The French law of 7 Thermidor Year II (July 25, 1794) proclaimed that all citizens should be able to be informed of what had been done in their name. It was the beginning of the public service of the National Archives of France, an institution created four years earlier by the Constituent Assembly. But if the principle of this transparency is officially acquired, the reason of state does not adapt easily. The disappearance of the Algerian independence activist Maurice Audin and the murderous repression of the Paris demonstration of October 17, 1961, at the call of the National Liberation Front ( FLN ) constitute two emblematic cases of low noise retention of archives.
In 2013, President François Hollande gave Josette Audin copies of documents concerning her husband Maurice Audin, as well as a list of archives that she can consult and copy. Among other things, it accesses a file seized in 1961 from Colonel Yves Godard, then on the run. Godard was one of the leaders of the Secret Army Organization (SAO), a terrorist organization claiming to be from French Algeria.
In fact, the president’s decision is not extraordinary: French law recognizes that reason of state allows documents to be stamped with the “confidential”, “secret” or “top secret” seal in order to prevent their consultation, but for fifty years only.
What do we find in the Godard file, deposited in the Archives in 1961? In particular, the official thesis to explain the disappearance of Maurice Audin being that of the escape, documents produced by the army to support this thesis, with their contradictions. Each piece is presented by the colonel in his own way because he probably put together this file to cover himself, and possibly serve against other soldiers. This is what we see in the Godard archives located in California, unearthed in 2011 by Nathalie Funès, the journalist at L’Obs. In a draft book never finished, he attacks Jacques Massu, generally responsible for the Battle of Algiers, but who did not join him in the OAS. He accuses Gérard Garcet, a close friend of Massu, of having executed Maurice Audin, which does not appear in the file kept by the National Archives.
Garcet obviously denied what Godard said: both engaged in the repression against the Algerians, they made lying one of their professional “qualities”. Their statements are to be verified and compared to other sources.
Nothing beats a judicial investigation, and contradictory archives concerning Maurice Audin were gathered first in anticipation of such an investigation, then from the complaint of Josette Audin, for intentional homicide. The investigation was conducted in a complicated context. Interrupted because of the amnesty laws, it nevertheless produced written testimonies kept in the departmental archives of the court concerned, but not in the national archives.
PRIVATE OR PUBLIC DOCUMENTS?
Archives are of different types and are therefore located in various places. Thus, the newspapers of the time are in the National Library, and historians, like journalists, can access them without delay. But the French administration produces a large quantity of paperwork, part of which is found in the archives. The army is no exception to this rule. General Paul Aussaresses liked to say that he had a “manifold”, a numbered notebook in which each page was followed by three copies; day after day, he detailed his activities there, kept a copy, and distributed the others to various recipients, including Massu. It would be surprising if these copies were not archived. But where to find them? In the archives of Aussaresses or Massu? We do not know what may be there since they have remained private, which is quite scandalous: these documents are professional and not personal, they should return to the public heritage, as proposed in 1996 a report commissioned by the Juppé government:
The archives produced by the political authorities (President of the Republic, members of the government or local executives) and by their offices in the exercise of their public functions are of a public nature, in the same way as those of those responsible for the administration, the army and diplomacy.
If Aussaresses did not lie, two copies of these registers remain. It remains to be seen where, and whether or not they have been stamped “secret.” If these papers have not been destroyed, they contain precise information on the detainees and the decisions taken against them: General Aussaresses said that he decided every morning with Massu on the fate of each, and that is what ‘he noted in his “manifold.”
MAURICE AUDIN AND THE REASON OF STATE
In the case of Maurice Audin, consulting the national archives, therefore, does not add much. In the archives of the presidency, those of the time of General de Gaulle, there is a four-page note dated August 4, 1960, and even several successive versions of this note, undoubtedly written at the request of the General, in the subject of this Audin affair about which he probably hears too much talk for his taste.
One need only read pages 3 and 4 of this note to understand what raison d’Etat is. The alternative is well explained to the president: punish those guilty of Audin’s murder, or delay the investigation so as not to make the military bear the responsibility of the public authorities:
It is, therefore, to be expected, if the orientation currently given to the investigation is maintained, that the Audin affair will take on a new scale in the months to come because of the importance of the personalities, political or military, whose names will be questioned about it.
The advisability of this eventuality must be assessed in the light of two types of considerations:
1) In favour of expanding information and referring the case to a court, we can invoke:
➞ the duty of the Government, which cannot doubt that Audin was the victim of a murder, to find the culprits and to punish them;
➞ the deep emotion that the fact that the exact circumstances of Audin’s death remain unknown and the crime unpunished would not fail to arouse in many sectors of public opinion ;
➞ the fear (which is that of Mr Michelet) that a dismissal by an examining magistrate is attributed to pressure from the authorities.
2) The idea that the Audin affair is not, contrary to what persisted in trying to demonstrate certain circles, a test case and that the information should rather be slowed down would be justified on the other hand by the following considerations :
➞ The Audin affair occurred during the “Battle of Algiers”, that is to say during a period of extreme tension; it is not morally fair to make a few soldiers bear the responsibility for acts that the public authorities knew and tolerated, judging that recourse to illegal practices caused them less difficulty than an adaptation of the legality to the circumstances.
➞ Audin, the member of the Algerian Communist Party, was guilty of acts which certainly did not deserve capital punishment, but which nevertheless constituted collusion with the rebellion.
➞ the excesses of the “Audin Committee and the exploitation to which he gave himself of the disappearance of this young professor to fight the governmental policy in Algeria and to put the action of the army on trial have deeply sensitized the military circles on this affair.
MACRON’S PROMISE NOT FOLLOWED THROUGH
On September 13, 2018, President Emmanuel Macron went to Josette Audin to give her an official statement, published on the Élysée website. He describes the so-called “arrest-detention” system put in place during the Algerian war: arbitrary arrest, torture, summary execution. He recognizes that Maurice Audin was a victim of this system like many others, without being able to say whether he was murdered during a torture session or executed afterwards. And he announces the opening of the archives concerning all the disappeared of the Algerian war. He even specifies that it is about the disappeared civilians and soldiers, French as Algerians. The work for archivists promises to be colossal: identifying the archives concerned and making them available to the public.
One year later, on September 20, 2019, during a study day organized at the National Assembly on the theme “The disappeared in the Algerian war due to the French security forces”, Jean-Charles Bedague, of the Interministerial Service of Archives of France ( SIAF ) announced “for soon” the implementation of the declarations of the President of the Republic. A few days earlier, a decree had been published, but it still only concerned the case of Maurice Audin.
However, since December 2019, it is clear that the opposite has happened. The General Secretariat for Defense and National Security ( SGDSN ) does not care about the presidential statements and tightens the bolts by reactivating article 63 of the interministerial general instruction IGI -1300 taken in 2011, a text not debated, superior to the discussed law of 2008 which provided that “public archival documents are in principle freely communicable to any person who requests them”. And it is not the new version of IG1300, published in the Official Journal of November 15, which will change the situation.
TWO ” PLACARDED ” ARCHIVISTS
Suddenly, the archives are closed, because intimidation weighs on their disclosure: are threatened with various penalties both disclosers and archivists, all potentially accused of compromise. In 2020, to strengthen its control, the SGDSN requires that “confidential”, “secret” and “top secret” documents be declassified page by page before the consultation. A titanic work which discourages any inclination to open these archives. And this could even concern what has already been consulted, even published. This is what justifies the actions taken against this IGI-1300 which is contrary to the law: forums, petitions, recourse in the Council of State, coming from associations, including historians, archivists, and the Collective secret defence-a democratic stake.
As for Josette Audin’s private archives, they have been deposited at the La Contemporaine library-museum and can be consulted immediately, because the SGDSN has no say in this case.
With the events of October 17, 1961, the Algerian war suddenly arose in France. That day in Paris, coming from working-class neighbourhoods on the initiative of the FLN, the Algerians want to protest peacefully against the repression that is hitting them. The parade turns into a bloodbath, dozens of demonstrators are executed, their bodies were thrown into the Seine, under the orders of the prefect Maurice Papon, the same one who had applied – and even anticipated – the orders to round up the Jewish population of Bordeaux from 1942.
For decades, the archives of this slaughter have been locked. The historian Jean-Luc Einaudi, prevented from accessing it on the pretext that he is not an academic, however, collects enough elements outside the institutions, to publish The Battle of Paris(Threshold, 1991). In 1999, after his trial for his role in the collaboration and deportation of the Jews, Maurice Papon attacked Jean-Luc Einaudi for defamation. Then enter the archivists Brigitte Lainé and Philippe Grand who, as whistleblowers, unveil the evidence of the killing. The first is chief curator at the Archives de France. At the Archives de Paris, she is in charge, with her colleague and friend Philippe Grand, of the judicial archives. And they examined those which go from September to December 1961. In February 1999, she testifies for Jean-Luc Einaudi against the right of reserve which is imposed on him: “From the month of September, there is a constant in the staging of death: a majority of drowned, found in the Seine or the Parisian canals, hands tied or with traces of strangulation or bullets.”
Maurice Papon loses his lawsuit against Jean-Luc Einaudi, but the archivists and access to the archives do not come out of the ordeal unscathed. Brigitte Lainé and Philippe Grand are persecuted by their superiors, demoted, placarded, banned from public access, their files confiscated. They are rejected by some of their colleagues, who are also quick to condemn them by petitioning Catherine Trautman, Minister of Culture in the Jospin government (1997-2002).
In March 2003, the Paris administrative court recognized that there had indeed been disguised disciplinary sanctions against Brigitte Lainé and Philippe Grand, and cancelled the memos. A judgment without effect. In March 2004, the same court ordered the mayor of Paris to execute the judgment. Without results. One after the other, the two archivists retire in indifference and opprobrium, for having broken the “secret” of the archives of the Algerian war. Brigitte Lainé died on November 2, 2018, without having been officially rehabilitated.
OTHER BLIND SPOTS IN RECENT HISTORY
The Algerian war is not the only blind spot for archives in France. Those of the Second World War, in particular of collaboration, remained inaccessible for a long time until the law of 2008. The history of this dark period was then written outside France, from the United States, the United Kingdom. United or Germany. They are now open.
Those of (de) colonization or of “Françafrique” remain extremely sensitive. In addition to the disappearance of Maurice Audin and the killing of October 17, 1961, half of the sixteen cases brought together in the Secret Defense Collective – a democratic stake attached to it from near or far: the massacre of Senegalese riflemen at Thiaroye in Senegal in 1944; massacres of Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata in May 1945; kidnapping and assassination of Mehdi Ben Barka on October 29, 1965, in Paris; the assassination of Henri Curiel on May 4, 1978, in Paris; the disappearance of magistrate Bernard Borrel on October 18, 1995, in Djibouti; the role of France in the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in the spring of 1994; or the assassination of journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon in Mali, on November 2, 2013.
For all these “files”, historians, families, judges, archivists, engaged in the search for the truth, come up against, despite the generally shortened deadlines, defence secrecy. And in the thousand and one ways of refusing or sabotaging the communication of documents: “redacted” archives, in which entire passages are covered with thick black ink, making them illegible; variable geometry consultation times without justification; incorrect dimensions; dispersal in various administrations; or even frankly mocking the requesting authority. In 1981, one of the members of Gaston Defferre’s cabinet, then Minister of the Interior, asked the External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service ( SDECE ) to send him the Henri Curiel file. During a first meeting, he is given a thin three-page folder, barely a few lines. He protests. When he is summoned for the second time, the room he is shown in is chock-full of unclassified, unlabeled files: an impassable forest.
Sometimes, however, justice here gives reason to the most obstinate. On June 12, 2020, the Council of State followed researcher François Graner in his request for access to the archives of President François Mitterrand deposited in the National Archives while he was in office, in particular, those of the spring of 1994 when it was perpetrated. the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda by the Hutus in power. But the administration systematically refused the researcher. For the first time, the high court of administrative justice decided that “the protection of state secrets must be balanced against the interest of informing the public about these historic events”. And that, in this specific case, this interest in informing was greater than secrecy. A decision which sets a precedent, paving the way that could lead France to follow the example of other democracies. As in the United States where the deadline for communicating federal government records is ten years. It may even be further reduced if it is judged that transparency is more important to democracy than secrecy. This explains why in order to understand the ins and outs of the disappearance of their husband and father, Maurice Audin’s family had to make a detour via the United States.
