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General Charles de Gaulle in 1958.
General Charles de Gaulle in 1958. Photograph: PA
General Charles de Gaulle in 1958. Photograph: PA

From the archive, 16 June 1975: A clasp of lethal friendship for de Gaulle

This article is more than 8 years old

The CIA reveals it was asked to help kill the French president in 1965

This morning’s Chicago Tribune reports that congressional leaders have been told by CIA officials that French dissidents approached the CIA 10 years ago to ask for American help in a conspiracy to kill the French President.

The killer was to be an “old soldier.” He was to wear a poisoned ring on one of his fingers. And he was to shake the General’s hand in what the Tribune said today would have been “a clasp...of lethal friendship.”

According to the newspaper in an exclusive copyrighted story that indicates no sources or dateline, a CIA officer travelled to Capitol Hill within the past fortnight to brief Senators and Congressmen on the kind of stories they can expect to unearth when they read the Rockefeller Commission’s censored (by President Ford) section on political assassinations; and what to expect when the two congressional select committees begin to investigate the subject.

In the secret briefing, the CIA man reportedly told the Congressmen that French dissidents – the Algerian connection was not mentioned, but the plot was allegedly hatched after the failure of the 1961 and 1962 OAS attempts on the General’s life – had made contact with the CIA in 1965 and 1966.

At the time, the Johnson administration was less than happy with de Gaulle, who was by then an ardent opponent of the Vietnam war, and had thrown US servicemen out of French military bases.

The plan, as reportedly put to the CIA, involved infiltrating an agent, wearing the poisoned ring – perhaps with a curare-tipped needle on its outer surface – into a group of old soldiers attending a reception at which the General would appear.

The agent would wait in line to have his hand shaken, deliberately lagging so that the General would be tired and his hand would be numb from shaking the hands of so many more enthusiastic soldiers.

Finally, that “clasp...of lethal friendship,” and the General would fall to the ground while the assassin strolled calmly off into the throng.

The tribune’s sources could not say if the CIA had ever done more than entertain the plan; no evidence exists, the paper says, to show that Mr Johnson knew anything of this; and no one will say if the ring wearing old soldier ever existed.

Only one thing is certain: de Gaulle is dead. He collapsed watching television at his home in Colombey-les-deux-Eglises.

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