On July 10, 1985, French agents sank the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior at Marsden Wharf in Auckland, New Zealand, in an operation code named Operation Satanique. France had tested nuclear weapons at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia since 1966, South Pacific nations had signed the Treaty of Rarotonga declaring a nuclear free zone, and Greenpeace, fresh from relocating about 300 Marshall Islanders from contaminated Rongelap Atoll, planned to lead a flotilla to Mururoa and land protesters. The DGSE’s Action Division sent agent Christine Cabon to volunteer in the Greenpeace office under a false name, a crew on the chartered yacht Ouvea to smuggle in limpet mines, and two officers, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, posing as Swiss honeymooners to deliver them to divers.

The first mine exploded at 11:38 pm and the second at 11:45 pm, drowning photographer Fernando Pereira, who had gone below for his cameras. A neighborhood watch noted the plate of the couple’s rented camper van, and police caught them. The yacht crew was released on Norfolk Island before evidence was ready, scuttled the Ouvea, and was picked up by the French submarine Rubis. France denied involvement until Prime Minister Laurent Fabius admitted the truth, and President Francois Mitterrand was later confirmed to have ordered the attack.

• New Zealand deliberately called the bombing a criminal breach of international law rather than terrorism.
• Prieur and Mafart pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received 10 year sentences.
• France threatened to block New Zealand’s farm exports to the European Economic Community, forcing a 1986 UN deal that moved the agents to Hao Atoll.
• France brought both agents home within two years, later paid New Zealand another $3.5 million, and paid Greenpeace over $8 million.
• In 2015 the diver Jean-Luc Kister apologized and called the mission a big, big failure.