The short televised summary of AD[1] related the suspicions of the Audran family and their lawyers concerning the motivation for the crime:[2] Audran's misgivings about arms trafficking. If my memory does not deceive me too much, Olof Palme[3] was also interested in this question shortly before his death and I believe it was also a matter of the Bofors Company, the leader of the European consortium of explosives E.A.S.S.P.,[4] whose shipments to Iran figured in the current delights in L'Evenement du Jeudi.[5] In January 1984, the engineer and General Algernon,[6] responsible for the export of Swedish arms, was "suicided" by a subway train, although two witnesses -- who subsequently retracted their stories -- had seen an unknown person push the suicide-despite-himself. And, in 1983 or 1984, I am not quite sure, an attack claimed by "AD" exploded -- opposite my place of exploitation -- a charming mansion that sheltered a very discreet company that assured the links between the French armament industry and a consortium close to NATO. In brief, this is only a small part of a long story that no one is particularly interested in reconstituting.
I am in the process of finishing Last Things,[7] without resolving to again take up the pre-existing materials as such, due to the easily refutable weaknesses of my letter,[8] and due to the appearance of new elements, including page 266 of issue #11[9] and certain information collected by Bourdjeff the Infallible:[10] the EdN will be strongly obliged to the point of providing a quite convincing, experimental verification of my elucidations -- it will be a question of a founding in September a committee of sympathizers called the Irradiated of All Countries, Unite Committee, which distributed the enclosed tract[11] on the occasion of an international antinuclear meeting in Paris. This new intermediary allows us to reconcile the racial purity of the encyclopedists and a certain success concerning the (small) anti-nuclear masses. Those without status obtain a status of non-status: in this way, the road appears promising.
The pamphlet [Last Things] will be drafted and harmonized by Jeff [Jean-Francois Martos] and me in four or five days, when I will send it to you. In the meantime, I would like to immediately pose to you the following question: until now, I have not breathed a word of this to Floriana [Lebovici]. At the moment when we engage ourselves in a public document -- when what is only out of consideration for her might become disagreeable -- we will be putting in front of her an accomplished fact, whereas she has regular contacts with both [Jaime] Semprun and [Christian] Sebastiani when it comes to matters of translation. Moreover, perhaps she has opinions on the subject that it would be fitting to keep in mind. It seems to me it would be necessary to tell her about this pamphlet before it is printed. Do you have any reasons to think otherwise?
Best wishes,[1] Action Directe, the French equivalent of Italy's Red Brigades.
[2] The assassination of General Rene Audran by "Direct Action" on 25 January 1985.
[3] The Prime Minister of Sweden, assassinated on 28 February 1986.
[4] Bofors is a Swedish weapons manufacturer. EASSP stands for the European Association for Study of Safety Problems in the Production and Use of Propellant Powders.
[5] The weekly magazine L'Evenement du Jeudi published Kenneth R. Timmerman's award-winning investigative pieces into an organized crime gun-running network in Italy, which was just a part of the vast, global conspiracy Americans will associate with the phrase "Iran-Contra."
[6] Rear Admiral Carl-Erik Algernon was killed on 15 January 1984. See Chapter 8 "Sweden's Lost Innocence," in Kenneth R. Timmerman's Fanning the Flames: Guns, Greed & Geopolitics in the Gulf War.
[7] See Debord's letter to Baudet dated 11 July 1987.
[8] The one addressed to Debord and dated 3 July 1987.
[9] Of the Encyclopedia of Nuisances, abbreviated in French as the EdN.
[10] Jean-Francois Martos.
[11] A 15-page-long pamphlet, published in Aubervilliers, 1987. Not enclosed in the version being translated here.
(Published in Jean-Francois Martos, Correspondance avec Guy Debord, Le fin mot de l'Histoire, August 1998. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! June 2007. Footnotes by the translator.)