Ministère des Armées, at present René Pleven, and to begin the process of militarizing the organization. Colonel Paul Grossin, at present operating in the field in Greece with the Americans, was recalled to Paris via a flight from Athens, and briefed by Pleven personally. He was to take over SDECE and run it like a military unit. They would be answerable to the Ministère des Armées and the President of the Council, but no longer tendered reports to the Premier or took his direct orders-- an important separation, in the Gaullist view, that helped to secure the agency against domestic political turmoil.

Colonel Grossin, flush with counter-insurgency and counter-espionage experience gained through a difficult year in Greece, was given carte blanche to clean house in SDECE. An internal audit was to be conducted, sweeping SDECE for infiltration and establishing safeguards to prevent future infiltration. A new regime of background checks was to be developed that would be targeted specifically at identifying manufactured backstories or such false tales of one's background and which would spare no expense in investigating potential new agents or staff. It was Colonel Grossin's intention to make SDECE airtight, and to purge it of any infiltrators.

(( Operation is to purge the SDECE of any infiltrators, pls get rid of them. ))