PARIS, June 23: France’s two leading intelligence-gathering organizations, the DGSE and the DST, are expected to undergo important purges over the coming weeks, which will include the replacement of several leading members of each agency’s hierarchy, and also the reorganization of the services that they provide.

Although such transformations of France’s leading espionage and counter-espionage organizations usually accompany important changes of government, the transformation that is to come, says a French intelligence source, “smacks of nothing less than a Stalinist-era purge.”

Largely responsible for the decision to undertake a top-to-bottom overhaul of France’s secret services is the discovery by President Jacques Chirac that the two organizations were regularly used — allegedly — by the government of former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, to destabilize his Presidency, and to actively disseminate false information about Chirac and his close friends; intelligence intended to dirty his name and smear his reputation.

In any case, say French intelligence sources, whatever the origin of the decision, it’s not a surprise that by the end of the summer the DGSE’s Jean-Claude Cousseran and the DST’s Jean-Jacques Pascal, two men considered as being “very close” to the French Socialist Party, if not active members, will have been replaced by other career diplomats and military officers “with undoubtedly a penchant for the French Gaullists rather than the Socialists,” as one insider puts it.