Foreign News: L’Affaire Passy

General de Gaulle’s enemies struck at him through Colonel André Dewavrin, 35.

A year ago Dewavrin (nom de guerre: Colonel Passy) was one of the most powerful and honored figures in France, one of the closest confidants of its President Charles de Gaulle. He had capped a brilliant career as chief of the Gaullist Intelligence Service by dramatically parachuting into Brittany to command French resistance forces at the moment of Patton’s breakthrough.

Last week Dewavrin, stripped of rank and honors, and some 70 pounds lighter after four months in jail on unspecified charges, was recuperating in a clinic near Paris (see cut). His case had not been brought before any court, nor was it likely to be. “L’Affaire Passy” had begun to smell like “L’Affaire Dreyfus.”

When President de Gaulle resigned last January, it was a foregone conclusion that “Colonel Passy” would not last long. Communists, seeing in him a determined enemy, had attacked him ever since liberation. The Socialists had followed suit. Nor was any love lost on the “boy wonder” by the Army, whose stuffy “Deuxième Bureau” was eclipsed by Dewavrin’s secret service.

Solitary Confinement. Last May, a few days before the critical referendum which marked the surprise setback of Communism in France, Dewavrin was spirited away to solitary confinement in a Metz Army fortress. The Government’s only explanation: Dewavrin had been guilty of “grave administrative faults.”

This week Pierre-Henri Teitgen, Minister of Justice, offered a fuller explanation: “Dewavrin used his ‘caisse noire’ [secret funds] to make clandestine deposits in France and abroad which he did not reveal to his successors; his accounts were incomplete and inexact to the tune of 40 million francs [$3,335].” But the Government (which had dealt with the Passy case secretly at Cabinet level) was prepared to be lenient. “You don’t do counter-espionage with choir boys,” said Teitgen. There would be no public trial: “It is necessary … to safeguard certain secrets.”

London’s Communist Daily Worker offered a sensational explanation: “Dewavrin had been hiding millions of francs in Latin America and Spain to finance a new underground in case France went Communist, or in the event of war between Russia and the Western powers. It is a current affirmation in circles close to the General [De Gaulle] that war against the Soviet Union is inevitable and that, when it breaks out, Spain will become the principal base from which the opposition will be directed against Russia and the democratic movement in France.”

Price of Unity. French Rightists took a different view: the Communists had expected to win last May’s referendum and make heavy gains in the succeeding elections. Before taking over key ministries in the Government, they wanted to strip De Gaulle of his most dangerous lieutenant and thereby prevent the possibility of a Gaullist coup d’état to overthrow a Communist-dominated Government. Dewavrin’s imprisonment was the Communist price for maintaining shaky tripartite unity in President Félix Gouin’s Government.

The M.R.P. squirmed. It had inherited I’Affaire Passy from the Gouin Government, and for the sake of unity felt obliged to do nothing. Meanwhile, the Communists had every reason to be pleased at seeing the M.R.P. at odds with one of De Gaulle’s chief aides.

At week’s end Dewavrin announced that he would sue M.R.P. Minister of Armies Edmond Michelet for illegal detention, the Daily Worker for libel. Cried Dewavrin: “Pour qui me prend on? (Whom do they take me for?) I ask neither amnesty nor pardon. I demand justice.”