The spy who loved the D (système) & GPT: when the CIA absorbs too much French work culture

In which an American spy absorbs too much French work culture, decides foreign agent registration is not for him, and asks ChatGPT to apologize on his behalf

I’ve never been ashamed of it, but I love the D, don’t you? My unabashed desire for it — when the time is right, of course — and things are looking ready to go — well, actually, there may be someone who loves the D more than me, and that man was the CIA chief of station in Paris.

He absorbed the culture of D, internalized it, and made the D his imperative. Of course, if I’m telling you I love the D as did the head of the CIA’s Paris office, then you should appreciate my transparency in clarifying immediately that 1) I love French D and that 2) the French D is specifically système D — a cultural concept known as débrouillardise.

Système D is a concept of French culture which roughly speaking is about the art of being resourceful, being a problem-solver and figuring out how to make things or situations work through ingenuity and irreverence. Se débrouiller literally evokes clouds, meaning like figuring it out as clouds pass, making one’s way through, “je me débrouille,” I’ll figure it out, I’ll make it work, rules are merely suggestions, why would I fill out paperwork when I could simply not, etc. etc. and that’s how this financial crime story unfolds when an American patriot fell for the charms of French D.

Dale Britt Bendler, former CIA chief of station in Paris, pled guilty to two federal charges, of failing to register as a foreign agent under FARA while secretly working for the governments of France, Angola, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and making false statements to federal investigators about it. He did this while still employed as a CIA contractor with daily access to classified systems. In December 2024, a federal judge sentenced him to a year and a day in prison. His crime wasn’t dramatic — no dead drops, no microfilm, no honey traps in the traditional sense, nothing hidden in a peanut butter sandwich. Dale’s crime was…paperwork, or rather, the absence of it. Which is also something very French in and of itself, and it’s giving système D taken to its logical conclusion.

Mais oui, oui, oui, plus forte les conneries - today I’ll tell you a story about a rogue spy who unfortunately spent too long in France and lost his work ethic along the way. Eventually, his betrayal of his country mirrored the frenetic behaviors of a rogue recruiter using the company’s access to LinkedIn Sales Navigator on their own free time a little too much, but you’ll see.

One of the things you learn when you live in France, or anywhere in Europe really but especially France, is to love the D, and by that I mean the concept of système D. To love the D means to have a casual, even hostile, relationship with official procedures, if not through sheer creativity and will to power.

Système D is beautiful when it means you have procured, produced, pilfered paperwork that doesn’t exist but is demanded of you. It’s beautiful when your neighbor rallies around you in solidarité against l’administration ridicule, helps you navigate the prefecture, vouches for you at the city hall, all this while proudly declaring their allegiance to you because you’re one of the good immigrants, you see (that’s because you speak French, you’re not too loud, and you’re not from the wrong country, but that’s another discussion). My point is, système D has conditions, and it’s less beautiful when it means the former CIA chief of station in Paris decides that registering as a foreign agent is really more of a suggestion.

Now that you know I love the D and my reasons for it, meet our aforementioned CIA chief of the Paris office Monsieur Dale Britt Bendler. Sixty-nine years old, three decades in the CIA, chief of the agency in Paris from roughly 2011 to 2014. A man who, between 2017 and 2020 post-CIA service, earned $360,000 moonlighting for foreign principles and actors linked to France, Angola, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo while simultaneously employed as a CIA contractor with daily access to classified systems. Like a true Frenchman, Dale did not believe polycules as a concept really have any limits — neither did policies.

When he finally stood in federal court to explain himself, he said — and I need you to imagine him shrugging his shoulder offhand, saying in the most blasé deadpan Parisian accent you can muster — well, zee FARA is not zeee most compliqueeee zing! I ask you to imagine that, reader, because the plain English version of what he actually said loses all charm when I write that he literally said at his own trial “Well, the FARA isn’t that complicated”

Non mais allô quoi. See why I made it more spicy with the accent? It’s because the man absorbed the entire French approach to paperwork and applied it to American federal espionage law.

On the importation of French work ethic to American intelligence

Here’s what I think happened, and I’m speculating, but I’m speculating based on years of living in Europe and watching what happens to Americans who stay too long.

You spend enough time in France, you start to absorb things. First it’s the obvious stuff like the complaining about taxes, pouting, exaggerated physicality, whatever. Then someone asks you for one too many stamps for one too many pieces of paper which don’t exist. You snap. Something in you changes. You start to internalize the débrouillard mentality. You realize that rules in France exist to be interpreted, negotiated, occasionally ignored if you have the right connections. You learn that the technically correct path is for suckers and tourists.

Dale was chief of station in Paris and that’s not a posting you get by being rigid. That’s a posting where you need to navigate French intelligence services, French bureaucracy, French everything, and their neverending acronyms for all 17 different branches and offshoots of each office. You need to be flexible, resourceful, clever. You need to se débrouiller.

During the court date, the U.S. government’s framing of his conduct was poetic in rendering how Dale searched classified databases “like it was his own personal Google.”

This is système D applied to espionage - why go through proper channels when you can just... look it up yourself? Why file paperwork when you can simply handle it? Il se débrouille. He’s figuring it out. The American way is forms in triplicate; the French way is a shrug and a “ça ira” — it’ll be fine, except it’s not because there is a blatant conflict of interest to using American resources for foreign work, n’est pas?

The allocution, or when even apologizing feels like too much work

Dale loved système D so much that the night before his federal sentencing, he queried ChatGPT for an example allocution. An allocution is a fancy term for the part of sentencing where you express remorse and regret for your (alleged) behaviors. It’s your one chance to be human, to show the judge you understand what you did, to maybe, just maybe, get a lighter sentence because you’ve demonstrated genuine reflection. In other words, an allocution is like a text from an ex with no agenda or no sex possible because they’re on another continent.

You heard that right: the head of the CIA’s office in France, one of America’s oldest and most exasperating allies, decided to open up ChatGPT, a large language model chatbot, and type something like “how to say sorry for crimes.” I’m surprised that’s not a crime in and of itself really, but I digress.

And then — wait for it….and then — mais oui, mais non — the former head of the CIA’s office in France who used ChatGPT to figure out how to say sorry for committing crimes told the court about it. Dale announced this. He said, out loud, on the record, that he had queried ChatGPT the previous night for an example allocution for his offenses.

Pourquoi? Why would you admit this? I have so many questions, and each more dizzying. This is like telling your professor you had ChatGPT write your essay. This is like telling your therapist you googled “how to have emotions.” In a way, it is so absurd that it is French by the nature of the absurdity involved. Hear me out — this is débrouillardise taken to its most absurd conclusion: I needed to apologize, so I asked the robot, what’s the problem? Et alors? As an action, what it’s insinuating, which is a surface far more darkly, is that there is no need to reflect on one’s own words, one’s own thinking. In this operating system of DalePT, it’s input/output, classified/unclassified, me/mine/ours, America, foreign work, money has no allegiance, yeehaw, click, click, oops, I got caught.

Don’t accuse me of being mean, because his actual statement, after promising to save the court time was an honest “I was stupid.”

Put another way, the GPT incident highlights the stunning decline of his work ethic. Dale had three decades of intelligence work running covert operations across multiple continents before système D claimed him fully. He personally witnessed 9/11 from Manhattan. And when the moment comes to account for it all, he can’t even be bothered to write his own apology. The French 35-hour work week has claimed another victim

.

The client list, or the incredibly low, low price of treason ($30k a pop)

Now, why was Dale’s sidehustle post CIA career so problematic? Let’s talk about his side hustles. While employed full-time by the CIA with daily access to classified systems, Bendler was simultaneously working for foreign principals connected to France (naturellement), Angola, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I think the last time these four countries ever came together for any other work project must have been a Shakira music video where she collaborates with Wyclef Jean.

Nevertheless, he persisted with all four for a combined $360,000 over three years.

That’s $120,000 per year, which is $30,000 per country per year. Frankly, that’s nothing, the amount is so…little for what it entails as a betrayal that I find it insulting. If you’re going to commit federal crimes involving four different foreign actors linked to different countries and classified intelligence access, at least have the dignity to charge properly. This is like offering to betray your country for the price of a mid-range Hyundai annually. This was the head of the CIA’s Paris office, not some study abroad student looking to score party drugs. It’s like if Emily in Paris decided to give up all her spoils and kooky wardrobe and paid for an apartment to become a YouTube series shilling for Albania in a rundown hostel full of drunken Brit surfers instead.

Yet this decision is also very French, in a way. Why optimize for one high-paying client when you can spread yourself thin across many and do a mediocre job for all of them? It’s a little bit cinq à sept and definitely mimics stereotypes of two-timing, cheating, affairs, etc. It’s the consulting model. It’s the je me débrouille approach to treason. It’s the lazy version of treason with quantity over quality, breadth over depth. I can feel his satisfaction with himself already. But he of all people should have known salaries are already so low in Europe — why sell himself at such a bad exchange rate given his access and abilities otherwise?

The sentencing: joyeux Noël, here’s your prison date

Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. sentenced Bendler to two concurrent one-year-and-one-day terms, comparing him to a drug dealer rather than a drug user, which is the kind of analogy that really lands in federal court. Bendler was peddling the good stuff, because he wasn’t just hoarding classified information, but was actively selling access to it.The “greatest shame” of the punishment, the judge noted, was Bendler having to face other government employees in the courtroom. As if the GPT admission was not enough, another brilliant ‘quoi’ moment naturally occurred in this spy saga when out of sympathy for Madame Bendler, the judge allowed Dale to spend the holidays with his family before reporting to prison on January 5th, but his lawyer couldn’t remember the name of the prison he was recommending.

Can you imagine being sentenced to prison and then your lawyer saying oh my bad, I forgot, it’s somewhere in Florida, I think? Your lawyer is also a fan of système D, one supposes. After all, he couldn’t be fussed to remember the actual trial and judge and everything, but he’ll figure it out. There’s a prison somewhere in Miami, probably, he’ll find it when he needs to. Tranquillement, calmly, he’ll figure it out. Se débrouiller until the very end.

D.A.R.E. to resist système D: “Don’t be me”

Before his ChatGPT-assisted apology, Bendler told the court he’d spoken to “twenty guys and gals” whom he advised “Don’t be me.”

“You think you’re smart,” he warned, “but those eggs can get mixed and become scrambled.”

This is D.A.R.E. for spies. One can appreciate how the 1990s initiative known as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (which turned out to be rather counterproductive apparently) also lends itself to loving French D if you swap out the words.

Imagine Dale Bendler, formerly of the Central Intelligence Agency, on a cautionary roadshow telling colleagues to just say no. Except instead of a cop in a middle school gym with a fried egg and a frying pan, it's a disgraced station chief working the K Street cocktail circuit: "Kids, don't do what I did. This is your career on système D. Any questions?” Dale shared his one-man Débrouillardise Abuse Resistance Education program, and like the original D.A.R.E., it probably didn’t work.

But here’s what is interesting - why would he share that? Why would twenty people need the warning?

Twenty people means twenty people doing something similar enough that Dale felt compelled to intervene. Twenty people with clearances, with access, with their own potential foreign principal arrangements and their own casual relationships with classified databases. The barbarians aren’t at the gates but they have been inside for years. The barbarians have security clearances and K Street contacts and they’re all warning each other not to get caught the way Dale got caught falling for French D.

Ça fait réfléchir, non?

My take on what Dale represents - self-preservation maxxing

I think Dale represents the opposite of preservation or when self-preservation goes wrong, actually. He’s selling to whoever’s buying, and when someone asks him to account for it he outsources his remorse to a chatbot. That is telling of a larger issue - how did this man become the chief of the CIA office in Paris, and what does that tell us about the system versus the symptoms of the sycophantic or succubic use of it? Dale also acknowledged filing out forms is not that complicated even though he didn’t do it. But the tell is that filing forms is for people who still believe in the system they work for. Filing forms is for people who haven’t realized that everyone around them is running their own side hustle, their own arrangement, their own little scheme. Why would you follow rules that nobody else is following? Se débrouiller. Figure it out. Everyone else is. Alloooo!

Bendler will report to that Miami prison (name still TBD, apparently) in January and somewhere, an iteration of GPT perhaps still has that allocution draft saved. Maybe it’ll be ready to help the next spy who absorbed too much of that good stuff in the form of French D, système D, and can’t be bothered to apologize in his own words.

Joyeux Noël, Monsieur Bendler. Profitez bien des fêtes. The barbarians send their regards.

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Reader note: This is not legal advice. Do not treat classified databases like your personal Google. Do not fail to register as a foreign agent because paperwork is boring. Do not ask ChatGPT to write your courtroom apology, especially if you have committed what sounds like treason. And if you find yourself warning twenty colleagues about the consequences of your crimes, maybe ask yourself what that says about the situation you find yourself in. For inquiries: ani@anibruna.com.