French Ex-Spy Says Unit Plotted Murders

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 operated a high-level France, backed up De recent allegations of CIA "assassination" committee Vosjoli's allegations in .a involvement in foreign whose task was to pinpoint telephone conversation, assassination plots, De Vosjoli enemies of the regime for "Nothing has escaped him," in the mid-1950s was the elimination, according_ to a Leroy-Finville said. "He French intelligence service's newly published book by a followed my personal tragedy liaison man with the former senior French secret closely." American agency. He was agent. fired by De Gaulle for In his book "The Com- According to the book, the becoming, too closely iden- mittee," ex-agent Philippe committee consisted of senior tified with the CIA. Some time Thiraud De Vosjoli also intelligence officials and civil afterward, he asserted that claims that the De Gaulle servants and was sometimes the French leader's entourage government systematically presided over by the then- had been infiltrated by a opened foreign embassies' prime minister, Georges Soviet agent—an allegation diplomatic mail, including Pompidou. De' Vosjoli im- that served as the basis for the that of the United States. On plicates Pompidou, later plot of the bestselling novel one occasion during an in- .president of France, in the "Topaz" by Leon Uris. While ternational conference in Leroy-Finville case, claiming De Gaulle was in power, the Cannes in 1961, according to that the orders to kill the novel was banned in France. French Algerian exiles came De Vosjoli, a French agent In the more relaxed at- entered the hotel room of U.S. from a senior official In the prime minister's office. • mosphere under President 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 principally a defense of a diplomatic pouches of vir- considered antagonists of tually all foreign embassies in former colleague, Marcel Charles De Gaulle. • Leroy-Finville, who was Paris were regularly opened If De Vosjoli is to be by French' agents in the cashiered and imprisoned for believed, one successful his supposed involvement in Gaullist era. Agents operated target of the committee was from a specially equipped van the kidnap-slaying here of a the Italian state oil tycoon leftist Moroccan politician, - at Orly Airport, where the Enrico Mattel. French agents incoming , and outgoing Mehdi Ben Barka, in 1965. The were responsible for Ben Barka affair erupted into diplomatic mail was in- 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- Leroy-Finville, American diplomatic mail 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

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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,