An Officer and a Spy

Two months later, in March 1894, an agent of the Sûreté, François Guénée, acting on our behalf, met the Spanish military attaché, the marquis de Val Carlos, a regular informant of the Statistical Section. Among other intelligence, the marquis warned M. Guénée of a German agent employed on the General Staff. His exact words were: ‘Be sure to tell Major Henry on my behalf (and he may repeat it to the colonel) that there is reason to intensify surveillance at the Ministry of War, since it emerges from my last conversation with the German attachés that they have an officer on the General Staff who is keeping them admirably well informed. Find him, Guénée: if I knew his name, I would tell you!’

I subsequently met the marquis de Val Carlos myself in June 1894. He told me that a French officer who worked specifically in the Second Department of the General Staff — or at any rate had worked there in March and April — had supplied information to the German and Italian military attachés. I asked for the name of this officer, but he could not tell me. He said: ‘I am sure of what I say but I do not know the officer’s name.’ Following my report of this conversation to Colonel Sandherr, new orders were issued for a much more rigorous surveillance. It was during this period, on 25 September, that the bordereau that forms the basis of the Dreyfus case came into our possession.

(Signed)

Henry, Hubert-Joseph (Major)

The next three documents are original, glued-together papers purloined from Schwartzkoppen’s waste-paper basket: raw intelligence presumably included to buttress Henry’s statement. The first is written in German, in Schwartzkoppen’s own hand, and appears to be a draft memorandum, either for his own use or for his superiors in Berlin, jotted down after he was first approached by the would-be traitor. He has torn it into extra fine pieces; there are tantalising gaps:

Doubt. . Proof. . Letter of service. . A dangerous situation for myself with a French officer. . Must not conduct negotiations personally. . Bring what he has. . Absolute. . Intelligence Bureau. . no relation. . Regiment. . only importance. . Leaving the ministry. . Already elsewhere. .

The second reassembled document is a letter to Schwartzkoppen from the Italian military attaché, Major Alessandro Panizzardi. It is written in French, dated January 1894, and begins My dear Bugger.

I have written to Colonel Davignon again, and that is why, if you have the opportunity to broach this question with your friend, I ask you to do so in such a way that Davignon doesn’t come to hear of it. . for it must never be revealed that one has dealings with another.

Goodbye my good little dog,

Your A

Davignon is the deputy head of the Second Department — the officer responsible for briefing the various foreign military attachés and arranging their invitations to manoeuvres, receptions, lectures and so forth. I know him well. His integrity is, as they say, above reproach.