French Ex-Spy Says Unit Plotted Murders
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A26 Sunday. October26, 1975 THE WASHINGTON POST French Ex-Spy Says Unit Plotted Murders By Bernard Kaplan dissidents living in exile in special committee. He was Special to The Weshingten Po-sr Portugal and Spain just after released less than a week the Algerian war. later. • PARIS, Oct. 22—During the Leroy-Finville, now in Ironically, in view of the 1960s the French. government retirement in southern recent allegations of CIA operated a high-level France, backed up De involvement in foreign "assassination" committee Vosjoli's allegations in .a assassination plots, De Vosjoli whose task was to pinpoint telephone conversation, in the mid-1950s was the enemies of the regime for "Nothing has escaped him," French intelligence service's elimination, according_ to a Leroy-Finville said. "He liaison man with the newly published book by a followed my personal tragedy American agency. He was former senior French secret closely." fired by De Gaulle for agent. According to the book, the becoming, too closely iden- In his book "The Com- committee consisted of senior tified with the CIA. Some time mittee," ex-agent Philippe intelligence officials and civil afterward, he asserted that Thiraud De Vosjoli also servants and was sometimes the French leader's entourage claims that the De Gaulle presided over by the then- had been infiltrated by a government systematically prime minister, Georges Soviet agent—an allegation opened foreign embassies' Pompidou. De' Vosjoli im- that served as the basis for the diplomatic mail, including plicates Pompidou, later plot of the bestselling novel that of the United States. On .president of France, in the "Topaz" by Leon Uris. While one occasion during an in- Leroy-Finville case, claiming De Gaulle was in power, the ternational conference in that the orders to kill the novel was banned in France. Cannes in 1961, according to French Algerian exiles came De Vosjoli, a French agent In the more relaxed at- from a senior official In the mosphere under President entered the hotel room of U.S. prime minister's office. • Under Secretary of State Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a George Ball in the middle of The Committee kept no French edition of "The the night and rifled it for notes or records, De Vosjoli Committee" is expected to be secret documents. says. it had a "permanent" published here shortly. Although De Vosjoli's book list of assassination "ob- Meanwhile, a French- contains many alleged jectives," among them language version has ap- revelations about the inner Presidents Sekou Toure of peared in Montreal. workings of France's in- Guinea and Habib Bourguiba De .Vosjoli says that, the telligence U services, it is of Tunisia, both at the time diplomatic pouches of vir- principally a defense of a considered antagonists of tually all foreign embassies in former colleague, Marcel Charles De Gaulle. • Paris were regularly opened Leroy-Finville, who was If De Vosjoli is to be by French' agents in the cashiered and imprisoned for believed, one successful Gaullist era. Agents operated his supposed involvement in target of the committee was from a specially equipped van the kidnap-slaying here of a the Italian state oil tycoon - at Orly Airport, where the leftist Moroccan politician, Enrico Mattel. French agents incoming , and outgoing Mehdi Ben Barka, in 1965. The were responsible for diplomatic mail was in- Ben Barka affair erupted into sabotaging Matters airplane tercepted. They even had the a major scandal of the De in 1963 because, according to chemistry equipment to Gaulle regime and led to a him, France believed he was reconstitute . the fibers of diplomatic crisis between seeking to oust French oil paper that might be inad- France and Morocco. • interests in Algeria. vertently torn in the process. De Vosjoli insists that The book offers an ex- American diplomatic mail Leroy-Finville, considered planation of. why Leroy- could not be intercepted in this one of the top agents of the Finville was abruptly released way because It was invariably French intelligence agency' from prison after four months carried by State Department was actually framed by his and never tried. According to couriers. But, says De Vosjoli, own government. The real De Vosjoli's account, a group French intelligence reason for his official of the accused man's former discovered that copies of most disgrace, he says, was his associates, including himself, U.S. documents usually were refusal to obey or- sent a warning to De Gaulle sent to the American em- ders—emanating from the and .Pompidou that . unless bassies in , neighboring "Committee" —to kill a he was freed, they would countries under less stringent number of French Algerian reveal the existence of the security. So, accordina to De "Mt Copyright Alfred Elmslewd, Time-Life Picture Agency De Vosion as pictured in Life magazine in 1968. Vosjoli, Leroy-Finville set up De Vosjoli says. but was able an organization in Morocco to to photograph the contents of open U.S. dipliomatic mail Ball's briefcase and replace there. them while the under The burglarizing of Ball's secretary slept. hotel room was ordered after a hugging device failed to pick up enough information, ac• cording to De Vosjoli. That 'operation was also conducted under; Leroy-Finville. He stood poised as at the hotel's fuse box, ready to plunge it into darkness in case the agent was discovered. He was not, .