A member of the French secret service team that carried out the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 has been killed in a plane crash in the French Alps, police and local media reported.
Xavier Maniguet (62) was one of four men aboard the yacht Ouvea that smuggled explosives used in Operation Satanic, which sank the Greenpeace flagship in a bid to stall protests against French nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
Maniguet, a flying instructor with many hours of experience in mountains, died with a 76-year-old pupil on Sunday.
They had just dropped off a skier on the 3400m-high Etendard glacier near the resort of Saint-Saint-Sorlin-d'Arves, and were taking off again when a gust of wind hit their craft, the gendarmerie said.
Maniguet had been at the controls of the single-engine Jodel aeroplane when the accident happened, according to French media.
Maniguet was a reserve officer in the French navy, an expert diver, parachutist, acrobatic pilot and sailor, wrote several books on survival in extreme conditions and on the biology of sharks.
He trained as a doctor specialising in diving injuries and aeronautical health.
The press described him as an "honorable correspondent" - a casual - for the French foreign espionage service, the DGSE.
His publisher said he was "a colonel who has worked for the French services," with no elaboration.
Maniguet chartered Ouvea in New Caledonia and sailed it to New Zealand with three other agents.
The yacht carried two explosive charges that were hidden in an inflatable life-raft container, as well as a Zodiac inflatable boat, outboard motor and underwater rebreathing apparatus bought in Europe.
The gear was handed over to two agents who were charged with co-ordinating the operation.
They then handed the gear to an assault team that attached the mines to the Greenpeace flagship, sinking it in Auckland harbour on July 10, 1985, but inadvertently killing Dutch-Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira, who had gone below deck to retrieve his camera.
Ouvea had fled on July 9 and landed on Norfolk Island four days later.
The yacht was searched but there was no time to analyse the evidence before the crew were allowed to go.
Maniguet was questioned at length in Sydney by New Zealand and Australian police.
He said he knew nothing about the operation and styled himself as a rich travelling man who wanted to go sailing in the South Pacific and had picked up the three others as crew.
As rumours about Maniguet's role amplified in the French press, he wrote a book, L'Aventure pour L'Aventure in 1986 to shore up this tale of a hard-living buccaneer who was innocent of involvement in the Rainbow Warrior saga.
But in 2007, he published another book, French Bomber in which he admitted L'Aventure had been a piece of disinformation to support "official cover".
In his book, Maniguet provided no details that add to the history of the affair but accused Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur - the false "Tourenge" couple arrested and sentenced by New Zealand for their part in the mission - of making crass operational mistakes.
He also pointed the finger at the French defence ministry, prime minister's office and presidential palace, bitterly accusing them of giving up the names of agents to New Zealand and leaking them to the press in order to save their skins.
"We were grassed up, utterly and shamefully," he said in an interview with Le Parisien.
"In all Western democracies, politicians are supposed to protect their secret agents. That's why, today, I would like the file to be declassified to establish the responsibility of the people who handed up the names of the secret agents."
