The OAS conspiracy to assassinate de Gaulle

The OAS conspiracy to assassinate de Gaulle is the plan by the Secret Army Organisation to hire a professional killer to murder Charles de Gaulle. Its exposure transforms a clandestine contract into a struggle between an assassin who believes he can penetrate the President’s security and a police operation constrained by secrecy and by de Gaulle’s refusal to appear afraid. The plot’s consequences are therefore twofold: it raises the practical difficulty of reaching its target, while setting in motion an unusually broad investigation that must find a man whose name and identity remain uncertain.

Origins and the choice of a professional

The organisation presents its aim as political restoration. It regards de Gaulle as a dictator whose rule has dishonoured France, and holds that he must die before the country can be restored to Frenchmen. The conspiracy follows a succession of failed efforts: six attempts had been considered or undertaken by OAS supporters, with three exposed during early planning, one betrayed on the eve of the attempt, and two carried out but unsuccessful. The record is not merely a measure of repeated failure. It explains why the organisation turns from its own supporters to an outside professional.

In discussions with Marc Rodin and André Casson, The Jackal assesses the proposed killing as possible but exceptionally difficult. A public figure’s exposure can make assassination feasible, he argues, but an attack is most likely to permit escape when security has grown routine and the first shot provokes confusion. Here, previous attempts have already warned the authorities. The Jackal expects no relaxed checks or mechanical routines; if a shot reached de Gaulle, he says, security personnel would be more likely to turn on the assassin than panic. The failed attempts have therefore damaged the prospects of any later attacker, even as they persuade the OAS that a professional is necessary.

The Jackal also identifies the distinction between a professional and a willing volunteer prepared to die in the attempt. The earlier attacks at Pont-de-Seine and Petit-Clamart failed, in his assessment, because no participant would risk his own life to make the killing certain. His appraisal is unsentimental: the organisation’s commitment does not itself supply the kind of operative its plan requires. The conspirators’ decision to employ him rests on his judgment that the task can be done, not on any promise that it will be easy.

Exposure and the decision to continue

The plot’s exposure begins to change its prospects when Viktor Kowalski’s confession reaches the French authorities. Valmy’s message tells Rodin that the authorities know the assassin by the codename The Jackal. Rodin initially sees a possible gap in what has been revealed: Kowalski could not know the killer’s real name, known only to Rodin, Rend Montclair and Casson. But the distinction offers little protection. Investigators have the meeting, the hotel, and a description of the man; Rodin concludes that they will infer that the blond visitor was a killer.

Rodin recognises the operational consequences before the full manhunt has begun. He expects the security around de Gaulle to tighten and the President to abandon public engagements, closing off the opportunities on which the attack depends. He considers the operation irretrievably exposed and intends to warn The Jackal to stop. His decision reflects his former role as a commanding officer: he will not knowingly send a man on a mission whose chance of success has collapsed. The Jackal, however, does not share that conclusion. He believes his plan can still defeat the security screen, despite acknowledging that the threat has made his task more dangerous.

The Jackal’s calculation is sharpened by his independence from his employers. With Kowalski dead, he believes that nobody—not even Rodin and his associates—knows who he is or where he is. He is carrying Alexander Duggan’s identity and can establish it with the passport. Yet continuing also carries a financial risk. The quarter-million dollars held in his account in Zurich could become the subject of a dispute with Rodin if he withdraws; refusal to return most of it, he believes, would expose him to being tracked down, tortured for the document needed to release the funds, and killed. He weighs that danger against the cost of staying ahead of both his employers and the police, and the hazards of pursuing the assassination. Exposure narrows his choices but does not make him abandon the operation.

A secret investigation becomes a manhunt

The French authorities do not immediately answer the exposure with a public national search. The Minister of the Interior tells his chief of cabinet that the intelligence still rests on Colonel Rolland’s interpretation of Kowalski’s statements, and that inquiries in Vienna are continuing. De Gaulle’s formal instructions prohibit publicity, a nationwide search, or any sign outside a small circle that anything is wrong. Public precautions would risk turning the affair into a spectacle of the President hiding from a foreigner, and de Gaulle will not tolerate that impression. The plot therefore creates a contradiction at the centre of the response: the threat calls for heightened vigilance, but the authorities must conceal both the threat and the scale of their preparations.

Claude Lebel receives the assignment as a directive rather than a request. After reading Rolland’s report in a room of senior officials, he is given his own office, access to necessary information and the resources of the organisations represented at the meeting, without a limit on costs. He immediately turns that authority into a working arrangement. Lucien Caron is made his sole assistant and secretary; the office is kept within the circle of secrecy, supplied for continuous work, and given ten outside telephone lines and a dedicated operator. These practical provisions make the investigation an operating unit rather than an informal consultation.

Lebel’s first approach is international but deliberately guarded. He arranges confidential calls through the International Criminal Police Organization with homicide chiefs or their deputies in seven countries: the United States, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, West Germany and South Africa. The conversations are to be direct, unmonitored and treated as top priority, although Lebel cannot yet present the matter as an official enquiry between police forces. He describes the sought man as a possible political contract killer with successful killings behind him, not a gangland gunman. The method reflects the evidence gap: the police have neither a name nor a reliable description, so Lebel asks other forces to identify a professional whose record or reputation might fit.

The search also depends on mundane records. During an overnight review of the archives, investigators find evidence that Alexander James Quentin Duggan entered France from Brussels on the Brabant Express on July 22 and appeared on a passenger report for the Etoile du Nord Express travelling from Paris to Brussels on July 31. A hotel registration in Duggan’s name, with a passport number matching information from London, places him at a small hotel near the Place de la Madeleine from July 22 through July 30. Lebel chooses a discreet visit to the proprietor over a raid; the man is already gone by August 15. The records offer a traceable identity and a travel history, but not a current location.

Escalating precautions and the unresolved threat

When a car is found near Ussel, Lebel orders Commissaire Valentin to assemble as many capable men as possible and begin a square search centred on the vehicle. The instructions are specific: question farms, drivers who regularly use the road, village shops and cafés, hotels, and woodcutters’ shelters. The searchers are to look for a tall blond Englishman who speaks good French, carries three suitcases and a handgrip, has substantial cash, and may appear to have slept rough. The police are also told to keep the press away, disguising the activity with a low-key explanation about a possible confused crash victim. If they locate the man, they must surround him rather than approach him. The orders show how the investigation attempts to convert a sparse description into a systematic local net while keeping the larger conspiracy hidden.

The threat dictates still more elaborate security for the ceremonies on Paris Liberation Day. Steel barriers are to be raised hours in advance; the enclosed areas are to be searched, including the sewers; nearby houses and flats are to be checked; and armed watchers are to survey roofs and windows. Police are assigned even to the cornices, roof and spires of Notre-Dame of Paris. Clergy, acolytes and choirboys are to be searched, while special lapel badges are issued to police and members of the CRS in case The Jackal attempts to pass as security personnel. Bulletproof windows are secretly fitted to de Gaulle’s Citroën, and the driver is told to move faster than usual. Officials are to place unusually tall men around the President without his noticing.

Despite this apparatus, Lebel cannot identify the method by which The Jackal might get a weapon near de Gaulle. His assessment is narrower and more urgent: the assassin remains in France, armed and concealed, and must emerge the next day if he is to act. The police cannot rely on a single revelation that makes the danger disappear; they must recognise him when he appears. The conspiracy thus culminates, in the evidence of this phase, not in a completed attack but in a contest of attention and adaptation: the security ring is made formidable, while the concealed assassin’s continued presence prevents the authorities from treating it as sufficient.