Ch. 4. Permindex Attempts to Assassinate De Gaulle

A group of fascist French generals dedicated to keeping Algeria as a French colony were the middle group in the 1961 and 1962 assassination attempts on French General DeGaulle. 

A French colonel, Bastien-Thiery, commanded the 1962 group of professional assassins who made the actual assassination attempt on DeGaulle. Colonel Thiery set his group of assassins up at an intersection in the suburbs of Paris in this final attempt in 1962 to kill DeGaulle. The gunmen fired more than one hundred rounds in the 1962 Colonel Thiery assassination attempt. But General DeGaulle, traveling in his bullet proof car, evaded being hit, although all of the tires were shot out. The driver increased his speed and the general was saved.

Colonel Bastien-Thiery was arrested, tried and executed for the attempt on DeGaulle's life but he was the breaking point between the operating level of that assassination attempt and the people financing and planning it and he went to his death without revealing the connection. 

General DeGaulle's intelligence, however traced the financing of his attempted assassination into the FBI's Permindex in Switzerland and Centro Mondiale Comerciale in Rome, and he complained to both the governments of Switzerland and Italy causing Permindex to lose its charter and Centro Mondiale Comerciale to be forced to move to Johannesburg, South Africa.

General DeGaulle was furious at the assassination plots and attempted assassination upon himself. He called in his most trusted officers with the French intelligence agency and they advised him that they were already working on the investigation to ferret out who was behind DeGaulle's attempted assassination. 

[Editor's note: There were several intelligence agencies operating in France during this period. Torbitt is most likely referring to the DST, the French Directorate of Territorial Security or Direction de la surveillance du territoire.]

The French intelligence agency in a very short while completely traced the assassination attempt through Permindex, the Swiss corporation, to the Solidarists, the fascist White Russian emigre intelligence organization and Division Five, the espionage section of the FBI, into the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium. 

French intelligence thus determined that the attempts on General DeGaulle's life were being directed from NATO in Brussels through its various intelligence organizations and specifically, Permindex in Switzerland, basically a NATO intelligence front using the remnants of Adolph Hitler's intelligence units in West Germany and also, the intelligence unit of the Solidarists headquartered in Munich, Germany. 

[Editor's Note: The "intelligence unit of the Solidarists" is probably a reference to the anti-Soviet spy network run by the Gehlen Org, which was based in Munich. See also the Wikipedia article on Operation Gladio.]

The overall command of the DeGaulle assassination unit was directed by Division Five of the FBI. 

Upon learning that the intelligence groups controlled by the Division Five of the FBI in the headquarters of the NATO organization had planned all of the attempts of his life, DeGaulle was inflamed and ordered all NATO units off of French soil. Under the contract between France and NATO, General DeGaulle could not force them to move for a period of time somewhat exceeding one year; yet, he told NATO to get off the soil of France and put the machinery in operation to remove them within the treaty agreements with the organization. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence arm of all armed forces in the United States and Division Five, the counter-espionage agency for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were both found to have been the controlling agencies in NATO directing the assassination attempts on DeGaulle's life. DIA and Division Five of the FBI were working hand in glove with the White Russian emigre intelligence arm, the Solidarists, and many of the Western European intelligence agencies were not aware of the assassination plan worked directly through NATO headquarters. Even the high echelons of the United States CIA were not aware of the DIA, FBI and Solidarist directed activities. 

Jerry Milton Brooks, a close associate of Maurice Brooks Gatlin, Sr., testified in New Orleans that Gatlin was a transporter for the CIA and Division Five of the FBI. Gatlin in 1962 left New Orleans of behalf of Permindex with $100,000.00 in cash of the FBI's money and delivered the cash on behalf of Division Five and Permindex to the group of Fascist French generals planning the assassination of General DeGaulle. Gatlin flew from New Orleans directly to Paris, France and made the delivery.

Gatlin was the general counsel to the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, and he worked directly under Guy Bannister. In 1964 Gatlin was thrown, pushed, or fell from the sixth floor of the El Panama Hotel in Panama during the middle of the night and was killed instantly. 

Guy Bannister had been in charge of the midwestern FBI Division Five operation with headquarters in Chicago up until 1955. At this time, J. Edgar Hoover shifted Bannister from an official basis with Division Five to a retainer and contractual basis with the espionage section of the agency and moved him to New Orleans where Bannister worked with the New Orleans police department and later from a private office at 544 Camp Street. 

In his contractual capacity with Division Five, Bannister had close contacts with all of the armed service intelligence agencies and worked closely with them on the espionage section of the FBI's various projects. 

Bannister was the officer in charge who dispatched Gatlin with the $100,000.00 cash to Paris for the DeGaulle assassination group. We outline the DeGaulle assassination attempt with President Kennedy's assassination because the same organization carried out both operations.