Charles de Gaulle—OAS

The relationship between Charles de Gaulle and the OAS is defined by a struggle over the future of France in which political opposition becomes an organized campaign to kill the President. For the OAS, his death is presented as the necessary precondition for overthrowing his government; for the state, the threat is dangerous not only because it targets one man but because his death could destabilize the country. A history of failed attempts leads the OAS to seek an outsider, while the very secrecy intended to protect that plan makes it harder for either side to control what follows.

Political Opposition and the Stakes of De Gaulle’s Death

The OAS leadership frames its cause as the restoration of France, claiming that the country is ruled by a dictator whose death would make political change possible. Its assessment is shaped by six earlier attempts to eliminate Charles de Gaulle: three were exposed during their planning, one was betrayed the day before it was to take place, and two were carried out but missed. These failures show both the persistence of the organization’s campaign and the difficulty of turning its political objective into an effective attack.

The danger reaches beyond the fate of the President. Roger Frey understands the conflict through the precarious state of French institutions in 1963. De Gaulle’s supporters had previously fought their way back to power, but Frey now sees the possibility that a successful assassination could bring down the political order and open the way to a coup and civil war. The OAS’s campaign therefore threatens a political structure that Frey believes may not survive the death of its central figure.

The conflict has also become a contest between the OAS’s underground organization and the state’s efforts to penetrate it. By the time of the proposed contract, the OAS is under pressure from intelligence infiltration and police action. The organization’s internal security is unreliable: Rodin warns that even people in responsible positions may report plans to the authorities, while some politicians associated with the cause cannot be trusted with sensitive information. The OAS is fighting the state, but it cannot assume that its own channels are secure.

From Failed Attempts to an Outsider

Marc Rodin concludes that the OAS’s known and capable French operatives have become too exposed to carry out the assassination. They would move inside France as hunted men, pursued by conventional police and vulnerable to betrayal by informants. His proposed solution is to hire a foreign professional who lies outside the networks the French authorities have already been monitoring. René Montclair and André Casson agree in principle, but the decision is made within an exceptionally small circle because every additional person who knows the plan creates another opportunity for a leak.

The English professional whom Rodin consults describes the problem as unusually difficult. Charles de Gaulle has been warned of the general intention to kill him, even if he does not know the details of this particular attempt. Security routines that might otherwise become mechanical are therefore unlikely to relax; if an attack occurs, the surrounding personnel are expected to respond rather than panic. The earlier attempts, especially those at Pont-de-Seine and Petit-Clamart, have not merely failed: they have made the target harder to approach. The professional nevertheless agrees to undertake the assassination, for a price reflecting the danger and the prospect that he will never be able to work again.

The arrangement is deliberately designed to preserve the distance between employer and agent. The Englishman insists that the planning and execution remain his responsibility and that he will disclose no operational details, even to the men hiring him. He intends to disappear, sever his existing means of contact, and communicate only in an emergency. The agreement gives the OAS access to a specialist it believes can evade its opponents, but it also gives the specialist control of the information and timing that matter most. The organization can commission the attempt; it cannot supervise it in the ordinary way.

Secrecy, Money, and the Limits of Control

Rodin restricts knowledge of the hiring plan to himself, Montclair, and Casson, and the Englishman makes the same secrecy a condition of cooperation. He demands that records of meetings, files, and dossiers be destroyed. If any of the three men is captured, he reserves the right to abandon the operation. His conditions reflect the OAS’s immediate vulnerability to infiltration, but they also make the relationship brittle: a security breach can end the arrangement, and there is no wider organization to take over its management.

Money is another instrument of the relationship, but not a guarantee of influence. The OAS’s combined Swiss accounts pass the first payment threshold of $250,000, and Rodin instructs the bankers to transfer that sum to the hired assassin. He expects that the death of Charles de Gaulle would prompt extreme-right industrialists and bankers to provide a further $250,000, although those same backers had recently resisted advancing more money because they doubted the OAS’s progress. The anticipated reward depends on a political outcome that has not happened; the first payment, by contrast, is already being put beyond the organization’s immediate control.

Casson argues that the transfer should wait until an intelligence contact in Paris can provide reliable information about de Gaulle’s whereabouts, travel plans, and public appearances. His representative has placed an agent close to someone in the President’s entourage, but needs several more days to make the channel dependable. Rodin accepts the delay. Neither man knows that the assassin has already selected his day and is proceeding according to his own schedule. The episode makes the imbalance plain: the OAS is trying to supply information and assistance, yet its chosen agent’s independent preparations have already moved beyond the timing the employers believe they can affect.

The State’s Response and the Escalating Standoff

Once the threat reaches the government, the French response is constrained by uncertainty and by de Gaulle’s own orders. Frey has not yet received confirmation that every part of the analysis is correct, and the suspected assassin is known only by a codename. De Gaulle nevertheless forbids publicity, a nationwide search, and any indication outside a small circle that the government is alarmed. He also refuses to alter his public engagements. He considers conspicuous security changes politically costly: they could invite ridicule abroad and suggest that the President of France is hiding from a foreigner.

The order creates a sharp tension between protecting Charles de Gaulle and preserving the appearance that the state remains in control. Alexandre Sanguinetti objects that the President’s life must be protected, yet the prohibition on countermeasures leaves officials feeling they may have to wait for the attack. The police and security agencies possess extensive files and infiltrators within the OAS, but those resources cannot identify an outsider who has no known French network. The very method Rodin chose to bypass the state’s informants has therefore turned the state’s accumulated knowledge into a poor guide to the immediate threat.

As the Liberation Day ceremony approaches, the precautions become extensive without changing the public programme. Crowds are to be held farther from ceremonies behind steel barriers; secured areas are to be searched, including the sewers; nearby rooftops are to be watched; and police are placed on the roof and among the spires of Notre-Dame. Officials and participants are searched, and special badges are issued so that a disguised attacker cannot easily pass as a security officer. Bulletproof windows are secretly fitted to the President’s Citroën, without his knowledge, while the driver is told to move faster than usual and unusually tall officers are assigned to surround him.

Even these preparations do not resolve the central uncertainty: the authorities do not know how the assassin will approach the President. Claude Lebel argues that the man has already reached France despite betrayal and pursuit, and that he must emerge during the next day’s events. His proposed contribution is to move among the ceremonies and watch for the fugitive. The OAS’s effort to defeat the state’s security network has thus produced a standoff in which the state can fortify the visible approaches but cannot predict the method of an adversary it has failed to identify. The relationship is no longer simply a campaign by the OAS against de Gaulle; it is an escalating contest between public protection and an attacker whose greatest advantage is that his employers do not fully know what he is doing.