Jean, Didier Dans les Secrets du Sphinx

Derrière le Mur du Silence

This book is about General Jeannou Lacaze, an officer in the Foreign Legion, an officer in the 11th Choc at the SDECE, corps commander of the 2nd REP from 1967 to 1970, head of intelligence at the SDECE from 1971 to 1976, commander of the 11th Parachute Division from 1977 to 1978, chief of staff of the armed forces from 1981 to 1985, advisor to the Minister of Defence from 1985 to 1989, advisor to African heads of state from 1988 to 2001, highlights the key aspects of his career: war, action, secret service, command, decision-making and influence. Through a thematic tour of the SDECE and the Algerian War, the Ben Barka affair, Operation Farewell, the Cold War, New Caledonia, the general's relationships, the defence of the African sphere of influence and the security of African heads of state, we discover General Lacaze, an influential man with diverse and eclectic relationships who kept many of France's secrets from 1960 to 2000. The original perspective on well-known but unchecked or little-used information, documents from the general and previously unpublished witness statements, always used with the aim of providing a well-founded analysis, enable the author to look at cases, some of which caused scandals, from a new perspective and to report completely unknown facts, making this book an important document for readers who want to understand the background of yesterday and today. Learning from the past to understand today's events is the aim of this book. General Lacaze's convictions on the strategy and methods of the USSR, on the defence of New Caledonia and on the defence of the African sphere of influence are highly topical, both in relation to Russia and to the strategic importance of New Caledonia and the decline of French influence in Africa.