Final_Judgment

260 The Twain Shall Meet [199]
PLOTS TO ASSASSINATE CHARLES DeGAULLE
Public controversy surrounding Permindex, resulting in its expulsion
from Switzerland and Italy, involved the role of Permindex in assassination
plots aimed at French President Charles DeGaulle. And as we shall see, it is
here that we find even more intriguing connections between Permindex and
the JFK assassination.
Earlier in these pages, as we have seen, the rebel Secret Army
Organization—known by its acronym OAS—was bitterly opposed to
DeGaulle's decision to grant independence to Arab Algeria. (It was, as we
noted in Chapter 4, John F. Kennedy who, as a young senator, riled the
Israeli lobby by calling for Algerian independence in 1957.)
The OAS launched numerous assassination attempts against DeGaulle,
none of which were successful, of course, but they did later inspire Frederick
Forsythe's famous novel (later turned into a popular motion picture), The
Day of the Jackal.
Following an investigation of one attempt, in 1962, French
intelligence (the SDECE) charged that Permindex laundered money into the
OAS coffers to finance the attempt on DeGaulle's life. 552
According to DeGaulle's biographer, Jean Lacouture, "for moral as well
as political reasons, [the OAS leadership] considered it necessary to sacrifice
the Head of State, either physically or politically, so that Algeria would
remain French." 553
SOUSTELLE, THE OAS AND THE IRGUN
One of the harshest French critics of Algerian independence was Jewish-born
convert to Christianity, Jacques Soustelle, former governor-general of Algeria.
Described by Israeli historian Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi as being known as
one of "Israel's friends in France," 554 Soustelle, as French Atomic Energy
Minister from 1958 to 1959, cooperated closely with Yuval Ne'eman, the
father of Israel's atomic bomb project, in helping Israel develop the
groundwork for a nuclear arsenal. 555 Bitterly condemning Degaulle's
reversal on Algeria, Soustelle went into self-imposed exile. 556
Although Soustelle himself denied any contacts with the OAS, 557 he
was one of its primary supporters, winning the plaudits of OAS partisans
who promulgated the joint Israeli-OAS propaganda myth that Algerian
independence would establish a Soviet foothold in North Africa. In fact,
Israeli intelligence came to Soustelle's aid when he went into exile. In 1962
Soustelle took up "hiding in Rome in the house of a furniture dealer whose
brother was a representative of the [Israeli] Irgun." 558
Interestingly enough, according to Paesa Sera, the Italian journal which
publicized the role of Permindex in the plots against DeGaulle, former
Hungarian premier and Permindex board member Ferenc Nagy was a
"munificent contributor" 559 to Jacques Soustelle and the OAS.