Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action
The Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (, Central Bureau of Intelligence and Operations), abbreviated BCRA, was the World War II-era forerunner of the SDECE, the French intelligence service. The BCRA was created by the Free French chief-of-staff in 1940, and it was first commanded, Major André Dewavrin, who had taken the "nom de guerre", "Colonel Passy". De Gaulle set up his Free French intelligence system to combine both military and political roles, including covert operations. He selected journalist Pierre Brossolette (1903-44) to head the Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action  (BCRA). The policy was reversed in 1943 by Emmanuel d'Astrier (1900-69), the interior minister, who insisted on civilian control of political intelligence. History. The organization was preceded by the Deuxième Bureau, which had been the French external military intelligence agency since 1871. Following the defeat of France in 1940, the Vichy France regime's intelligence service was organized within the Centre d’information gouvernemental ("Center for Government Information", CIG), under the direction of Admiral François Darlan. According to Colonel Louis Rivet, head of the Deuxième Bureau since 1936, shortly following the defeat of France in June 1940, he, Captain Paul  Paillole, and various members of the counter-intelligence service met at the Seminary of Bon-Encontre near Agen. With the assistance of General Maxime Weygand, they planned to revive French counter-intelligence against German domination. Colonel Rivet's memoirs remain controversial, but according to his account the official Bureau des Menées Antinationales ("Bureau of Anti-national Activities", BMA), officially an organization opposing communist activities and resistance efforts and accepted by the Germans under the terms of the armistice, was in reality a cover for the pursuit of collaborators with the Germans. The main vehicle for such operations was "L’entreprise des  Travaux Ruraux" (The Rural Work Enterprise), supposedly an agricultural engineering program, which performed clandestine counter-espionage under the command of Captain Paillole. In August 1942, the BMA was dissolved and recreated clandestinely as the Military Security Service by Pierre Laval and Admiral Darlan, who needed such an organisation to try to preserve Vichy French sovereignty. Paillole was given control of this new organization. Meanwhile, on 1 July 1940, the Free French government-in-exile in London created its own intelligence service. General Charles de Gaulle assigned Major Dewavrin to command the organization. Initially known as the "Service de Renseignements (SR )", the agency would change its name to "Bureau central de renseignements et d’action militaire (BCRAM)" on 15 April 1941, and again change to "Bureau central de renseignements et d’action (BCRA)" on 17 January 1942. Initially, it consisted of a single section: Subsequently, other sections were added: Upon the reconciliation between General Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle in 1943, the French national liberation committee ordered the fusion of the BCRA and the clandestine intelligence services of Rivet into a new structure, the (DGSS, ). Louis Rivet resigned in opposition to the new organization. In 1944 the DGSS became the "Direction générale  des études et recherches" (DGER, "General Directorate for Study and Research"), which became the "Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage" (SDECE, "Foreign Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service") in 1945.