-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Great Heroin Coup - Drugs, Intelligence, & International Fascism Henrik Kruger Jerry Meldon, Translator South End Press©1980 Box 68 Astor Station Boston, MA 02123 ISBN 0-89608-0319-5 240pps - one edition - out-of-print Orginally published in Danish Smukke Serge og Heroien Bogan 1976 --[7]-- SEVEN BEAU SERGE, SCOURGE OF THE PARTISANS The murder of police lieutenant Galibert caused a major sensation in France. Despite what seemed to be an all-out manhunt, the wily Christian David, aided by friends, eluded Galibert's colleagues in the antigangster squad. In the Fetich Club of Neuville-Sur-Ain, outside Lyons, Beau Serge bided his time. A big-time bordello and haunt of the Guerini clan, the Club was a frequent rendezvous of David's friends in SAC. Reportedly, Meme Guerini at first favored delivering his body to the police. But powerful forces must have intervened, as Mafia bosses were persuaded to help Beau Serge flee from France.[1]One day in March 1966 a car picked him up at the Fetich Club and drove him to a Guerini post on the outskirts of Marseilles. In early May David sent word to Simone Mauduit, one of his Parisian mistresses, asking her to fly down to Marseilles with a bundle of money.[2] >From Marseilles David's friend Francois Orsoni drove her to a restaurant on the road from Cannes to Nice. There she handed Beau Serge the cash and bade him a fond farewell.[3] Later that month David was driven to Genoa, Italy, where he boarded a ship bound for Latin America. A new career in the shadows awaited him. Beau Serge had with him from Marseilles a letter of introduction to the former French mafioso and Gestapo collaborator Auguste Ricord. The mobster was then organizing a major narcotics network that would smuggle heroin from Marseilles to the U.S.A. via Argentina and Paraguay. His reputation having preceded him in Latin America, David was welcomed into the Ricord organization with open arms and soon moved into its highest ranks. Also part of Beau Serge's reception committee were agents of the SDECE and SAC. His arrival coincided with a powerful French diplomatic offensive in Latin America. With the U.S. wading into a quagmire in Indochina and otherwise preoccupied with the Soviet Union, de Gaulle, and more so Jacques Foccart, sought to entrench themselves as deeply in Latin America as they had in Africa. De Gaulle planned to come on like the Great White Father, the Third World's only friend, but Foccart felt that wouldn't suffice. He moved several of his most trusted men from Africa to Latin America. Between 1965 and 1968, for example, we find the notorious Colonel Roger Barberot as France's ambassador to Uruguay, and Dominique Ponchardier its man in Bolivia.[4] If anyone stands for cloaks and daggers it's these two, whose names turn up in a string of France's most sensitive espionage scandals. Foccart's men moved where they saw the greatest openings: supporting right wing forces in a region already in the grip of military dictatorship. Barberot and Ponchardier offered to help these regimes break the back of left wing insurgency. For that they needed men without scruples, men like Christian David. On arrival in Argentina, David met Francois Chiappe, wanted in France for a pair of murders. Chiappe, also known as "Big Lips," had worked for the Guerini mob and was on excellent terms with politicians and right wing militants in Argentina.[5] He was also a top member of the Ricord organization. The Ricord network was divided into four teams that operated independently out of separate headquarters. Ricord himself ran the main team from Asuncion, Paraguay, and oversaw the entire operation. Chiappe and Michel Nicoli led another team, Dominique Orsini and Louis Bonsignour a third, and Andre Condemine and Lucien Sarti a fourth.[6] Other important names in the organization were Claude-Andre Pastou, Didier Barone and Michel "Bouboule" Sans. It was Murder Incorporated in French. Nearly all had been sentenced to death in France. Barone, besides belonging to the Felix Lesca gang, had teamed up on art swindles with the aforementioned CIA agent Fernand Legros and with Legros' forger, Elmyr de Hory.[7] Pastou is similarly interesting. In December 1968 Enrico Passigli, a weapons-smuggling friend of Christian David's, was murdered in Rome.[8] Almost simultaneously, Thierry de Bonnay, another close associate of Legros',[9] died in a mysterious auto accident. Italian police suspected Pastou in both killings, which were committed while he was on a trip back to Europe. The Ricord network operated freely south of the border because its members helped repressive regimes fight the left and smuggle arms, sometimes combining the two profitably. While he was helping intelligence groups infiltrate guerilla movements, Christian David found new customers for his weapons. The major arms deals, though, were with militant fascist groups in Argentina and Chile. Through connections, Chiappe secured David an Argentine passport in the name of Carlos Eduardo Devreux-Bergeret. Beau Serge then went on secret missions for French intelligence. His first assignment to infiltrate Douglas Bravo's Venezuelan urban revolutionaries, led nowhere. In early 1967 Bravo was expelled from the Venezuelan Communist party and police smashed his organization. Once relocated in the hills, Bravo was wary of spies. Following the false start in Venezuela, Beau Serge flew to Mexico and met with two African agents. They handed him a contract to eliminate African politicians. It's not clear whom he was to murder and whether or not he succeeded, but he was in Africa several months, and murder was a task he rarely muddled.[10] Upon returning to Latin America he joined Ricord in Ascuncion before planting himself in Argentina. In late 1967 David — alias Eduardo Devreux-Bergeret — managed to infiltrate the Forcas Argentines de Liberacion (FAL), one of the most active guerilla groups in stormy Argentina from 1967 to 1971. Among other actions, it kidnapped Auguste Ricord's close friend and Paraguay's consul in Argentina, Waldemar Sanchez. Relying on his experience with the instruments of death, David soon became the FAL's arms instructor and ingratiated himself with its members. In the end he made off with its files and a cashbox containing $250,000.[11] While fleeing he allegedly slew an FAL leader and a lookout.[12] He headed with his prize to Central America. Eventually the SDECE made a deal for the papers with the Argentine government, which led to the arrest of several guerillas and the death by torture of one.[13] Soon thereafter David went to Uruguay, where the French ambassador was Roger Barberot—the same Barberot who four years later would be associated with the French Connection heroin affair that also involved Beau Serge.[14] In May 1968 Barberot and Dominique Ponchardier were unexpectedly rushed home to Paris to help quell French student unrest, forcing Foccart to put his plans for Latin ,America on hold. [15] After 1968 Beau Serge was more or less a free-lance agent. While remaining in close touch with the Foccart network, he also took on assignments for security police and political death squads in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and thereby, inevitably, for the CIA. In Montevideo he reconnected with his mistress Theresa, who just happened to be a member of the Tupamaros. Through her Beau Serge infiltrated Latin America's best-organized band of guerillas. Uruguay's President Pacheco Areco had already begun a determined struggle against the revolutionaries. Assisting his police and armed forces was a squad of CIA agents expert at torture and antiguerilla warfare. Two of those agents, Dan A. Mitrione and Claude L. Fry, were captured by the revolutionaries. Mitrione was given the death penalty by a people's court, while Fry suffered a heart attack and was released.[16] Beau Serge appears at first glance to have done more for President Areco than the entire conventional CIA team. But on this job he probably collaborated with U.S. intelligence. Also assisting him was Jacques Foccart's full-time man in Uruguay in Roger Barberot's absence, Jean-Baptiste Listroni, who became David's go-between with the Uruguayan government.[17] David must have been quite an actor, since he even fooled the legendary Tapamaros leader Raul Sendic. After robbing a bank, the guerillas handed Beau Serge $400,000 for the purchase of weapons. He then flew off, as if to complete the deal, to Foccart's personal fiefdom and beehive of the weapons trade, the African nation of Gabon. [18] While he was away, however, the guerillas somehow learned, not of his escapades in Argentina, but of his role in the Ben Barka affair. They decided to set a trap for him. But once back in Uruguay, Beau Serge smelled trouble and rushed to the security police, who soon arrested 150 guerillas in the strongest blow they'd dealt the revolutionaries. It was a handsome feather in the cap of President Pacheco Areco. For his troubles David was reportedly given $200,000 in addition to the $400,000 of which he had relieved the partisans, plus a Uruguayan diplomatic passport in the name of Edouard Davrieux.[19] The passport made David the heir-apparent of Auguste Ricord. With it he travelled freely to the U. S. and Europe, controlling and expanding the international narcotics network. There's also a somewhat unbelievable story about David's departure from Uruguay. In the transit hall of Montevideo airport, a stewardess reportedly brought him a package. Suspecting a bomb, Beau Serge had the stewardess open it herself. She screamed when she did. Inside was the head of Theresa, a goodbye gift from the Tapamaros.[20] President Pacheco Areco's glee was short-lived. Within two years nearly all the guerilla's David had sent to prison would escape. In March 1971, thirty-eight Tupamaros women fled through a tunnel from a Montevideo jail. The president fumed. As to the police, they were sure the men locked up in Punta Carretas had similar plans. Within weeks they felt vindicated. At a river sewage outlet they discovered a package containing frogmen gear and a plan of the Montevideo sewer system. An escape by the Tapamaros had apparently been foiled. Jokingly, the warden told the press that the Tupamaros' map of the sewers was superior to the city's. Using it, the police had discovered electric drills and other tools meant for the escape. The authorities took no chances. They reinforced surveillance of Punta Carretas with tanks and police dogs, as President Areco looked towards the approaching October election. If Sendic and his guerillas slipped away, he'd be finished. At 4:10 AM on 6 September 1971, Billy Rial, a prison neighbor, phoned the prison to announce that a group of inmates had just run through his house. "Yeah, tell us another one," was the answer. "Nobody runs off from our prison." But Rial insisted and the watchman decided to check out the guard room. "Everything quiet," was the response.[21] The watchman told Rial off for trying to make fools of the authorities. One hour later, though, his tune changed. An entire prison wing had been emptied of inmates, Raul Sendic included.[22] The police dashed off to Rial's house. There they found 106 prison uniforms in a 6x3 feet heap. A 2-foot wide, 100-yard long tunnel ran from the basement of Rial's home, below the garden, the street, the prison walls and yard, to the building which had housed the fugitives. Their escape had taken nine hours. According to Rial, his house had been overrun by partisans who held his family hostage. Equipped with walkie-talkies, they were in radio contact with those still within prison walls.[23] "They treated us well," said Rial, "but wouldn't even have a cup of coffee." As the prisoners gradually appeared, they had exchanged their uniforms for civvies. When all were present, they embarked peacefully in stolen busses. The authorities were helpless laughing-stocks and, to top it all, Areco lost the presidency to the equally incompetent Juan Maria Bordaberry.[24] By then Beau Serge was long gone. pps. 75-81 Notes 1. L. Durand: Le Caid (Denoel, 1976). 2. J. Sarazin: Dossier M ... comme Milieu (Alain Moreau, 1977). 3. P. Galante and L. Sapin: The Marseilles Mafia (W.H. Allen, 1979). 4. R. Barberot: A Bras le Coeur (Robert Laffont, 1972); D. Ponchardier: La Mort du Condor (Gallimard, 1976); P. Chairoff: Dossier B ... comme Barbouzes ( Alain Moreau, 1975). 5. L'Aurore, 31 May 1976. 6. Galante and Sapin, op. cit. 7. A. Jaubert: Dossier D. . . comme Drogue (Alain Moreau, 1974). 8. France-Soir, 5 February 1973. 9. R. Peyrefitte: La Vie Extraordinaire de Fernand Legros (Albin Michel, 1976). 10. Jaubert, op. cit. 11. Ibid. 12. M. Acosta: "Smukke Serge," Kriminal-Journalen, March 1978. 13. Sarazin, op. cit. 14. See chapter ten. 15. Chairoff, op. cit. 16. According to Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a Cuban-born CIA operative who worked with Mitrione in Uruguay's police program before returning to his homeland, Mitrione's instructions on torture included the following: "When you receive a subject, the first thing to do is determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, through a medical examination. A premature death means a failure by the technician. "Another important thing to know is exactly how far you can go given the political situation and the personality of the prisoner. It is very important to know beforehand whether we have the luxury of letting the subject die... "Before all else, you must be efficient. You must cause only the damage that is strictly necessary, not a bit more. We must control our tempers in any case. You have to act with the efficiency and cleanliness of a surgeon and with the perfection of an artist..." (A.J. Langguth, New York Times, 11 June 1979). 17. Chairoff, op. cit. 18. Recently, Maurice Delaunay -France's ambassador to Gabon in 1965-72 and again in 1975-79 -was named the president of the Compagnie des mines d'uranium. de Franceville, and Maurice Robert -a former SDECE officer and chief of security for the oil company Elf-Aquitane, which controls ElfGabon-was named the new French ambassador to Gabon. Journalist Elie Ramaro (Afirique-Asie, 7 January 1980) sees the appointments of the two close collaborators in Jacques Foccart's African network, as the mother country's way of reassuring Gabon's president Omar Bongo. The French had recently engineered a coup d'etat that toppled another of their African puppets, Emperor Bokassa, from the throne of the Central African Republic. (He had become expendable after revelations of his payoffs to French President Giscard D'Estaing). President Bongo, incidentally, purchased a house recently in the Beverly Hills movie colony largely populated by Arab sheiks and Iranian exiles, for the sum of $2.2 million, which was $300,000 above the asking price (New York Times, 15 October 1979). 19. According to certain sources it was in fact a French diplomatic passport; see Sarazin, op. cit. 20. Acosta, op. cit. 21. Granma, 12 September 1971. 22. Sendic was eventually recaptured and subjected to severe torture. He remains a political prisoner in Uruguay; see J. Da Veiga in Aftique-Asie, 29 October 1979. 23. UPI and Reuters, 7 September 1971. 24. According to journalist Warren Hoge: "Juan Maria Bordaberry, the last elected Uruguayan President, dissolved Congress in 1973 under military prodding and then was replaced himself by the armed forces three years later. The Uruguayan military, until then relatively aloof from politics, had consolidated power through its campaign to crush the Tupamaro guerillas." (New York Times, 14 November 1979). U.S. military aid to Uruguay between 1946 and 1975 totalled $86 million. Between 1950 and 1975 2537 Uruguayan military personnel were trained by the United States; see N. Chomsky and E.S. Herman: T he Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (South End Press, 1979). The Carter administration resumed military aid to Uruguay in the fall of 1979, reversing a 1977 halt in the name of human rights. --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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