On October 13th (2006) I met with my French asset LIDDY. Following up on our last meeting, during which he reluctantly named Thierry Lacoste as the individual trying to dig dirt on Jean-Luc Allavena,(JLA), I asked LIDDY for more. Again, he was hesitant, but he finally came out with it: “A constituted power is attacking JLA to destabilize him.”
What power? I asked.
“Very strong, very high up,” said LIDDY. “A real power.”
Under further questioning, LIDDY insinuated that is was coming from Freemasons in Paris. He alluded to a “senior Monegasque close to the Prince who travels regularly between Monaco and Paris” and “a position will be taken next week” and “they are awaiting his arrival from Paris to issue instructions.”
LIDDY was vague and fragmented because that’s all he knew, but those were the verbatim notes I scribbled into my journal. LIDDY’s information was extremely important based upon what would soon transpire. LIDDY was also terribly discomfited. He believed we were playing with fire because—mindful that we operated in Albert’s service, not JLA’s—he was not sure whose side the Prince was on.
Next day, October 20th, the day began with a 7 a.m. rendezvous in M-Base with JLA. I brought him up to date on Narmino. As before, JLA favored confronting him and resolving the matter conclusively. That was JLA’s management style: Decide, execute, move on—not belabor the issue for almost a year. Bad news does not improve with age.
Claude Palmero, meantime, almost suffered a coronary over the increased invoice from me that the Prince had approved. JLA’s assurance of its necessity did not ease Palmero’s pain, especially as Lacoste—with whom Palmero was close—continued to sputter dark noises about me.
October 30th was a pivotal day for our intelligence service, for the Prince’s reign and for Monaco.
As LIDDY had forecast, the knives were plunged: Albert abruptly fired JLA as his chef de cabinet. Apparently, a journalist from Le Figaro informed the Prince that JLA told him he worked for a Prince who did not care and that he, JLA, was weary from doing all the work.
I very much doubt this is what JLA said, even though the words ascribed to him were true.
Lacoste and Valeri and others had been trying their best to dig dirt on JLA—and could not find any. So they did the next best thing: They orchestrated a campaign to strike at the Prince’s Achilles heel—his hubris. Any question about Albert’s inability to lead was a sore point for him; Thierry Lacoste and his cohorts knew exactly how to play that card against JLA.
The Prince could abide criminal behavior among his ministers, his courtiers and his cronies, but the moment someone was merely rumored to have spoken negatively about him he would blow a major gasket.
Consequently, in haste and anger, Albert fired the most competent courtier in his service.
I know this for certain: JLA was the victim of a smear campaign that suckered the Prince.
Albert fired JLA in a five-minute meeting, leaving no room for an explanation, as he had to depart for yet another trip, this time to Paris and New York. Truth is that confrontations made the Prince extremely nervous.
Albert told JLA, “You will be treated fairly,” requesting he work out departure “details” with weasels Claude Palmero and Thierry Lacoste. And then the Prince was gone, leaving rumor and innuendo about JLA to sweep like a tsunami across the principality.
But how fair was it to leave JLA humiliated and embarrassed in front of his countrymen?
Albert might have allowed him the dignity of resignation, with a smooth transition. Instead, JLA was caught in the vagueness of the Prince’s action. Had the Prince meant for him to leave the Palace immediately, that minute—or work through the week to tie up outstanding matters on his desk?
Albert left it ambiguous, as usual. JLA chose the latter, more honorable option, and worked through the most difficult week of his life.
I’d waited my whole life to witness someone behave the way Rudyard Kipling advocated in his classic poem If.
That was JLA: If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…
I scribbled this observation into my journal: The good news: A2 finally had the balls to fire someone. The bad news: He fired the WRONG person. Frightened of being upstaged by JLA, A2 behaved like a crybaby. JLA was the backbone of A2’s reign, honest and incorruptible, slogging away from seven a.m. till midnight most weekdays while A2 was off gallivanting, having convinced himself years ago that attending parties was “working.”
JLA worked hard until Friday evening when, head held high, he left a clean desk and closed his office door on a Palace where only weasels were left in control.
When I spoke to JLA by phone on November 12th, we both knew exactly what had happened, why and by whom.
On November 29th I found the Prince by phone on the road in Le Var, heading to a “foie gras evening.”
He said, “I’ve been meaning to call and tell you about JLA” (this was one month after the dismissal of a man whose mission was critical to my own.) “I couldn’t continue,” Albert mumbled, “had to do something.”
As had been the case since 1992, I received a Christmas card from Albert with a printed signature.
Far more meaningful to me this Christmas, 2006, was a handwritten card I received from JLA: Dear Robert, It has been great to work with you and I am very proud of all our accomplishments!
The new year begin with me picking up the thread after Thierry Lacoste and Claude Palmero attempted an intervention and, without Prince Albert’s authorization, tried to terminate the Monaco Intelligence Service.
Fast Forward Five Months
By mid-May of 2007 it seemed clear the Prince tolerated us merely as a token service, disinterested in our work, not doing anything about the shady people who continued to prosper and proliferate in his principality.
This was not fine with me.
We had been telling other intelligence services in earnest of the Prince’s seriousness about “putting morality, honesty and ethics at the forefront of my government and my cabinet.”
It all sounded good, but it wasn’t the truth.
Truth was, the Prince was doing nothing about the pervasive money laundering and numerous shady dealings. It was just too much of a burden for him—and he finally reached the point where he didn’t want to even hear about it anymore.
I had not signed on to be the Prince’s PR spin-meister.
That day, we stopped creating new liaison partnerships. It was time to wait, and watch, in passive mode, to see what happened next.
Somewhere in my internet surfing, trying to find an explanation, I came upon The Five Dysfunctions of Leadership:
Absence of trust
Fear of conflict
Lack of commitment
Avoidance of accountability
Inattention to results
Sadly, I concluded the Prince suffered from all five.
His leadership style in a word: Hedonistic.
Happy Anniversary
As we approached our fifth anniversary in service to the prince, I drafted a re-definition of our mission:
We respond to requests from the Sovereign for briefings (through liaison partners) and requirements (investigations and operations).
We maintain relationships with foreign intelligence services for the purpose of assisting the Sovereign with briefings, shared intelligence, and joint investigations/operations; we also respond to requests of services with which we liaise, if they serve Monaco’s sovereign interests.
We grow our Micro-Europe intelligence club to enhance deep cooperation among micro-states.
I wanted to discuss this redefinition with Albert, to allay his fears about our intentions about Monegasques in important posts, but he had become elusive.
Thus, when I arrived in Monaco on June 13th I came prepared to dissolve Monaco’s intelligence service—and move on with my life.
On June 16th, exactly five years after the Prince hired me to be his spymaster, I was in Hotel Columbus, ninth floor, awaiting an elevator to descend. (We had already given up M-Base and secreted our files away for safekeeping) when Albert phoned. “Sorry,” he said, “I’ve been very busy and I’m about to leave for Paris and Marchais.”
I told Albert I would depart for Malta next morning for a meeting of the Columbus Group. Honest to goodness, he said, “What’s that?”
I reminded him of our association of intelligence services from the European micro-states, pointing out that San Marino would attend for the first time. An excellent addition, I added, because it was in San Marino’s banks that corrupt Monegasque officials hid their dirty money.
The Prince did not know quite what to say, so he said nothing.
“Shall I keep going?” I added.
“Yes,” he replied without enthusiasm. “Keep going.”
“You know,” I said, “it was five years ago today that you asked me to do this job. Happy anniversary.”
“Happy anniversary.” He sounded robotic.
Absent Albert
Word began to leak all was not well in Monaco.
On July 22nd. the (UK) Sunday Times published a story by its Paris correspondent Matthew Campbell titled “Monaco in a Mood Over Absent Albert”:
The jet-setting ruler has come under attack for spending too much time away from his tiny country on the sun-kissed Riviera.
The “green prince,” who used to be seen on a bicycle or at the wheel of an electric car is also being lampooned for using a gas-guzzling Mercedes as well as a helicopter and a private jet to get around while lecturing his citizens about their emissions.
Criticism of the centuries-old Grimaldi clan is rare to the extent of being considered almost blasphemous in Monaco. But Albert has become the target of Internet jibes, and last week a magazine labeled his country a “ghost ship” because he was so often away from the Palace…
“The prince is more interested in multiple conquests than the conquest of his people’s hearts,” wrote one critic last week…
Albert is making himself scarce, becoming, as one report put it, “more and more of a distant figure.” By all accounts, the “falling out of love” is mutual, and Albert is just as tired of his subjects as they are of him…
“He needs to re-launch his reign,” said Frederic Laurent.
Instead, the Prince launched himself to the United States for another vacation—a sweep through the five American states he had not yet visited, so he could say he’d been to all 50.
I was supposed to meet Albert in Iowa. But I’d had just about enough and my quarterly invoice was still unpaid. And then I learned that a pair of the usual hangers-on who liked to party had copped a ride on the Prince’s plane to Des Moines, where Albert and I had planned to powwow. I realized Albert would skirt around his pledge to talk business with me. So I bagged it.
Clearly, Albert’s intelligence service no longer mattered to him. He probably just wanted it to go away without him having to confront the issue.
Finally, on August 2nd, the Prince phoned me from Arkansas. This was his way of confronting the issue: “Let’s continue on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
Clearly, he had no sense of the structure and network that had been established over a five-year period.
“That won’t work,” I replied. “My focus is largely keeping alive relationships with our liaison partners from twenty countries.”
The Prince said, “Twenty countries?”
“Yes,” I replied. “The United States and Britain, France and Italy, the micro-states of Europe, the Bulgarians, the Poles, the Romanians, the Slovenians…” I trailed off. “You approved these contacts, met all these people—remember?”
Albert was a loss. He either did not remember or did not want to remember.
“But he hasn’t got anything on,” uttered the boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s classic The Emperor’s New Clothes…