In my father's library was the best selling book TOPAZ, by Leon Uris, made famous by the Hitchcock espionage thriller released in 1969. The handwritten inscription on the inside cover states "This book, "Topaz," was written by Phillipe L. Thyrand de Vosjoli - who allowed Leon Uris to put his name on it, as author. Uris cheated de Vosjoli out of almost all his share of the money - WMS." My father was close to de Vosjoli and fumed at how he was treated by Uris.
De Vosjoli was at the center of a 1962 spy scandal known as the Martel Affair. A Soviet defector alerted the CIA that the French intelligence services had been penetrated by a Russian double agent. The French rejected the claim insisting there was no Soviet agent in their service but suspicions about the integrity of the French SDECE (later renamed DGSE) brought U.S., French and NATO operations to a halt.
Phillipe de Vosjoli was a SDECE agent who knew Winston Scott from their prior assignments in London and Paris. They trusted each other and both believed in the legitimacy of the double agent. When de Vosjoli was asked by his superiors to produce the identity of an agent involved in a Cuban operation, he refused. He anticipated that his source would become the target of Soviet retribution. Under pressure, Phillipe reached out to Win for help. Win promtly responded and managed to exfiltrate de Vosjoli from the French service into the CIA. Phillipe de Vosjoli became the only French intelligence agent in history to defect to the United States.
In 1968 De Vosjoli went public with an explosive front page article in LIFE magazine. I met Phillipe de Vosjoli a number of times when he came to visit my father in Mexico. I remember their conversation about a character in the Hitchcock film called "American Agent" that was inspired by my father's role in the affair.
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