JFK's support for De Gaulle versus CIA-OAS

[Paul Rigby]

Two titles that at least are in your ballpark:

Challenging De Gaulle: The O.A.S. and the Counterrevolution in Algeria, 1954-1962, by Alexander Harrison; Praeger, 1989. Warning: Introduction by William Colby.

Target de Gaulle: The True Story of the 31 Attempts on the Life of the French President, by Pierre Demaret and Christian Plume; The Dial Press, 1973.

I got the first from the library years ago, CD, but I felt the dread hand of Praeger's sponsor at work: Colby practiced some of his legendary limited hang-out skills on the subject in the mid-1970s, with a spate of newspaper articles such as "Former CIA director William Colby confirmed that "foreigners" had sought the Agency's assisstance with such a plot, although he insisted the CIA declined to participate" (The Chicago Tribune, June 20, 1975). And so on and so forth.

The second I own, but due to my sophisticated hi-tech storage and retrieval system, am presently unable to remember which unlabelled box it's in.

In re the latter: For those of us who understand the first "terrible sound" in Dealey Plaza as a means to sow confusion and what I've termed "cognitive dissonance" within the perceptions of witnesses, the following passage is appreciated:

Writing of the November, 1958 attack on de Gaulle in the Rue de Rome by elements of Jeune Nation, the authors note, "The idea was to create panic among the crowd by setting of thunderflashes and powerful smoke-bombs giving off vast quantities of smoke. In the confusion the party would rush the general's open car and assassinate him."

Parapolitical prestidigitation - now this I like.