(See graphics to accompany th is s to ry .) PORTUGUESE DOCUMENTS REVEAL JOURNALISTIC COVER FOR the April 25 coup. Robert Leroy surfaced re­ INTERNATIONAL FASCIST GROUP; LINK GROUP TO BOMBINGS cently in an interview in an Italian paper. ....... ..I COUNTER INSURGENCY AND ARMS TRAFFIC Several weeks la te r , Yves G u illo u gave an in ­ terview to the French magazine "Paris Match," LIBERATION News Service;* in which he denied involvement in fascist ac­ (Editor's note: The following was compiled t i v i t i e s . largely from reports in "Liberation," an indepen­ "I am only an anti-communist journalist, dent French le ftis t daily. Some information came naturally," he daid. "As for Aginter, it is from Le Monde and the New York Times.) merely an organization for ideological struggle. NEW YORK (LNS) - - M ilan, Ita ly . December 12, I have never worked fo r PIDE and s t i l l less have 1969: a bomb explodes in a Milan bank, leaving I ever received money from it." sixteen people dead and over one hundred wounded. The Formation of Aginter Press Some days later, several le ftists are arrested and charged w ith the bombings. They are to spend the But the Portuguese documents t e l l a d iffe re n t next two years in ja il on false convictions. story. According to them, Aginter was formed in 1962 la rg e ly by former members o f the German Ges­ Late in 1971, an investigation by the Italian tapo and the French Secret Army Organization (OAS). p o lice th a t had continued despite the bombing con­ With strong links to PIDE, Aginter quickly offered victions, lead to the arrest of two Italian pub­ ; its agents courses in sabotage, espionage and lis h e rs who re a lly were involved in the p lo t: terrorism. These "skills" were learned primarily Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura. And last year from their experience in the OAS during the war a thitfd man, a high ranking agent of the Italian for Algerian independence in the late fiftie s and secret police named Guido Giapnettini was arrested early sixties. in connection w ith the bombing. After 1965, with the help of PIDE funding, In the course of their investigation, the It­ the agency began a coordinated e ffo rt to i n f i l ­ alian police have come up with evidence that links tra te European le f t and extreme le f t movements. a mysterious European press service, "A ginter Press!'; At the time, their activities were concentrated to a European-wide neo-fascist organization. in Ita ly, France, Switzerland and Germany. And their evidence points to Aginter director According to the archives in Lisbon, Aginter Yves Guillou, alias Guerin Seracy and another French­ also developed into a recruitment and training man, Robert Ler.oy, as being the p rin c ip le organizers program for righ tist terrorists and mercenaries of many of the bomb explosions in Italy in recent operating throughout the world. The documents years including the one in Milan. say A ginter provided lessons in sabotage and coun­ According to this report, Aginter Press served terinsurgency programs, as well as a manual of in­ as a cover for an international fascist organiza­ structions on how to resist interrogation. tion responsible for the planning and execution of Aginter was involved, as well, in counter­ many fascist attacks throughout Europe in recent revolutionary activities in the 1960s in many years. ' African countries such as Guinea-Bissau, the Congo The Portuguese Papers (npw independent Z a ire ), Gabon, Senegal and Angola. Five years a fte r the 1969 bombing and S hortly after the April 25, 1974 coup in Portugal, an in­ The documeftts also lin k the former press ag­ vestigation by officers of the Portuguese Armed ency to a network o f European neo-Nazi organizations Forces Movement (MFA) that overthrew the Portuguese c u rre n tly a ctive throughout Europe such as Europe dictatorship, corroborated the findings of the Action, the Black Order (an Italian organization Italian investigation. with suspected involvement in a recent conspiracy for an ultra-rightist takeover of the Italian gov­ After the coup in Portugal, thousands of agents ernment), and the New European Order. of the PIDE, the brutal and hated secret police un­ der Portugal's fascist regimes, were rounded up And the archives are said to name several and jailed. high ranking political figures in France and Ger­ many as involved in these organizations. On the night of May 2l, 1974, the questioning of one PIDE agent revealed that the Lisbon-based In the most recent development, dozens o f A ginter Press Agency had served as a base'’o f sup­ rightists met in Lyons, France, December 27, 28 port for PIDE, and as a center for the coordination and 29, 1974, at a q iiie t congress o f the "New of the activities of related fascist organizations European O rder." They represented fa s c is t organ­ in other countries. izations in France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and Latin America. The following day, a group of MFA officers The meeting also included Czechoslovakian and Yugo­ searched the former offices of Aginter Press, which slavian exiles, according to the New York Times were by then deserted. There they discovered a re p o rt. mass of information and archives on the activities of the agency, as well as a laboratory for the Among the participants was Yves Guillou, for­ manufacture o f many types o f fa lse documents. mer directpr of Aginter Press. As for the leaders of Aginter Press, they "New European Order" was founded in 1951 by mysteriously disappeared from Lisbon shortly before former Nazis who escaped execution at the end o f PAGE 1 1 LIBERATION News Service ' (#677) February 12, 1975 m ore.... World War II. Its founders s till head the organ­ Unemployed people, la b o r, w elfare and o th e r iz a tio n . They are Gaston Amaudruz, former Gestapo groups are expected to participate. agent now living in Lausanne, Switzerland, a Swed­ . * * * ish Nazi named Per Engdahl, and Maurice Bardeche from France. For more information on what w ill be going A declaration issued after the congress deman­ on in your area, contact the Congress of Afrikan ded the immediate release o f Nazi war crim inal Ru­ People, 502 High S t., Newark, N.J. 07102. Tel: d o lf Hess, s t i l l in j a i l in West Germany. The (201) 621-2300. Order says Hess has been "imprisoned for more than -30- thirty years for having wanted to re-establish ; . ' > * * * * irk ****** ******** * ****************** irk* It Irk irk * * peace, along w ith numerous comrades who fought fo r RED FACES FOR RED-BAITERS Europe." , WASHINGTON (LNS) - - The government's veteran Among others mentioned by the Order's declara­ witchrhuhters are not as single-minded and effective tion was Jacques Vasseur who, according to Le Monde, was well known to the French resistance as a collab- as you might th in k . Columnist Jack Anderson re ­ ports th a t the top o ffic ia ls fo r the Senate In ­ ...o ra to r w ith the Gestapo in France. ternal Security Committee, whose chairman is the Following the conference came a report from lifelbng anti-communist, James Eastland, have Italian magistrates revealing a heavy arms tra ffic lately been concentrating their search for sub­ from Marseille to Africa, controlled by "MGM," versives in such hotbeds o f ra d ica l a c tiv ity as an Italy-based import-export agency, controlled by the vacation resorts in Reno, Miami, San Juan European fa s c is ts . and Mexico C ity .. 5 Formed in the early '70s, its alleged purpose The Committee's chief counsel, Julian G. is "the acquistion and sale of a ll commercial pro­ Sourwine, re g u la rly charges the government fo r ducts," but the organization, it has been revealed, trip s to the ro u le tte tables o f Reno. Sourwine is mainly involved in buying heavy m ilitary equips got the government to pay fo r h is a irfa re , car ment including tanks, bomber planes, miSSiles and rentals and daily expenses, but insists that he submachine guns. The Ita lia n in ve stig a tio n has pays o f f h is own gambling debts. linked several Italian participants at the fascist Sourwine was one o f the government's most congress in Lyons w ith MGM. renowned Red-baiters during the, McCarthy period, MGM apparently buys arms from French, Swiss and continued his work into the1 sixties with in­ and Belgian manufacturers, through two middlemen, vestig ation s o f such groups as the United States G ilb e rt Lapeyrie, a former Gestapo agent, and Cesar Servicemen's Fund, Students fo r a Democratic Soc­ Dauwe. The arms, then, have been p rim a rily sold iety and Liberation News Service. in Africa. Dauwe was arrested and temporarily freed Sourwine*s chief investigator has spent when his involvement with an arms shipment bound money on trip s to Miami where he owns property fo r Ghana was discovered. and to Mexico City where he has relatives. Ander­ "What is particularly disturbing in this af­ son says the two o f them "have spent thousands fa ir," wrote the French paper, Liberation, recently, on these junkets." "is that fascists can control a flow of arms of "I am not a chiseler," Sourwine told a reporter such importance and particularly to Africa.