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temporary. Yet for over 30 years the PCF was not to return to the council chamber of the French executive. Only later it was discovered that Washington had been secretly involved in the silent coup. 'General Revers, the French Chief of Staff, later reported that the American government had urged Ramadier to remove the PCF Ministers.' Specifically, 'the Socialists discussed the matter beforehand with Ambassador Caffery' who had made it clear to the French Socialists that American economic aid would not be forthcoming as long as the Communists remained in the executive.9

One month after having ousted the Communists from the government the French Socialists attacked the military right and the CIA and exposed the Plan Bleu secret army. On June 30, 1947 French Socialist Minister of the Interior Edouard Depreux lifted the secret and declared to a baffled population that a secret right-wing army had been erected in France behind the back of the politicians with the task to destabilise the French government. 'Towards the end of 1946 we got to know of the existence of a black resistance network, made up of resistance fighters of the extreme-right, Vichy collaborators and monarchists', Depreux explained. 'They had a secret attack plan called "Plan Bleu", which should have come into action towards the end of July, or on August 6 [1947].'10

According to the far-reaching allegations of the French Interior Minister the CIA and the MI6 together with French right-wing paramilitaries had planned to stage a coup d'etat in France in summer 1947. In the wake of the revelations several arrests and investigations followed. Among the arrested conspirators was Earl Edme de Vulpian. His castle 'Forest' close to Lamballe ni the north of France had served as the headquarters for the final coup preparations. Investigating commissioner Ange Antonini found 'heavy weapons, battle orders, and operation plans' on the castle. The plans revealed that as an essential component of the secret war the Plan Bleu conspirators had intended to escalate the already tense political climate in France by committing acts of terror, blame them on the left, and thus create suitable conditions for their coup d'etat, a 'strategy of tension' also carried out during the secret anti-Communist wars in Greece, Italy and Turkey. 'It was even planned to assassinate de Gaulle in order to increase the public resentment', French secret service expert Faligot relates.11

While admitting that a secret war was being waged in France in the post-war years, other sources have categorically rejected the claim that the conspirators would indeed have staged a right-wing coup d'etat in 1947. 'When Minister of the Interior Depreux revealed the Plan Bleu dossier, his intention was to deal out a blow to the right, after having previously dealt a blow to the left', Luc Robet, himself directly involved with the conspiracy, claimed with reference to the ousting of the Communists from the executive in the previous month. 'Furthermore it was a move to weaken the French army, which had a mentality of making its own politics.'12 Surprisingly the investigation of the role of the SDECE in the conspiracy was lead by SDECE Director Henri Ribiere himself. He concluded that the CIA and the MI6 were to blame as they had promoted Plan Bleu, although they had allegedly never envisaged a coup d'etat. The' arms which were found all

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over the country had been paid in parts by London and Washington. Yet they had been provided to resist the Communists, and not to stage a coup d'etat', the investigators concluded.13

On the suggestion of US ambassador Caffery, who closely supervised the secret

war against the Communists in France, the CIA, following the coup that had ousted the Communists from the executi ve in late 1947 targeted the strong Communist labour union CGT, the very backbone of Communist strength in France. US General Vandenberg in his memorandum to President Truman had correctly emphasised that the Communist's 'capabilities of economic presure through the CGT or of resort to force are, as Ambassador Caffery suggests, significant principally as guarantees against their exclusion from the Government'.14 The CIA succeeded to create a schism in the Communist-dominated CGT, splitting away the moderate Force Ouvriere, which by the early 1950s it supported with more than one million dollars per year.15 The secret operation greatly diminished the strength of the PCF.

Last but not least the secret war of the CIA in the Fourth Republic targeted also the French police. After in the spring of 1947 the Communist Ministers had been expelled from the French government the whole administration was purged from Communists while the anti-Communists were promoted in the police forces. Prominent among them was commissar Jean Dides who during the Second World War had closely cooperated with the OSS and now was promoted to become the commander of a clandestine French paramilitary anti-Communist police unit operating under Interior Minister Jules Moch. The embassy of the United States was pleased with the progress made and in early 1949 cabled to the US State Department in Washington that in order 'to fight the danger of Communism, France has organised cells of restrained but efficient policemen... Also Italy is erecting such anti-Communist police squads under the control of Interior Minister Mario Scelba, using commanders of the former fascist police.'16

Together with other commanders of anti-Communist police forces engaged in the secret war in Western Europe, Dides regularly took part in the meetings of 'Paix et Liberte', a large CIA front under the leadership of French anti-Communist Jean-Paul David.17 American historian Christopher Simpson estimated that covert action units such as 'Paix et Liberte' were funded by the CIA during the secret war against the Communists with 'well over a billion dollars yearly'.18 With branches in several European countries, 'Paix et Liberte' carried out CIA operations in psychological warfare in Western Europe and spread anti-Communist propaganda by printing posters, sponsoring a radio program, publishing printed material in various outlets and organising occasional demonstrations. In Italy the CIA branch of Paix et Liberte directed by Edgardo Sogno was called Pace e Liberta with headquarters in Milan. In 1995 the Italian Senate investigation into Gladio and secret warfare found that Paix et Liberte had operated on the direct orders of NATO. Allegedly French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault had in 1953 suggested in NATO's Atlantic Council that Paix et Liberte should head a reorganisation of NATO's Intelligence Service and serve as a centre and motor for the coordination of international actions against Cominform.19 Irwin Wall in his history of the

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The secret war against the Communists did not end when Plan Bleu was exposed and closed down in 1947. Much to the contrary, French Socialist Prime Minister Paul Ramadier saw to it that his trusted chiefs within the military secret service were not removed by the scandal. When the storm had passed he ordered Henri Ribiere, Chief of SDECE, and Pierre Fourcaud, deputy Director of the SDECE, in late 1947 to erect a new anti-Communist secret army under the code name 'Rose des Vents' (Rose of the Winds, i.e. Compass Rose), the star-shaped official symbol of the NATO. The code name was well chosen, for when NATO was created in 1949 with headquarters in Paris the SDECE coordinated its anti-Communist secret war closely with the military alliance.21 The secret soldiers understood that within its maritime original context the compass rose is the card pattern below the compass needle according to which the course is set, and according to which corrections are undertaken if the ship is in danger of stirring off course.

As the secret cooperation with the United States intensified in April 1951 the French SDECE opened a station in Washington.22 According to the overall CIA and NATO planning for anti-Communist secret warfare in Western Europe the Rose des Vents army within the SDECE had the task to locate and fight subversive Communist elements within the French Fourth Republic. Furthermore it had to undertake evacuation preparations and provide for a suitable exile base abroad. The Rose des Vents secret army was trained to undertake sabotage, guerrilla and intelligence-gathering operations under enemy occupation. France was divided into numerous geographical stay-behind zones, to which secret cells were allocated, with each zone being supervised by an SDECE officer. An exile base for the French government was installed in Morocco in northern Africa, and the SDECE sent some of its microfilmed archives to Dakar in Senegal.23

Maybe the most famous member of the French secret anti-Communist Rose des Vents army was Francois Grossouvre who in 1981 became the adviser of Socialist President Francois Mitterand for secret operations. During the Second World War Grossouvre had enrolled in a fascist Vichy-backed militia that he later claimed to have infiltrated on behalf of the resistance. After the war the military secret service recruited him for the Rose des Vents secret army. SDECE agent Louis Mouchon who had himself recruited many secret soldiers for the network recalled how Grossouvre had been contacted: 'Our responsible man in Lyon, Gilbert Union, who during the war had carried out missions for the BCRA, was a passionate car driver and at that time had died on the road. To replace him, the SDECE had recruited, in 1950, Francois de Grossouvre.' Mouchin elaborated that Grossouvre was not only chosen for his wartime experience but as well for his contacts: 'His business, the A. Berger et Cie Sugar company, offered ample opportunities to stage fronts. He really had excellent contacts.'24

As special adviser of President Mitterand, Grossouvre influenced French secret warfare in the beginning of the 1980s but was eased out of his main responsibilities

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in 1985 as his cloak-and-dagger style became intolerable to Mitterrand's staider colleagues. Yet the personal relations to Mitterand allegedly remained good and when in late 1990 after the pan European Gladio discoveries President Mitterand in the midst of the scandal had to close down the French Gladio network 'he had first consulted his "grey eminence", Francois Grossouvre'.25 By the time of Grossouvre's

death his participation in the secret war was no longer a secret. 'He was recruited into the French espionage service and helped to organise Gladio, an Americanbacked plan to create an armed resistance movement in Western Europe against a Russian invasion', the British Economist noted in his obituary after Grossouvre, aged 76, had dramatically shot himself in the Elysee Palace on April 7, 1994.26

Retired CIA officer Edward Barnes during the French Fourth Republic had served as liaison officer to the French stay-behind Rose des Vents and left the country in 1956. After the discovery of the secret armies in 1990 he recalled how not only Washington but also many Frenchmen had been greatly concerned that the strong French Communists should come to dominate the country. 'There were probably a lot of Frenchmen who wanted to be ready if something happened.' Resisting a Soviet occupation according to Barnes was the primary motivation of the French Gladio, while promoting anti-Communist political activity in France 'might have been a secondary consideration'.27 According to Barnes the French stay-behind program consisted of 'several dozen' men individualy recruited by the CIA, each of whom was to build a small network of his own recruits. If in analogy to other Gladio countries each Gladiator recruited and trained another ten men then Barnes might have been implying that the French Gladio program numbered around 500 secret soldiers.

The exact number of participants in the secret war against the Communists is very hard to specify. The Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter reported after the discovery of the secret CIA armies that 'a director of French intelligence at the time had offered to place at the disposal of the CIA some 10,000 trained and armed "patriotic" troops, outside the ranks of the French armed forces' trained to intervene in a secret war 'in case a Communist government came to power'. According to Barnes the CIA 'had no record of how many people would come out of the woodwork. There was no way to calculate that. Those I met were farmers, townspeople, trades people.' Many did not need much training as they were war veterans and during the Second World War had served in the BCRA secret operations unit behind enemy lines.28

In order to guarantee the material independence of the secret soldiers the CIA together with the SDECE set up secret Gladio arms caches across the country. 'All kinds of things were stuck away in remote places, almost anything people would think might be needed', including arms, explosives, gold coins and bicycles, while radio equipment and codes were the top priority. In order to keep the network top-secret the need-to-know principle limiting information to the smallest number of people possible was strictly followed. Barnes stressed that he could only meet with about ten CIA recruits 'for fear of blowing me and blowing them. You couldn't go out and just say "Dig this stuff up, Joe." There were probably all

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kinds of things that went awry. Some of those guys didn't bury things where they said they did.'29

The Italian Defence Ministry knew that the SDECE together with the CIA was running a secret army to oppose the Communists. General Umberto Broccoli in October 1951 wrote to Defence Minister Marras that secret armies existed in the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, and also France has already organised such operations in Germany and Austria, as well as on its own national territory up to the Pyrenees.'30 How far the French secret army spread into the zones of Austria and Germany occupied after their defeat in the Second World War remains unclear, but estimates are that secret operations were limited to the respective sectors controlled by the French troops until the allied forces withdrew from the two countries. Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in October 1990 in his report 'The so called "Parallel SID" - The Gladio Case' confirmed that the secret anti-Communist armies had standing links to NATO and elaborated that 'Resistance networks were organised by Great Britain in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and probably also in Denmark and Norway. The French took care of the German and Austrian territories under its control, as well as of its own territory up to the Pyrenees.'31

A top-secret memorandum of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, dated May 14, 1952 and entitled 'Operation Demagnetise', detailed how 'political, paramilitary and psychological operations' shall be employed according to the directive in order 'to reduce the strength of the Communist Party in Italy' and also 'in order to reduce the strength of the Communist Party in France'.32 'The final aim of the plan is to reduce the strength of the Communist parties, their material resources, their influence in the Italian and French governments and particularly in the unions', the secret Pentagon paper specified, 'in order to reduce as much as possible the danger that Communism could gain strength in Italy and France and endanger the interests of the United States in the two countries'. The secret CIA armies run by the SDECE were instructed and trained within this strategic context, for, as the document specified, 'the limitation of the strength of the Communists in Italy and France is a top priority objective. This objective has to be reached by the employment of all means'. The war had to remain strictly secret and 'the Italian and French government may know nothing of the plan "Demagnetise", for it is clear that the plan can interfere with their respective national sovereignty'.33

Training of the Rose des Vents secret soldiers took place in various parts in France and abroad in close cooperation with French Special Forces. Above all the highly trained French special operations parachute commando regiment '11th Demi-Brigade Parachutiste du Choc' or, in short, 11th du Choc was directly involved. The relationship with the secret army was intimate and in several cases officers of the 11th du Choc served also as members of the secret Rose des Vents army. As the British SAS carried out secret operations and dirty tricks for the MI6, the French 11th du Choc after the Second World War served as the iron fist of the SDECE. According to French Gladio author Brozzu-Gentile 'the instructors of the French

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stay-behind were all members of the SDECE, or close to the service'.34 At the time of the 1990 Gladio scandal the French press revealed that the French Gladiators had received their training on the use of arms, the manipulation of explosives,

and the observation and usage of transmitters in the Centre d'Entrainement des Reserves Parachutistes (CERP) of the 11th du Choc in Cercottes, near Orleans in the south of Paris, in the 11th du Choc training centre Fort Montlouis in the Pyrenees mountains, close to the French Spanish border, as well as in the training centre of the 11th Choc in Calvi on the northern coast of the French Mediterranean island Corsica, close to the Italian Gladio headquarters on the island Sardegna.

As the leading military unit in secret warfare and dirty tricks the 11th du Choc operated above all in Indochine and Africa as France after the Second World War struggled in vain to hold on to its colonies Vietnam and Algeria. The unit to carry out the dirty tricks, the iron spear of the secret war in Algeria from 1954 to 1962, was clearly the 11th battalion Parachutiste du Choc', French secret service author Roger Faligot observed.36 By 1954, 300 men of this special force had arrived in Algeria. Most of them had extensive covert action and anti-guerrilla experience as they came directly from Vietnam after France had lost its colony Indochine in the same year after the battle of Dien Bien Phu. One of the most prominent members of the 11th du Choc was Yves Guerain-Serac, a notorious secret soldier who had served in Korea and Vietnam and later became directly involved in the operations of the Portuguese secret anti-Communist army. Italian secret Gladio soldier and right-wing terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra from behind prison

bars admired Guerain Serac as a fascinating personality and unmatched strategist of terror.37

As the secret war against the Communists in France and the secret war against the Algerian Liberation Front FLN in northern Africa intensified, the dangers of secret warfare became apparent when the politicians in Paris lost control over their secret soldiers and the entire country was dragged into a major crisis that culminated with the end of the Fourth Republic. In May 1958 the independence fight of the French colony Algeria started in earnest. The weakened government of the French Fourth Republic was unsure how to react while the French secret service and military were firmly committed to keeping Algeria a French colony. Many of the politicised men within the ranks of the military and the SDECE viewed the politicians of the Fourth Republic as 'weak, potentially or actively corrupt, a pusillanimous category of humanity whose predisposition was to cut and run in Algeria'.38 When the first French prisoners were killed by the FLN in Algeria, secret war experts within the French secret services and military started to plan for a coup d'etat to overthrow the government in Paris and install a new regime.

Within this process the 11th du Choc played a central role on both sides of the battle. On May 24, 1958, elements of the 11th du Choc based in Calvi on the northern shores of Corsica started the coup by leading the occupation of the entire island by paratroops. Soon the news spread that the secret soldiers intended to overthrow the elected government and bring retired General Charles de Gaulle back into power. As other members of the 11th du Choc disagreed with such an

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undemocratic secret war against Paris, they left their Cercottes training base near Orleans on the same day and gathered in order to protect targets designated by

Gaullist plotters and the paramilitary units that supported them.39 One of the targets of the Gaullist plotters was the chief of the SDECE himself, General Paul Grossing. When the latter caught wind of the plan, he immediately surrounded the SDECE headquarters on Paris' boulevard Mortier with members of the 11th du Choc loyal to him.

France in that May 1958 sank into chaos. The chief of the powerful French domestic secret service DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), Roger Wybot, was about to activate a secret anti-Communist plan called 'Operation Ressurection'. The plan that parachutists foresaw including members of the 11th du Choc falling from the sky would within very few hours take over control of the vital centres of Paris: The Interior Ministry, the police headquarters, communication centres including television and radio stations, electricity production plants and other strategically vital areas of the capital. 'The plan also foresaw the arrestation of a certain number of politicians, among which Francois Mitterand, Pierre Mendes France, Edgar Faure, Jules Moch, as well as the entire direction of the French Communists.'40

But on May 27, 'just hours before Operation Resurrection was to break upon the French capital', de Gaulle announced that he had 'begun the regular process necessary to the establishment of a Republican government'.41 Thereafter a succession of rapid and far-reaching actions ended the Fourth Republic. On May 28, Prime Minister Pierre Pflimlin resigned. On the morning of May 29 the President of the Republic, Rene Coty, made public the fact that he had invited Charles de Gaulle to form a government. Only 24 hours later the General appeared before the National Assembly and demanded full powers to rule by decree for six months, and enforced four months of 'holiday' for het deputies, and authority to submit himself a new constitution. De Gaulle's requests were voted 329 to 224. 'The Fourth Republic had chosen suicide over assassination by... the army and its security services.'42

Many within the military and the secret services who had supported the coup of de Gaulle expected that the General would firmly support a policy of 'Algerie Francaise', i.e. that he would do everything to keep Algeria under French colonial rule. To their surprise, however, de Gaulle with the backing of many politicians of the Fourth Republic embarked on a policy of Algerie Algerienne, which led to the independence of Algeria in 1962. The secret soldiers were furious. 'Increasingly, Presidents of the Fifth Republic, led by de Gaulle, came to distrust their secret services, regarding them as liabilities rather than assets.'43 The secret soldiers were in disagreement on whether they should follow the orders of de Gaulle and withdraw from Algeria or whether they should fight against the government of France. The final split of the 11th du Choc came in 1961 when most of its members chose Algeria Francaise and in order to promote their politics together with French officers fighting in Algeria founded the clandestine and illegal Organisation Armee Secrete, in short OAS. The two declared aims of the

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OAS were to first of all keep French control over colonial Algeria - and thus continue

to fight the FLN liberation movement by all means no matter what Paris directed - and secondly, to overthrow the Fifth Republic of President De Gaulle and replace it with a militantly anti-Cmmunist authoritarian French state.

The OAS coup came on April 22, 1961 when four French Generals under the leadership of General Challe seized power in Algeria in an attempt to maintain the country's union with France. Allegedly, secret soldiers of the CIA-supported NATO stay-behind army who had joined the OAS were directly involved. The secret soldiers 'supported a group of generals who were resisting, sometimes violently, de Gaulle's attempts to negotiate Algerian independence and end the war', US author Jonathan Kwitny related in his article on the secret armies in Western Europe.44 Obviously more research is needed on the involvement of the French stay-behind in the 1961 coup d'etat as it figures amongst the most sensitive dimensions of the history of the secret war in France. As of now the evidence suggests that the stay-behind armies were involved in successful coup d'etats in Greece in 1967 and in Turkey in 1980, and in the coup against the French government in 1961 which failed.

The CIA and its Director Allen Dulles together with militant secret soldiers of NATO and the Pentagon in Washington had allegedly supported the coup against de Gaulle. Immediately after the coup 'minor officials at the Elysee Palace itself had given 'to understand that the generals' plot was backed by strongly anti-Communist elements in the United States Government and military services', as the Washington Star reported. 'Both in Paris and Washington the facts are now known, though they will never be publicly admitted', an article of Claude Krief revealed already in May 1961 in the widely read French weekly L'Express. 'In private, the highest French personalities make no secret of it. What they say is this: The CIA played a direct part in the Algiers coup, and certainly weighted heavily on the decision taken by ex-general Challe to start the putsch.' Shortly before the coup General Challe had held the position of NATO Commander in Chief Allied Forces Central Europe, cultivating close contacts not only with the Pentagon and US officers but also with the NATO secret stay-behind army, maintaining daily contact with US military officers. General Challe, as Krief concluded, had acted directly on CIA orders: 'All the people who know

45

him well, are deeply convinced that he had been encouraged by the CIA to go ahead.' When Krief wrote his article on the CIA-supported coup against de Gaulle, the

existence of the secret stay-behind armies of NATO in all countries of Western Europe had not yet been revealed. But with a focus on the international secret war, Krief relates that ten days before the coup, on April 12, 1961, a clandestine meeting had taken place in Madrid, with the presence of 'various foreign agents, including members of the CIA and the Algiers conspirators, who disclosed their plans to the CIA men'. During that meeting the Americans allegedly angrily complained that de Gaulle's policy was 'paralysing NATO and rendering the defence of Europe impossible', assuring the putsch generals including Challe, that if they and their followers succeeded, Washington would recognise the new Algerian Government within 48 hours.46 De Gaulle, who through a number of manouvres and strategies was indeed attempting to make France and Europe less

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dependent on the United States and NATO, was furious about the recklessness of

the CIA. Whether US President Kennedy - who exactly at the same time was overseeing the secret coup against Cuban President Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs invasion which started on April 15, 1961 - had been informed about the coup in Algeria remains unclear. But it is known that Kennedy was furious when the CIA coup in Cuba failed, and that also the recognition of Washington of the Generals in Algeria was not forthcoming. In Algeria the coup d'etat by the secret soldiers held out for four days only and then collapsed. The French leading daily Le Monde critically summarised that 'the behaviour of the United States during the recent crisis was not particularly skilful. It seems established that American agents more or less encouraged Challe', while 'Kennedy, of course, knew nothing of all this.'47

After the failed coup, the secret soldiers were completely out of control. OAS outrages soon escalated to assassinations of prominent government officials in Algiers, random murders of Muslims, and bank raids.48 By November 1961 the secret OAS soldiers operated at will in Algiers and killed repeatedly to sabotage the beginning of the peace process that should have led to Algerian independence. The battle of the French security and military apparatus against the OAS proved very difficult because many only half heartedly engaged in it, or even sabotaged it, as they were sympathetic of the OAS and its political aims. As the violence escalated, the OAS carried the secret war to France and killed the mayor of Evian south of Lake Geneva where peace talks between the French government and FLN representatives were being held. Furthermore the secret soldiers targeted the government in Paris, and de Gaulle only narrowly escaped an assassination attempt at Pont-sur-Seine. Paris hit back with a vengeance and in November 1961 six prominent cafes in Algiers frequented by OAS sympathisers were ripped apart by explosions.

Next to France the secret soldiers of the OAS from their bases in Algeria carried their secret war to other European countries including Spain, Switzerland and Germany where special squads of the 11th du Choc engaged in assassination operations of FLN leaders as well as their financial contributors and arms suppliers.49 In Germany the secret soldiers allegedly cooperated with the German secret soldiers of the stay-behind network and the German secret service BND. The Germans allowed the 11th du Choc to carry out its operations against the FLN using the German parachute-training centre in Altenstadt in Bavaria as a secure camouflaged operation base. 'Gladio members and many BND members were recruited there also for other secret services operations', BND expert Erich Schmidt Eenboom observed. The French assassins of FLN activists in Germany were never caught. 'The police seemed unable to catch the members of the hit and run teams', Eenboom relates.50

The secret war dragged France into a nightmare of violence with brutality escalating on all sides. At the height of the tensions in Paris, police chief Maurice Papon imposed a curfew in the capital aflat the murder of 11 of his officers. The FLN, which had orchestrated the attacks, responded by organising a protest

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march, and up to 40,000 Algerians answered the call to demonstrate in Paris on October 17, 1961. Papon, a notorious racist who during the Second World War had been involved in the deportation of more than 1,500 Jews to Nazi death camps, ordered his officers to brutally smash t he demonstration whereupon a massacre ensued.51 According to the 1988 testimony of Constantin Melnik at least 200 - and probably closer to 300 people - were slaughtered by police officers who were eager to avenge the deaths of their colleagues.52 Melnik had been the security adviser for de Gaulle's government and chief of all French secret services from 1959 to 1962. When asked about the stay-behind network Melnik had highlighted the inherent danger of secret armies when he declared that 'any group with radios and training would be very dangerous for the security of France'.53

'I saw people collapse in pools of blood. Some were beaten to death. The bodies were thrown onto lorries and tossed into the Seine from the Pont de la Concorde' Saad Ouazene, a 29-year-old foundry worker and FLN sympathiser later remembered the massacre in Paris. 'If I hadn't been strong I'dnever have got out alive', Ouazene who escaped with a fractured scull testified. 'As Algerians got out of the buses at the Porte de Versailles, they were clubbed over the head', French policeman Joseph Gommenginger, on duty that night, recalled the 1961 massacre. 'Those carrying out the attacks even threatened me. They had all removed their numbers from their uniforms. I was revolted. I never thought police could do such things.' In the days following the massacre, dozens of bodies were taken from the Seine as fardown river as Rouen.54 In the absence of an official investigation the magazine of distinguished French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre Temps Modernes called the episode a pogrom.55

The secret war of the OAS, which had involved secret soldiers of the NATO stay-behind, in the end failed to both overthrow de Gaulle and prevent Algeria from becoming independent. The agreement for peace in Algeria and the independence of the country was signed between the FLN and the government of de Gaulle in Evian in March 1962, whereupon also the OAS collapsed about a year after its creation declaring truce on June 17, 1962. Only a fraction of OAS diehards led by Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thirty were unwilling to give up and carried out another ambush on President de Gaulle near Paris on August 22, 1962. De Gaulle, who survived after having displayed as always little concern for his own safety, was outraged that the OAS assassins had attacked him while in the company of his wife and made the operation a personal affair. In September the OAS men involved in the assassination operation were captured in Paris, all were sentenced to death, but only Bastien-Thirty was executed.56 The larger part of 11th du Choc, many of whom had joined the OAS, saw their career at an end. The remaining units of the 11th du Choc were put under close Gaullist control.

The secret CIA army designed by NATO as an anti-Communist stay-behind had thus during the Algerian crisis on the ensuing chaos and violence allegedly been involved in domestic operations in the total absence of any Soviet invasion. The danger of secret warfare consisted then, as now, in the lack of control that the democratic institutions including parliament and at times also the government had

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