CIA from the outset pushed for European integration

By Wayne Madsen CIA files contain a one-page article written by journalist and Asian history expert Stanley Karnow, who earned himself a spot on Richard Nixon's enemies list. The article, titled "An Odd Bit of Hidden History: De Gaulle's CIA Aide," which appeared in The New Republicon June 29, 1974, illustrates the CIA's opposition to anything and anyone standing in the way of a united Europe under American control. In fact, the current subservience of European Union foreign and defense policy to the whims of the U.S.-controlled North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) suggests that the original CIA plans for U.S. dominance over a united Europe have come to pass. According to Karnow's article, which appeared to be of great interest to the CIA's news monitors, the CIA so feared the nationalism of French wartime hero Charles de Gaulle in the 1950s, it assigned one of the general's old friends from Free French days in London, John F. Hasey, to keep tabs on de Gaulle in Paris. Hasey operated a covert surveillance team of former French Foreign Legionnaires and recruited a young Laotian army captain, Phoumi Nosavan, studying in Paris at the time, to become a paid CIA agent. During the years de Gaulle was out of political power, occupying a run-down office on Rue de Solferino in Paris. Hasey visited de Gaulle and informed him that he was in Paris representing CIA director Allen Dulles. De Gaulle took Hasey into his confidence and he told the CIA agent he had no intention of bringing down the Fourth Republic. The CIA feared that de Gaulle's French nationalistic tendencies would spell trouble for America's vision of a Euro-Atlantic alliance and a united Europe. Hasey's instructions from Langley were clear: he was to report on every one of de Gaulle's moves that appeared to be at loggerheads with U.S. designs for NATO and united Europe. Hasey, according to the Karnow article, argued for the CIA to cultivate a relationship with De Gaulle. Hasey even suggested that de Gaulle, who was in need of cataract surgery, be brought to the United States on the CIA's dime for the operation. The CIA not only rejected Hasey's proposal but instructed him not to disclose anything of a classified nature to de Gaulle. The CIA apparently also instructed U.S. ambassador to Paris, Douglas Dillon, to avoid all contact with de Gaulle but changed its mind after it was learned that the Soviet ambassador in Paris paid regular visits to de Gaulle. During conversations between Hasey and de Gaulle, according to Karnow who interviewed Hasey for his article, de Gaulle opined that the United States and Soviet Union were too big to govern and that they would both eventually fragment. Hasey concluded that de Gaulle also saw such a future for the French empire, with the unthinkable at the time -- independence for Algeria -- a foregone conclusion in the general's mind. Hasey received a contradictory message in 1958 from General Pierre Koenig, a close adviser to de Gaulle, who told Hasey that de Gaulle would never permit independence for Algeria. Koenig was wrong and the Algerian civil war opened the door for de Gaulle's return to power in France, the dissolution of the Fourth Republic, and the advent of the Fifth Republic. The CIA never relented in trying to prevent de Gaulle's return to power in France. A CIA agent in Paris handed a black bag with $75,000 in cash to former Socialist Prime Minister

Guy Mollet, who supported French terror tactics against National Liberation Front cadres in Algeria, to fund his political campaign against de Gaulle. Instead, Mollet took the money and endorsed de Gaulle, joining his first Cabinet. De Gaulle eventually pulled France out of NATO's military structure in 1967 and opposed European Economic Community membership for the United Kingdom. De Gaulle also endorsed independence for the Canadian province of Quebec, which at the time was seen by the CIA as a mortal threat to the Atlantic Alliance. It is with little wonder that the 1960 student riots against de Gaulle included a number of "fifth column" Trotskyites who were on the payroll of the CIA. One such Trotskyite was West German University of Paris student radical Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who led "Maoist" and "Trotskyite" student riots while on a stipend from the West German government. Cohn-Bendit's activities on behalf of the CIA and the French extreme right were revealed by French General Confederation of Labor leader Benoit Franchon on May 27, 1968, while addressing workers at a Renault automobile plant, "Right now, a whole cohort of people do nothing but 'feed the fires,' showering all kinds of praise on the young people's enthusiasm, while actually they are preparing a trap and a snare for us." After becoming French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, reversed de Gaulle's withdrawal of France from the NATO military command structure and championed the enlargement of both the European Union and NATO.