Francis Temperville

Passions

Vocation

Traits

French nuclear engineer and spy. Arrested in September 1992, Temperville was accused of selling secrets to the Soviets, after receiving information from Victor Otchenko, a former KGB colonel who defected to the West. The documents he traded concerned the physical makeup of French thermonuclear weapons, techniques of reprocessing nuclear waste, and secret telegram codes used to track results from nuclear tests conducted in the South Pacific. Temperville delivered the documents by stuffing them in trash bags filled with cigarette butts and other refuse and left them at the base of utility poles. Later, his Soviet clients would signal the documents had been successfully picked up by placing a pack of Dunhill cigarettes at traffic lights or stop signs. He confessed that in 1987, while still a physics student, he was contacted by a Briton who called himself "Serge" and said he wanted to brush up on chemical physics. In the documents released by the police, Serge was identified as Sergei Jmyrev, a KGB officer and second secretary of the former Soviet Embassy in Paris from 1986 to 1991. It was Jmyrev who arranged for the Atomic Energy Commission to hire Temperville in October 1989. Charged with treason, Temperville was sentenced on 10/30/1997 to nine years in prison.