A guest waiting for the meeting to begin joked, “I’m afraid to ask anybody what they do because then they might have to kill me.” In the same jocular vein, I asked the man near the bar, “Are you a spy?” He answered seriously, “We don’t use that word. Spies are the enemy. We call ourselves intelligence officers.”

I was at the monthly meeting of the New York City chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers to hear a talk by Colonel David Hunt, a retired senior officer of the CIA Directorate of Operations. I found the topic of discussion intriguing: “Corporate Espionage: Who Is Stealing America’s Secrets – Why and How They Are Doing It.”

The AFIO was founded 30 years ago, the local chapter only this year. According to its Web site, at www.afio.org, “AFIO’s mission is to build a public constituency for a sound and healthy U.S. intelligence system and capability. The organization’s educational focus is on fostering understanding of the vital importance and role of U.S. intelligence for U.S. National Security in historic, contemporary, and future contexts.”

It’s not difficult to understand why a chapter was needed in the hub of the press and broadcast industries during a time when the intelligence agencies have been cited for failures since September 11, 2001. I’ve always suspected that immeasurable harm was done to our intelligence services by the Watergate scandal. It’s no coincidence that the AFIO was established soon after that debacle in 1975, when public confidence in covert missions and the CIA sunk to a new low, thanks to that successful journalistic coup.

The president of the AFIO, S. Eugene (Gene) Poteat, opened the meeting, giving us historical background of national intelligence and its importance. “Major George Beckwith was the head of British intelligence operations in the Colonies at the end of the Revolutionary War. Upon his return to England, along with the defeated British army, Beckwith was quoted by the London newspapers as saying, ‘Washington did not really outfight the British he simply outspied us!’ Beckwith had just paid the greatest compliment that one spymaster can make to another.”

Mr. Poteat is a retired senior CIA official with many commendations over his 32 years of service in intelligence, but one would hardly identify the grandfatherly figure as a spymaster. In fact, none of the AFIO members, male or female, represented the archetypical James or Jane Bond. We were told, in essence, that James Bond could not do his job in America. It’s just too hard to keep secrets in this country.

Colonel Hunt then disclosed the identity of who’s responsible for stealing America’s secrets: It turns out that it’s our “alleged ally” France! What may be an open secret in the international intelligence community is still relatively unknown to John Q. Public. Apparently, the use of the French intelligence services to secure secrets from the briefcases of visiting American executives dates back to Charles de Gaulle, who authorized it. The “bag operations” finally came to the notice of our intelligence agency in the mid-1980s, when an executive noticed that copies of his documents, including handwritten notes, were in the hands of the French businessman with whom he was dealing. When asked how he got them, the Parisian admitted that a government official had given it to him.

Peter Schweizer of the New York Times wrote in a June 1992 article titled “Our Thieving Allies” that a former French intelligence director, Pierre Marion, told him that in 1981, he established, at the request of President Mitterrand, a branch to spy on American high-technology companies, and that as of then, it still existed.

After other former French operatives wrote books detailing the extent of the blatant espionage, America started to warn executives not to leave their briefcases behind in hotel rooms or surrender them at government agencies. The French, of course, are not the only allies engaging in industrial espionage, but they certainly are the most brazen.

Espionage, whether industrial or political, harms this nation, and we need a strong intelligence community to thwart it. Colonel Hunt said that when we hear complaints about the failure of intelligence on 9/11, we need to take another step and ask what we should do after we acquire information on potential terrorists. “They get lawyers. The ACLU steps in, and everything comes to a halt,” he said.

Colonel Hunt, Mr. Poteat, and the other speakers all emphasized the importance of educating the public about the intelligence agencies. For more information, search for all the names on the Internet.

I’d tell you more, but then I’d have to kill you.

acolon@nysun.com