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NATO's Secret Armies, Operation Gladio and JFK


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There is the Big Picture and then there is the World Wide Picture.

This article by Rob Couteau addresses the latter.  And I think it is the first one to actually relate the discoveries about Gladio and Metta's book on Permindex to each other, and through that to, not just JFK, but to the Moro murder and the attempts against DeGaulle.

As I have said, sometimes we get so involved in the details of the case, that we lose sight of what the case is really about.  Rob has done a fine job in expanding that sight and doing it with the likes of Dr Ganser.  Who he was in contact with while writing the piece.  Also, note the excellent pics.

Nice going Rob.

https://kennedysandking.com/articles/nato-s-secret-armies-operation-gladio-and-jfk

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Thanks for posting this, fellas.

I admire Daniel Ganser's historical research on Gladio, which I first discovered in the context of 9/11 research.

Sibel Edmonds related publications on the subject-- Classified Woman, and The Lone Gladio -- are also good reads.

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In looking at Ganser's book, its really set up like some kind of encyclopedia or compendium on the subject.

Talk about devotion.  But that is what a real academic is all about: being comprehensive.

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Haven't gotten into the article yet, just want to point out a typo in the opening synopsis. (A comma after Kennedy.)

 

 

 

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And the thing is Rob, he looks so young.

Really, he looks like he is 27, but he isn't.  Usually that kind of work ages people prematurely.

 

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Interesting observation, Jim. I think it's a combination of good Swiss genes and more importantly a lot of joie de vivre. According to wiki, he will be 47 years old on 29 August. Happy Birthday Dr Ganser. As you'll see, he tries to end even that sordid Gladio chronicle on a high note. I'm planning on reading it a second time, as there is just too much in there to retain on one reading. Ditto Philip Willan's "Puppetmasters."

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3 hours ago, Rob Couteau said:

Interesting observation, Jim. I think it's a combination of good Swiss genes and more importantly a lot of joie de vivre. According to wiki, he will be 47 years old on 29 August. Happy Birthday Dr Ganser. As you'll see, he tries to end even that sordid Gladio chronicle on a high note. I'm planning on reading it a second time, as there is just too much in there to retain on one reading. Ditto Philip Willan's "Puppetmasters."

Rob,

 

Just for your own info, the photo of Souetre you included in your essay appeared in an article by Jean-Claude Sanchez, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine "Debout les Paras" Le Journal de L'Union Nationale des Parachutistes. Jean-Claude Sanchez was the President of the Haute-Savoie section of the U.N.P. in 1982.

 

Caption under the photo reads: (Le Capitaine Souetre in Timimoun in 1957.)

The Timimoun District is in Adrar Province, south-central Algeria.

 

There was a throwaway line in something Jean-Claude Perez told Fensterwald in 1982 in the "A Possible French Connection". He said that,

post 1962, Souetre was part of an ultra-right, ultra-Catholic splinter group which included four men named Pichon, Lefevre, Bourget, and Grossouvre. Group called Integraliste
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Souetre%20Jean%20with%20aka%27s/Item%2011.pdf page 4.

 

image.png.9c95779f16278f4d691aafdd69850c41.png

Stay-behind: les réseaux d’ingérence américains

The American interference network – Gladio

http://www.voltairenet.org/article8691.html#nh27

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.voltairenet.org%2Farticle8691.html%23nh27

François de Grossouvre (29 March 1918 – 7 April 1994) was a French politician charged in 1981 by newly elected president François Mitterrand with overseeing national security and other sensitive matters, in particular those concerning Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Gabon, the Persian Gulf countries, Pakistan and the two Korea. He was also in charge of the French branch of Gladio, Nato's stay-behind paramilitary secret armies during the Cold War. He was found dead with gunshot wounds at the Élysée Palace, the French President's official residence. The official verdict was suicide.

 

Isn't it odd that he would commit suicide in the French President's official residence?

 

François de Grossouvre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_de_Grossouvre

 

In 1943 he married Claudette Berger, daughter of an industrialist, Antoine Berger, and had six children. Grossouvre managed his family-in-law's companies Le Bon Sucre (1944–63) and A. Berger et Cie (1949–63), and then founded the Générale Sucrière sugar company. Along with Italian collaborators, businessman Gilbert Beaujolin and the American Alexandre Patty, he succeeded in obtaining an exclusive production licence for Coca-Cola and building the first factory of this type in France. Distribution was by the Société parisienne de boissons gazeuses and the Glacières de Paris, both subsidiaries of Pastis Pernod.

 

(Remember Souetre was the manager? director? of a sugar company in Martinique)

 

According to Fensterwald in A Possible French Connection, Souetre “spent much time in Martinique where nominally, he was the Director of a sugar refinery whose head office was in France at Arcis sur Aube.”

http://www.xiconhoca.org/PDF/DDeRoux/Apossiblefrenchconnection.pdf page 13 of the memo page 15 of the pdf.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcis-sur-Aube

 

Besides many big farms producing all sorts of cereals, the sugar industry has a big plant there Cristal Union.”

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_de_Grossouvre

 

During World War II, François de Grossouvre was posted as auxiliary physician in a regiment of Moroccan tirailleurs, and then joined the ski troops in the Vercors region. There he met Captain Bousquet, who created one of the first units of the Organisation de résistance de l'armée (ORA). He then returned to Lyon, where he received his doctorate in 1942. Afterward, he became doctor of the 11th regiment of Cuirassiers, headed by Colonel Lormeau.[4]

Grossouvre then became a member of Joseph Darnand's Service d'ordre légionnaire (SOL), a Vichyst militia. He left it in 1943 to fight in the Vercors, joining the Maquis of the Chartreuse, near Grenoble (code-name "Clober"). After the Liberation, it was found that he had in fact infiltrated the SOL on behalf of ORA.

 

Grossouvre was then recruited in 1950 by the French SDECE intelligence agency to replace Gilbert Union, official in Lyon and who had worked with the military agency BCRA, and became leader of Arc-en-Ciel, the regional branch of Gladio (Lyon region), NATO's stay-behind anti-communist organizations during the Cold War, under the code-name "Monsieur Leduc".[1][5] According to former SDECE agent Louis Mouchon, "His business, the A. Berger et Cie Sugar company, offered ample opportunities to stage fronts. He really had excellent contacts." According to The Economist's obituary, "He was recruited into the French espionage service and helped to organise Gladio, an American backed plan to create an armed resistance movement in Western Europe against a Russian invasion."

Created by Colonel Fourcaud, in liaison with the US National Security Council, and then by Grossouvre, this network allegedly used the SAC Gaullist militia and the DPS, the National Front's currently dissolved militia.[6] The DPS was created along with Jacques Foccart, after the 1982 dissolution of the SAC, and allegedly provided mercenaries for activities in the former French colonies in Africa.[7]

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/François_de_Grossouvre

 

According to former SDECE agent Louis Mouchon, "His business, the A. Berger et Cie Sugar company, offered ample opportunities to stage fronts. He really had excellent contacts."

 

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.voltairenet.org%2Farticle8691.html%23nh27

 

For example, two regional stay-behind managers, Gilbert Beaujolin and François Durand de Grossouvre (aka "Monsieur Leduc"), set up a commercial company which immediately benefited from Coca-Cola's exclusive bottling concession [ 27 ] “

 

Steve Thomas

 

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Steve, Thanks for this great bunch of info. As usual with Gladio, the connections are mind-boggling. François Grossouvre also makes an appearance on pages 90-91 in Ganser's book: "Maybe the most famous member of the French secret anti-Communist Rose des Vents army was François de Grossouvre who in 1981 became the adviser of Socialist President Francois Mitterrand for secret operations. During the Second World War Grossouvre had enrolled in a fascist Vichy-backed militia that he later claimed to have infiltrated on behalf of the resistance. After the war the military Secret Service recruited him for the Rose des Vents secret army. SDECE agent Louis Mouchon who had himself recruited many secret soldiers for the network recalled how Grossouvre had been contacted: 'Our responsible man in Lyon, Gilbert Union, who during the war had carried out missions for the BCRA, was a passionate car driver and at that time had died on the road. To replace him, the SDECE had recruited, in 1950, François de Grossouvre.' Mouchon elaborated that Grossouvre was not only chosen for his wartime experience but as well for his contacts: 'His business, the A. Berger et Cie Sugar company, offered ample opportunities to stage fronts. He really had excellent contacts.' As special adviser of President Mitterrand, Grossouvre influenced French secret warfare in the beginning of the 1980s but was eased out of his main responsibilities in 1985 as his Cloak and Dagger style became intolerable to Mitterrand's staider colleagues. Yet the personal relations to Mitterrand allegedly remained good, and when in 1990 after the pan-European Gladio discoveries President Mitterrand in the midst of the scandal had to close down the French Gladio network 'he had first consulted his "gray eminence" François Grossouvre.' By the time of Grossouvre's death his participation in the secret war was no longer a secret. 'He was recruited into the French espionage service and helped to organize Gladio, an American-backed plan to create an armed resistance movement in Western Europe against a Russian invasion,' the British Economist noted in his obituary after the Grossouvre, age 76, had dramatically shot himself in the Elysee Palace on April 7, 1994."

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Note that, as a scholar, Dr. Ganser does not step beyond the point of verifiable data and doesn't speculate about the strange circumstances of the death. (Also, his account had to be highly condensed to explore Gladio in all 12 Euro member states.) I believe if asked in a more informal interview format he would be willing to make an educated guess, but he leaves it to the reader to put together the facts. In Richard Cottrell's book, "Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe," the author is less restrained and at times more speculative. For example, he says "In 1981, after so many years of plotting and struggles with his great rival Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mitterrand, the inscrutable Sphinx of French politics, rose to his life's ambition. He at last received the keys of the Elysee Palace, and naturally began to shower favors on all the good people who helped him on his way. One of these was the grand veteran mercenary Yves Guerin-Serac. The services he rendered to the complex conspirator Mitterrand may only be guessed. But they were quite sufficient, during the 14 years this fifth son of a provincial stationmaster occupied the presidency, to gain promotion to Colonel, with enhanced pension." Cottrell is saying that President Mitterrand promoted killer-terrorist and former renegade OAS member Guerin-Serac (who was no longer in the military) to Colonel so that Guerin-Serac could collect a bigger pension.) "The following chapter describes Mitterrand's enduring enmity for Charles de Gaulle, who responded with equal quantities of vitriol. The honors received suggests, at the very least, that Guerin-Serac was involved in plots to kill the president [Charles de Gaulle], either as planner or direct participant. Certainly he is the only known survivor from the ranks of the OAS to receive what amounts to a presidential pardon. Yves Guerin-Serac finally retired to his native Brittany, and would now be in his late 80s, if still alive. And enquiries indicate that he is, but maintains a diplomatic Trappist monk silence. After all, what is there say? His acts have all been vindicated. He must survey the world scene with quiet satisfaction, now that the Black Global Order for which he plotted, bombed, and killed is at last at hand."

 

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Cottrell follows with this passage on François Grossouvre:

"The death - or murder - within the precincts of the presidential palace set off a political earthquake around the tottering regime of Francois Mitterrand, the renowned escapologist of French politics. François Grossouvre, 76-year-old aristocrat found slumped at his desk on 7th April 1994, with two bullet holes drilled in his temple, was a fading old retainer in the Gothic Court of France's nominally socialist president." (In France, Mitterrand and his party were widely referred to as Caviar Socialists.) "He was long celebrated as the man in the shadows for his links to the French military-espionage complex, and guardian of uncomfortable truths concerning Mitterrand's much air-brushed past as collaborator and sympathizer with the extremist pre-war Far-Right. He was also the man who knew too much about the sitting president's role in serial attempts to kill General de Gaulle."

Now, speaking about the suspicious "suicide" of  François Grossouvre:

"The small difficulty was that slugs fired by the pistol which sent him to eternity appeared not to perfectly match the revolver, a .357 Magnum which he was still gripping in one hand. Another curiosity was exactly how he managed to score two shots to his own head.... [When François Grossouvre died] he carried off many useful secrets. The man of the shadows was former commandant in chief of the French stay-behind army, who began his secret military career as officer-in-charge of Arc en Ciel - the Rainbow - based in Lyon. He was privy to Mitterrand's personal decision to sink the Greenpeace yacht Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, on 10th July 1985. And he knew exactly why Mitterrand sanctified Yves Guerin-Serac, the most fanatical terrorist in contemporary French history. In the course of a long life as a wealthy businessman, media magnate, counselor of state, agent for French external intelligence SDECE and the CIA, the lean-framed, bearded aristocrat managed to find time to father six children. But he was really married to his lifelong muse en chef, Francois Mitterrand."

(I only wish this book was better footnoted and sourced.)

Edited by Rob Couteau
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Thanks for that Steve, and Rob.

Really interesting stuff.  How did Gladio stay secret as long as it did?  Amazing.

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4 hours ago, Rob Couteau said:

Cottrell follows with this passage on François Grossouvre:

"The death - or murder - within the precincts of the presidential palace set off a political earthquake around the tottering regime of Francois Mitterrand, the renowned escapologist of French politics. François Grossouvre, 76-year-old aristocrat found slumped at his desk on 7th April 1994, with two bullet holes drilled in his temple, was a fading old retainer in the Gothic Court of France's nominally socialist president." (In France, Mitterrand and his party were widely referred to as Caviar Socialists.) "He was long celebrated as the man in the shadows for his links to the French military-espionage complex, and guardian of uncomfortable truths concerning Mitterrand's much air-brushed past as collaborator and sympathizer with the extremist pre-war Far-Right. He was also the man who knew too much about the sitting president's role in serial attempts to kill General de Gaulle."

Now, speaking about the suspicious "suicide" of  François Grossouvre:

"The small difficulty was that slugs fired by the pistol which sent him to eternity appeared not to perfectly match the revolver, a .357 Magnum which he was still gripping in one hand. Another curiosity was exactly how he managed to score two shots to his own head.... [When François Grossouvre died] he carried off many useful secrets. The man of the shadows was former commandant in chief of the French stay-behind army, who began his secret military career as officer-in-charge of Arc en Ciel - the Rainbow - based in Lyon. He was privy to Mitterrand's personal decision to sink the Greenpeace yacht Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, on 10th July 1985. And he knew exactly why Mitterrand sanctified Yves Guerin-Serac, the most fanatical terrorist in contemporary French history. In the course of a long life as a wealthy businessman, media magnate, counselor of state, agent for French external intelligence SDECE and the CIA, the lean-framed, bearded aristocrat managed to find time to father six children. But he was really married to his lifelong muse en chef, Francois Mitterrand."

(I only wish this book was better footnoted and sourced.)

 

5 hours ago, Rob Couteau said:

 In Richard Cottrell's book, "Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe," the author is less restrained and at times more speculative. For example, he says..."Certainly he is the only known survivor from the ranks of the OAS to receive what amounts to a presidential pardon.

 

Rob,

 

I don't know exactly why Cottrell would say that.

In July, 1968, Charles DeGaulle issued a general amnesty for all those involved in the "Algerian affair".  If my memory serves me right, some 13,000 OAS members had been arrested at that point.

Souetre himself would go on run for several local municipal elections under the banner of the National Front Party. In 2000 he ran for a seat on the European Parliment. (He lost).

image.png.47ce231d1d3233afc5a24d868d498ddb.png

I've been trying to determine which had more influence on Jean-Rene's character. The trans-national sentiment of the Gladio movement represented by Guerin Serac, or the nationalistic influences of the Integrelistes. It's hard for me to understand how an ultra orthodox Catholic could countenance the murder of a Catholic President.

I think there are two ingredients that help understand Souetre's character.: One was the Integraliste movement; and the other was DeGaulle's suspension of Article 16 of the French Constitution.

 

1) Integralism

There was a throwaway line in something Jean-Claude Perez told Fensterwald in 1982. He said that,

post 1962, Souetre was part of an ultra-right, ultra-Catholic splinter group which included four men named Pichon, Lefevre, Bourget, and Grossouvre. Group called Integraliste
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Souetre%20Jean%20with%20aka%27s/Item%2011.pdf

p. 4.

(Albert Lefevre, by the way, was the one man I could find that both stood trial with Souetre in December, 1961 and who escaped with him from the Camp at St. Maurice L'Ardoise in February, 1962.)

From Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integralism

Integralism is an ideology according to which a nation is an organic unity. Integralism defends social differentiation and hierarchy with co-operation between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups. It advocates trade unionism (or a guild system), corporatism, and organic political representation instead of ideological forms of representation. Integralism claims that the best political institutions for given nations will differ depending on the history, culture and climate of the nation's habitat. Often associated with blood and soil conservatism, it posits the nation or the state or the nation state as an end and a moral good, rather than a means.[1]

The term integralism was coined by the French journalist Charles Maurras, whose conception of nationalism was illiberal and anti-internationalist, elevating the interest of the state above that of the individual and above humanity in general.[1]

Although it is marked by its being exclusionary and particularistic, and there has been consideration of its historic role as a sort of proto-fascism (in a European context)[1] or para-fascism (in a South American context),[2] this link remains controversial, with some social scientists positing that it combines elements of both the political left and right.[3]


Catholic Integralism does not support the creation of an autonomous "Catholic" state church, or Erastianism (Gallicanism in French context). Rather it supports subordinating the state to the worldwide Catholicism under the leadership of the Pope. Thus it rejects separation of the Catholic Church from the state and favours Catholicism as the proclaimed religion of the state.[5]

Catholic Integralism appeals to the teaching on the subordination of temporal to spiritual power of medieval popes such as Pope Gregory VII and Pope Boniface VIII. But Catholic Integralism in the strict sense came about as a reaction against the political and cultural changes which followed the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.[6

 

Steve Thomas

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