Mr. Holm retired last year while waiting for the inspector general to compete his report. He is a famous figure to his fellow cold warriors. He was flying into Zaire -- then the Belgian Congo -- during a counterinsurgency operation in 1962 when his light plane disappeared from the radar. He was presumed lost. But he lived, though horribly burned and permanently scarred, and was nursed by villagers who pulled him from the wreckage.

The wreckage of the Paris operation goes beyond Mr. Holm's career. Joseph DeTrani, chief of the Europe division of the C.I.A.'s clandestine service, has been placed in administrative limbo and at least four covert operators have been recalled from Paris. The inspector general's report will be shared with the congressional intelligence committees, some of whose members are likely to use it as a club with which to bash the C.I.A. for its work in the field of economic intelligence.

Officials familiar with the report said the basic facts of the case were accurately disclosed by France's Interior Minister, Charles Pasqua, in February 1995. In interviews, intelligence officials added details to the story, which was a major embarrassment for the C.I.A. when the French revealed it.

In 1993, R. James Woolsey, then a new Director of Central Intelligence, publicly announced that economic intelligence was a major new priority for the C.I.A. This naturally entailed spying on allies like Japan, Germany and France. The French had been particularly aggressive in spying on American executives -- bugging and stealing from hotel rooms, for example. "No more Mr. Nice Guy," Mr. Woolsey warned in a speech.

Soon the C.I.A.'s Paris station had at least five operatives -- four officers posing as diplomats and a woman posing as the Paris representative of a private American foundation -- working on a two-pronged project. They were assigned to uncover French positions on world trade talks and to counter French economic espionage against American companies.