Operation “Find the Jackal” is the covert French inquiry launched after authorities learn that a professional foreign assassin may be preparing to kill Charles de Gaulle. Its defining problem is that the threat is grave but the target of the investigation has no known name: the OAS itself cannot identify the hired killer, while the President forbids a public search or visible retreat from his engagements. The operation therefore becomes both a race to build an identity from scattered records and a test of whether a large security apparatus can act effectively while concealing that it is acting at all.

The threat and the limits of public security

The danger had been made harder by the previous failures of those seeking to kill de Gaulle. At a meeting with the OAS leadership, the English professional assassin explained that earlier attacks, including the Pont-de-Seine and Petit-Clamart attempts, had made the target more difficult: the authorities were already forewarned of the general intention, even if they did not know the details of a new attempt. Routine security could no longer be expected to relax, and an attacker could not count on the panic and confusion that might help him escape after a shot. The Englishman judged the task possible but exceptionally difficult, and argued that the OAS needed a professional rather than a volunteer prepared to die in the attempt.

The warning later confronts the French government as an operational dilemma. Alexandre Sanguinetti protests that the authorities must protect de Gaulle even though he will not accept restrictions on his movements. Roger Frey explains that the Rolland report is not yet fully verified: it rests on Colonel Rolland’s analysis of Viktor Kowalski’s statements, and Kowalski has since died. Investigations in Vienna are still under way. But uncertainty does not remove the danger. Frey recounts the President’s formal orders: no publicity, no nationwide search, and no indication outside a small circle that anything is wrong. De Gaulle fears that disclosure would invite ridicule abroad and make it appear that the President of France is hiding from a single foreigner. He will not tolerate that appearance, and Frey warns that those responsible will face consequences if even the general impression of the affair becomes public.

The prohibition is not, Frey stresses, a prohibition on action. The response must be secret: identify the assassin, trace him wherever he is, and destroy him without hesitation. Yet the government’s existing resources cannot simply be set in motion. The OAS agents cannot name a man unknown to the organization’s own leaders; the SDECE cannot direct its Action Service against an unidentified person; the DST cannot know whom to intercept at the border; and documentary searches by the Renseignements généraux have no name to guide them. The police cannot arrest, and the CRS cannot pursue, a man they cannot recognize. The first task, Frey’s meeting concludes, is not to mobilize every force at once but to give the assassin a name.

Lebel takes command

Maurice Bouvier identifies the solution as detective work and names his deputy, Commissaire Claude Lebel, as the best detective in France. The Interior Minister summons Lebel and gives him a directive rather than asking for advice. For fifty minutes, Lebel listens to a briefing and reads the Rolland report under the scrutiny of the fourteen men assembled in the conference room. He emerges dazed: the scope of the task is immense, but its central instruction is precise. He is to establish his own office, draw on the information and resources of the organizations represented at the meeting, and incur whatever costs are necessary.

Lebel keeps his existing office and makes it the headquarters of Operation Find-the-Jackal. He asks for Caron, a younger inspector who had worked with him in Homicide and followed him to the Criminal Investigation Brigade. The choice of a familiar assistant becomes the foundation of a deliberately compact command post within a much larger state response. Lebel orders the office made into a sealed working base: his regular secretary is to be removed from the matter, Caron is to act as both assistant and secretary, a camp bed and washing equipment are to be brought in, and coffee supplies installed. Ten outside telephone lines and a permanently assigned operator are required. A memorandum is to give Caron authority to request from department heads whatever Lebel himself could request. These details register the operation’s two governing needs at once: speed and strict control over who knows what.

Building a name from incomplete records

Because no single agency can begin with a known suspect, Lebel turns the inquiry outward. He and Caron spend three hours in the basement communications room contacting senior crime investigators across several continents over secure, scrambled lines. Lebel presents the approach as a preliminary tip-off rather than a formal request between police forces: the French authorities are not yet certain that a crime has entered either the intention or preparation stage. He can offer little identifying information, only a poor description. The crucial lead is a qualification rather than a name: the unknown man must be one of the world’s leading professional political assassins, with several successful killings behind him. The silence that follows this description conveys how unusual and consequential the inquiry is, although Lebel still cannot give his foreign colleagues a suspect to check.

The records search eventually produces a more concrete line of inquiry. Throughout the night, archives are checked again for Alexander James Quentin Duggan. A card shows Duggan entering France from Brussels on the Brabant Express on July 22; a second report records a passenger of that name travelling from Paris to Brussels on the Etoile du Nord Express on July 31. A hotel registration from a small hotel near the Place de la Madeleine gives the same passport number as the information received from London and places Duggan there from July 22 through July 30. Caron favours raiding the hotel, but Lebel chooses a quiet visit to the proprietor in the early hours. He learns that the man he seeks had left by August 15, without waking the other guests or turning a discreet check into a conspicuous police action. The records provide a traceable identity and movements, but not a current location.

From identification to field searches

As the inquiry develops, Lebel’s instructions convert sparse leads into local searches without relaxing the operation’s secrecy. After a car is found, he orders Commissaire Valentin to send the strongest available team to Ussel and begin a square search centred on the discovery site. Officers are to ask at farmhouses, speak with farmers who regularly travel the road, and check village shops, cafés, hotels, and woodcutters’ shelters. Lebel gives them a description of a tall, blond man, English by birth but fluent in French, carrying three suitcases and a handgrip. The man is well dressed, has substantial cash, and may look as though he has slept rough. The search is designed to reconstruct where he went and what he tried to buy, not merely to locate a conspicuous stranger.

Valentin is also told to keep the Press away. If local reporters ask questions, the police are to describe the search as a mission of mercy for a possible survivor of a car crash who may be wandering in a dazed state. Lebel instructs Valentin that, if the suspect is found sheltered somewhere, his men must surround the place and hold him there rather than approach him. The order reflects the danger already identified: a lone confrontation with an armed professional could turn a search into an avoidable attack. Later, Lebel receives another report from Valentin at Tulle and asks whether the car and the room at the château have been fingerprinted. Valentin confirms that both have been checked and that hundreds of prints match. The exchange shows the investigation testing physical traces alongside travel records and witness enquiries, though the report alone does not resolve the assassin’s whereabouts.

A hidden pursuit against a visible target

The operation’s secrecy is especially strained by the President’s insistence on continuing public appearances. Preparations for the ceremonies include steel crowd barriers erected hours in advance, searches of the enclosed areas and sewers, searches of nearby houses and flats, and armed watchers on rooftops looking toward opposite roofs and windows. At Notre-Dame de Paris, police are to be placed on the cornices, roof, and among the spires; priests, acolytes, and choirboys taking part in Mass are to be searched for concealed weapons. Special lapel badges are prepared for police and CRS officers in case the assassin tries to pass as a security man. Bullet-proof windows are secretly fitted to the President’s Citroën, its driver is told to move faster than usual, and unusually tall officers and officials are brought in to surround de Gaulle without attracting his notice. Even this intensive protection must remain concealed: the Minister says the President must not be told about the reinforced windows because he would be furious.

Lebel offers no last-minute device that can guarantee the assassin will be stopped. He tells the Minister that the man has reached France with a gun despite being betrayed and pursued by two of the world’s best police forces; he may be hiding behind yet another face and identity card. The security arrangements may be extensive, but Lebel cannot know how the assassin intends to penetrate them. He is certain only that the man must emerge the next day and that someone must recognize him. With no further protective measure to propose, Lebel asks to move among the ceremonies and watch. The operation thus reaches its immediate test not through a final deduction that identifies the killer, but through the ordinary discipline of observation: the police must keep their eyes open while the President continues to appear in public and the threat remains hidden.