The contract killing scandal rocking France’s MI6 - The Sunday Story
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
It's the trial rocking France's intelligence service. Two guards who had always dreamt of going under cover were allegedly tricked into a plot to kill a ‘Mossad agent’, who was nothing of the sort. It's an unbelievable tale of freemasons, fake missions - and real violence, where personal grudges are dressed up as matters of national security.
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Guest: Adam Sage, Paris correspondent, The Times.
Host: Rosie Wright.
Producer: Dave Creasey.
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Read more: Freemasons, bored spies and a murder-for-hire scandal at France’s MI6
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Sunday. I'm Rosie Wright. |
| 0:10.5 | A scandal is rocking the heart of France's intelligence world. Two men, guards at the country's equivalent of MI6, were dreaming |
| 0:23.3 | of the world of James Bond with high-stakes undercover missions. Instead, they found themselves on |
| 0:29.6 | routine duty, pretty bored. So when a top-secret assignment came their way, sanctioned they were told at the highest levels of the French state, it felt like everything they'd be waiting for. |
| 0:47.3 | Track down a target and kill them. The alleged hit? An operative link to Mossad, the stuff of movies. It sounded like the real deal. |
| 1:00.0 | The trouble is, it wasn't. |
| 1:10.0 | What followed was something altogether more unusual and far more troubling. |
| 1:15.6 | A story involving false identities, shadowy networks, even links to Freemasonry, |
| 1:22.6 | and at its centre, a contract killing that appears to have been built on illusion. |
| 1:29.1 | And it's all ended up this week in a Paris criminal court. |
| 1:45.7 | The story today. |
| 2:15.6 | The contract killing scandal rocking France's MI6. It really started with a father who dropped his daughter off at nursery school. |
| 2:17.6 | And after dropping her off, |
| 2:20.1 | he noticed this Renault-Cleo sitting in the street with two men in it dressed very strangely. |
| 2:22.3 | They had black hoods on, gloves, |
| 2:24.6 | and thick black coats, |
| 2:26.0 | which was strange because it was a hot day in Paris in the autumn. |
| 2:30.1 | That's Adam Sage, the Times' Paris correspondent. |
| 2:34.4 | He thought it was suspicious, and he called the police. |
| 2:37.4 | He was actually worried that maybe they were targeting in some way the nursery school |
| 2:41.7 | that he'd docked off his daughter at. |
| 2:43.4 | The police went to check it out, found the men sitting in the Renaulteo, as he'd said, |
... |
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