From: Robert Richardson
September 10, 2003
Re: Response to Paul Smith

Pierre Plantard was, in my opinion, a front man for older, more mature individuals. He was promoted in his late teens as a speaker to groups of the Catholic Rover Scouts prior to emerging in Alpha Galates. According to Mr. Plantard, his uncle was a priest and, as Paul Smith has correctly pointed out in some of his research, his family was associated with extreme Catholic Traditionalist beliefs (which would also manifest later in some ideas presented in the Priory of Sion). The Catholic Rover Scouts were a breeding ground for, and feeder to, the Ecole Nationale des Cadres, which were established during the Vichy regime to counter the liberal and Masonic ideals that French rightists and extreme nationalists saw as leading to the decline of French culture and the defeat of France. Alpha Galates and its publications are characterized by articles and philosophical positions which parallel the ideas promulgated by the Ecole Nationale des Cadres. To my point of view, I find it difficult to see Mr. Plantard as the founder of Alpha Galates, given its known contributors and supporters, but I do believe he was the front man on their behalf and was promoted as such by them. That experience and his friendship and association dating from that time with Phillipe Cherisey formed part of the basis of his later beliefs and actions, beliefs which reappeared in the Priory of Sion. The latter at times recycled the articles and philosophy which appeared in Alpha Galates publications. As the front man for Alpha Galates and its titular head, he would most certainly have been held responsible for its failure to register with the authorities.

I think all of this is a matter of interpretation and that is in the eye of the beholder. Paul Smith is basing his conclusion on the statements in the Alpha Galates publications that Mr. Plantard is the founder and animator of Alpha Galates. I am well aware of those statements, but am not prepared to trust publications issued by that organization or its successors, such as the Priory of Sion, because of the repeatedly demonstrated pattern of constantly engaging in outright fabrications to achieve their ends. However, those publications do provide clues to what really took place, and certainly some of the information in them is not fabrication. I personally see a lot of other hands moving behind the scenes at Alpha Galates, rather like puppet masters, using Mr. Plantard to shield themselves from occupation authorities (after all, however we may regard their actions, they saw themselves as patriots after their own interpretation of French patriots, as different as that may have been from the Resistance) and to act as a lure to attract young supporters, similar to the goal of the Ecole Nationale. In later Priory publications, the reverential invoking of the names of deceased rightists associated with Alpha Galates, as if to give Mr. Plantard some credibility, rather strikes me as the actions of a man attempting to cloak himself in what he views as the credibility of others with whom he, as a young person, had some association - as the Alpha Galates publications appear to confirm - but to whom he was a 19 year old subordinate.

Again, these are matters of interpretation by different investigators. The key issue is not to engage in endless debate over some perceived "definitive conclusion" in these matters, because there may yet prove to be accuracy in both theories, but to establish that there was a pattern of activity motivated by certain political positions and also characterized by a extreme Traditionalist Catholic position in Alpha Galates, patterns which reappear later in the Priory of Sion. To do so further develops the basis for an understanding of what is really going in the Rennes-le-Chateau affair and to move closer to fully exposing the fraud.

With well over 100 published books advancing the fabrications of the Rennes-le-Chateau affair and with the immense success of the novel "The Da Vinci Code", further promoting many of those falsehoods, we must spend our energies in working to provide information which allows people unfamiliar with the subject matter and deluded by all these fabrications to find some sources that provide them a realistic picture of this affair. However imperfect our pictures may be, they are still far more accurate and clearer than other sources. The more information that is developed, the more accurate that picture will later become. There are some questions in this investigation where it will be impossible to ever reach a definitive conclusion, but we cannot provide a positive service to people victimized by this fraud if we expend our energies in debates about matters such as this. Let's move on with more important business.

Robert Richardson