Malotru or Phenomenon will no longer go to 141, boulevard Mortier in the 20th arrondissement of Paris to provide foreign intelligence to France. The characters played by Mathieu Kassovitz and Sara Giraudeau contributed with the Canal + series 

Le Bureau des Légendes

 popularized the headquarters of the DGSE, General Directorate of External Security. This Friday, the Ministry of the Armed Forces announced that the French spies would leave their Parisian premises in 2028 to settle at Fort Neuf de Vincennes. The surface of the future headquarters of the DGSE will be 20 hectares, double the current capacities.

"Intelligence is a decisive strategic function for our defense and our national security and an essential asset for detecting, preventing and hindering threats", specifies the ministry, evoking the need to ensure the place of the DGSE "among the best services of world intelligence ”.

An investment of 1.3 billion

The spies were informed this Thursday by President Emmanuel Macron, during a visit to their premises.

"The increase in the workforce of the DGSE and the deployment of new technical capacities are hampered by the limits of its current site on Boulevard Mortier", the press release added, describing a "fragmented and aging" pavilion.

The move - an investment of 1.3 billion euros - will also "strengthen synergies between intelligence and operations" and promote exchanges with other intelligence agencies in France (domestic, military, counter-interference, cyber, etc.).

Work is expected to start in 2024.

"An agency whose name we do not pronounce"

The announcement recalls the very recent move of the judicial police from the legendary 36 quai des Orfèvres to the Porte de Clichy.

This former barracks, which briefly became a prison during the Second World War, had housed in 1946 the External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service (SDECE), which became DGSE.

The locals experienced the Cold War, decolonization, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the emergence of China as a world power.

141 boulevard Mortier, “it's like 36, it's a place steeped in history.

Now, it was no longer suited to current needs, ”summarizes Alain Chouet, former senior manager of the house.

“It is an agency whose name we do not mention.

So we say Mortier, the box, the agency, the swimming pool, ”referring to the nearby Tourelles swimming pool, underlines Alexandre Papaemmanuel, professor at Sciences Po Paris, an intelligence specialist.

Our espionage file

The Bureau of Legends, a

series devoted to agents who work under false identities, has greatly popularized its vast immaculate walls studded with cameras.

Although it focuses on a small service, which represents only a tiny part of the agency's activities, the series has given a face to a canteen, a crisis room with blue seats, multiple secure doors, a partition almost paranoid.

The fruit of a lot of documentary work which has renewed the image of the house.

After five seasons and an exhibition at La Villette, “Mortier” has “entered a sort of collective unconscious”, insists Alexandre Papaemmanuel in this regard.

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