The Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) has its head office in the arrondissement.
John E. McLaughlin, former director of the CIA, has claimed that the cooperation between the DGSE and the CIA "is one the best of the world".
In Paris, the Alliance Base is run by a General of the DGSE French intelligence agency, and gathers the CIA, the MI6, the BND, and Australian and Canadian intelligence agencies.
In 1985, agents of the DGSE, the primary foreign intelligence agency of France, bombed the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour.
On 8 July Pierre-Henri Guignard and an 11-person team of Direction Générale de la Securité Exterieure (DGSE) personnel boarded a C-130 Hercules transport in Évreux for the Brazilian city Manaus, landing the next day.
Greenpeace had planned to use the Rainbow Warrior as part of protest efforts over French nuclear testing at Moruroa, and DGSE divers sank the vessel by detonating mines against its hull while it was berthed in Auckland.