General Pierre de Villiers, left, French Army Chief of Staff, with Bernard Bajolet, head of France's DGSE external intelligence agency, after a war cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Sept. 25. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen The first wave of US airstrikes in Syria last month targeted a former French intelligence officer who defected to Al Qaeda, Mitchell Prothero of McClatchy reports.

European intelligence officials told McClatchy that the French officer, whose identity is a secret, was the highest-ranking defector to join Al Qaeda. He reportedly defected from either French military intelligence or from France’s foreign intelligence agency (DGSE).



A French defense ministry source denied the report to Reuters.

Prothero reports that the agent-turned-terrorist was among the targets when eight locations occupied by the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syria affiliate, were hit by 47 cruise missiles.

US officials have previously said that the airstrikes targeted members of Khorasan, a group of Al Qaeda veterans dispatched to Syria to plan attacks on Western targets.

However, the "former French officer may have been a more important target," Prothero reports, and the officer is believed to have survived.

One European intelligence official told McClatchy the man was "highly trained in Western intelligence tradecraft and explosives.”

Hundreds of Westerners have joined extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, but the recruitment of a Western intelligence official is especially startling.

Another intelligence official, who learned of the man from casual conversation (as opposed to an official briefing), said it was the first time he had heard of “someone with legitimate security clearance and Western-style vetting and training" defect to an extremist group.

US and French officials declined to discuss the agent, and one European official called the agent's existence “absolutely top secret.”

“I’m rather appalled I’m even having this conversation,” he added.

The US continues to carry out airstrikes against ISIS and Nusra Front positions in Iraq and Syria.

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