“Sure enough, he was correct.

The 11-metre yacht named Ouvea had been chartered by four Frenchmen who had just sailed from New Zealand en route to New Caledonia. 

Alan ‘Kissard’ Buffett was Norfolk Island’s collector of customs in 1985. Source: Supplied

The Frenchmen said they were on a South Pacific diving and pleasure cruise. 

Initially, France denied any connection, but months later, then-prime minister Laurent Fabius admitted that French agents had been instructed to bomb the ship.

What the documents reveal

Norfolk Island’s administrator at the time, John Matthew, a former Australian naval commodore and head of the defence intelligence agency, communicated to Canberra his “strong doubts” about the police approaching the Frenchmen’s yacht due to potential “armed retaliation”.

They’d been well trained by France’s foreign intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security, to withstand interrogation and maintain their cover stories.

An impossible deadline?

The French secret agents sailed away from Norfolk Island later on 16 July. Their yacht, the Ouvea, was never seen again and the agents are believed to have been picked up by a French submarine.

The 11-metre yacht Ouvea had been chartered by four Frenchmen who had just sailed from New Zealand en route to New Caledonia. Source: Supplied

The samples from the Ouvea’s bilge returned positive results for traces of explosives. And documents taken from the yacht proved a connection between the Frenchmen on Norfolk Island and two other French secret agents already in custody in New Zealand.