1998 Parliamentary Commission On The Acts of The DPS
In 1998, a Parliamentary Commission, led by Socialist MP Bernard Grasset (Green MP Noël Mamère and conservative MP Patrick Devedjian were also part of it ), was created to investigate its acts, after several violent incidents during demonstrations and other occasions. The report was published on June 3, 1999, and pinpointed several cases of DPS member checking identity card of demonstrators instead of the police. It also pinpointed links with the Groupe Union Défense (GUD), former OAS members, mercenaries and private military contractors. The Parliamentary commission declared that the DPS should have been dissolved end of 1996, after the Montceau-les-Mines affair on October 25, 1996, when a DPS unit acted like an ordinary police order force, alike to the C.R.S. anti-riot units. After the creation of the Mouvement National Républicain (MNR) by Bruno Mégret, an offshoot from the FN, the DPS itself also split into two organizations, the DPS on one side and the DPA (Département Protection Assistance) on the other side.
A former member of the DPS has given a long interview to daily Libération. Using the pseudonym "Dominique", he explained that the DPS has special "unofficial" intervention squads made up of former paratroopers and Foreign Legionnaires, veterans of French interventions in Chad, Lebanon, and the Central African Republic. Some members of the DPS were present in covert operations in Zaire (1997 and 2001), Madagascar (in 2002, Didier Ratsiraka called for some mercenaries to resolve the political crisis ), Côte d'Ivoire (2001–2003) According to the Voltaire network, the DPS had been created with the help of Jacques Foccart and François de Grossouvre (leader of the French branch of Gladio, NATO's secret armies) after the dissolving of the Service d'Action Civique (SAC) & .
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