THE ROBERT RICHARDSON HOAX

Paul Smith

Past correspondence dating from the 1960s between Pierre Plantard, Philippe de Chérisey and Gérard de Sède and now currently in the possession of French researcher and author Jean-Luc Chaumeil reveals that the Priory of Sion as defined in the Priory Documents never existed at all and that it was all a hoax concocted for the purposes of making money (this includes the "parchments") – the 1960s activities of Pierre Plantard, Philippe de Chérisey and Gérard de Sède were originally inspired by Noël Corbu when during the mid-1950s he decided to make financial profit out of a gullible public by inventing fraudulent claims relating to the past activities of the Abbé Bérenger Saunière that were simply untrue – following his purchase of the priest's estate and his later opening of a restaurant in the Villa Bethanie – and Plantard and de Chérisey later simply accepted and embellished these false claims in order to link them with the equally fraudulent Priory of Sion. This correspondence also reveals how Plantard, de Chérisey and de Sède had also planned to deal with any attacks that were to be made on their claims – how they would revise – how they would change – and how they would adapt their positions – in the event of a situation occurring when the criticisms would be launched against them. There can be never be any doubts over their inconsistencies and the chameleon-like behaviour of their activities: the works ascribed to "Henri Lobineau" and the work ascribed to "Cornelius" entitled 'Scandals of the Priory of Sion', for example, just could not be too different from each other.

Robert Richardson's well-intended attempted debunkings of Pierre Plantard and the Priory of Sion have always contained basic mistakes – Richardson’s The Unknown Treasure: the Priory of Sion Fraud and the Spiritual Treasure of Rennes-le-Château (Houston, TX: NorthStar, 1998) was a study of the subject matter based merely upon cross-referencing information found in standard basic history books on France with Plantard's (then) known activities – and Richardson thought that he produced all the answers (neatly) that way – Richardson’s "answers" however were all mostly wrong because he did not know the nature of the specialist information that he was looking for and/or dealing with and he also simply believed that the Alpha Galates was a "real" organisation that had been "formed by Georges Monti" – a claim that does not exist anywhere in the pages of Vaincre – here was another mistake made by Richardson: he accepted on face-value the claims made by Gérard de Sède in his 1988 book Rennes-le-Château – Le Dossier, Les Impostures, Les Phantasmes, Les Hypothèses in relation to the Alpha Galates that also contained further mistakes and laughable "facts" relating to how the author had "received information about Plantard's wartime activities" (these laughable claims were later put to rest in Jean-Luc Chaumeil's 1994 book La Table D'Isis Ou Le Secret De La Lumière – Chaumeil had originally discovered the true nature of Plantard's wartime activities from the Paris Prefecture of Police during the late 1970s but had never published them).

Richardson's views and conclusions about Rennes-le-Château were also likewise similarly wrong and very much wide of the mark – he failed at that time to recognise that the whole subject matter was a concocted and manufactured mystery originally dating from the mid-1950s and seriously suggested the "discovery of Rosicrucian manuscripts dating from the 16th century" in relation to the Abbé Bérenger Saunière's activities as well as accepting many claims about the priest that originated from the Priory Documents themselves. Furthermore, Richardson seriously suggested that the village of Rennes-le-Château was an "ancient Celtic sacred site" with the immediate surrounding countryside representing a labyrinth for the spiritually-orientated initiate to walk upon in order to attain "transformation of consciousness" – this, according to Richardson, is what Boudet's 1886 book The True Celtic Language and Cromlech of Rennes-les-Bains was really all about – with the village of Rennes-le-Château being a "telluric centre". Richardson summed-up thus: "It is now no longer spiritually healthy for anyone to try to explore this area. It cannot be done casually nor by an untrained person. While the telluric grip of this area is vastly depleted over the strength it had even in the recent past and may soon be gone, an area of such qualities can become damaged. It is now very polluted by the depredations of treasure hunters, tourists, and, especially, the spiritual level pollution created by the priory of sion fraud and those who repeat it."

Needless to say, some of the above material did not quite make it into the abridged version of Robert Richardon's Priory of Sion Hoax article that later appeared on the Internet.

Much more recently Robert Richardson has been trying to convince people that Plantard merely acted as a frontman for others – quoting Richardson: "Pierre Plantard was, in my opinion, a front man for older, more mature individuals" and Richardson again, claimed that, "…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."

Here it must be categorically stated that Robert Richardson is completely devoid of any evidence to justify his above statements – not only that, but there is more than enough ample evidence to prove the contrary. Pierre Plantard always operated alone and although he always regarded himself as something special – he failed to generate any substantial interest in his various political-esoteric schemes from the 1930s onwards – he was always regarded by others as a fringe eccentric who failed to generate any following and nothing else. Plantard's wartime activities are documented in File Ga P7 that is located in the Paris Prefecture of Police that includes the following account about him dated 9 May 1941:

"Plantard, who boasts of having links with numerous politicians, seems to be one of those dotty, pretentious young men who run more or less fictitious groups in an effort to look important and who are taking advantage of the present trend towards taking a greater interest in young people in order to attract the Government's attention".

And Monsieur Claude Charlot, Chief curator of the Museum and Archives Department of the Bureau of Associations in the Paris Prefecture of Police, in a recent letter dated 13 February 2004, also commented about Plantard:

"His political clout was non-existent and his influence absolutely zero. It would seem that he spent his time creating more or less fictitious movements with names like Rénovation Nationale Française and Groupement catholique de la Jeunesse as well as thinking up nebulous schemes such as L'épuration et la rénovation de la France [‘Purification and renewal of France’], publishing a few newsletters such as Rénovation française and Vaincre (which were completely ignored) and boasting about non-existent political friendships to make him seem important."

Reading through File Ga P7 the only thing that Plantard managed to succeed in doing was to direct the 'Groupement catholique de la Jeunesse' (described as an unofficial organisation) which was run as a holiday camp at Plestin-les-Grèves (Côtes du Nord) and which in 1939 attracted 75 youngsters; and his acting as a speaker in this capacity on 20 June 1939 in the 'Salle Villiers' in Rue de Rocher (Paris) - and another Report dated 3 January 1943 described the organisation as something that "never amounted to much except in the imagination of its founder".

Plantard's formation of the Post-War Alpha Galates was doomed to failure: quoting from a Report on the organisation dated 6 June 1946:

"According to the information we have gathered, this association had not up to that time engaged in any activity. It has had about 50 members, who resigned one after the other as soon as they sussed out the President of the association and worked out that it was not a serious enterprise."

The Wartime version of the Alpha Galates seems to have been completely bogus – the articles contained in the issues of Vaincre ascribed to Le Comte de Moncharville were not written by him at all (Moncharville wasn't even living in France at the time) – the original articles bearing the name of Pierre Plantard have been discovered according to Jean-Luc Chaumeil. And Robert Amadou's involvement needs to be properly clarified before any final judgment on that can be established simply because the various reports concerning his connection with the Alpha Galates are all contradictory in nature.

In a brand new article that has just recently appeared online, Robert Richardson repeats his previous allegations about Plantard and even accepts and uses File Ga P7 from the Paris Prefecture of Police – but Richardson fails to quote passages from the various Reports it contains that contradict his claims concerning Pierre Plantard. Richardson has committed himself to presenting Plantard as part of a French Right-Wing Movement and Tradition rather than as a Lone Maverick trying to take over the world in his own idiosyncratic way. And it should also be pointed out here that Richardson does not distinguish between the Wartime and Post-War versions of the Alpha Galates in his latest article.

There can be no doubt that Plantard was Right-Wing politically and anti-Grand Orient, pro-Grand Occident esoterically – but this does not mean that he was "Part of a Right-Wing Movement" or "Part of a Right-Wing Tradition" whereby he was being manipulated and used by others who were more mature and more advanced than he was. Plantard's utilisation of Paul Le Cour's material cannot be doubted either – and Paul Le Cour regarded himself as the inheritor of the Legacy and Tradition of the movement known as the Hiéron du Val d'Or – but closer analysis of this shows that Plantard did not directly follow in Le Cour's footsteps or directly copy his material – Plantard merely based his later ideas and later claims on what Le Cour had written before him. Richardson also overrates the role played by the Hiéron du Val d'Or in French politics and French religion in every way – the organisation was ultra-fringe in nature – never mainstream – which did not happen to have more than 50 members in its heyday (and it was wrongly described by Richardson as a "secret society"). Its major claim to fame was its success in convincing the Vatican into introducing the Feast Day of Christ the King, which it eventually did during the 1920s.

The main crucial omission from Richardson's latest article is the main purpose of Plantard's Priory of Sion myth of the 1960s – the promotion of Plantard as the direct lineal descendant of Dagobert II and the restoration of the French Monarchy – here is the demonstrable proof that Plantard regarded himself as THE central character in European politics and esoterica and did not see himself as just being part of an existing French Movement or French Tradition formed by other people whereby he was simply being manipulated by others.

Robert Richardson's ambitions to debunk the Priory of Sion Hoax are both admirable and respectable but by not sticking to the verifiable facts he is unfortunately and unwittingly promoting myths of his own about both Pierre Plantard and the Priory of Sion.

And Robert Richardson also repeated his claim about the village of Rennes-le-Château being an "old Celtic religious site"....
 

More Robert Richardson Hoaxes

Robert Richardson's

 response

E-mail from Robert Richardson

From: Robert Richardson
September 7, 2003
Re: Article by Paul Smith

The purpose of "The Priory of Sion Hoax" was to explain, in the limited amount of words permitted by a magazine, the intellectual roots of the fraud which has been perpetuated on the public by an extremist French group and by greedy authors and publishers. No individual or group of individuals arises one day out of the blue. Every person and every group are formed by the intellectual/political/philosophical/economic climate in which we grow up and evolve, and the purpose of the article is to explain the sources of the climate and ideas which gave birth to the fraud. As for the specifics of Paul Smith's comments, I have read the Vaincre articles and do not find it logical that 19 year old Mr. Plantard is the founder, financier, inspiration, and/or leader of Alpha Galates or any other group composed of political activists well recognized in their respective professional fields and far more experienced in all aspects of life than he. Everyone forming Alpha Galates and later the Priory of Sion did so on the basis of precedents, and the purpose of the article is to identify those precedents, to explain the how and why of the formation of the Priory of Sion within the confines of a brief space. It is my most sincere hope that anyone interested in seeing the fraud exposed and the truth told will concentrate their efforts on exposing the fraud, rather than slipping into the pattern which is typical of those interested in the Rennes le Chateau affair - which is to lose sight of the important issue and of the trail to the truth and waste time attacking anyone who does not agree with their conclusions.

Robert Richardson

Original Link

E-mail from Robert Richardson

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

From: Paul Smith
September 10, 2003
Re: My Reply to Bob [Robert Richardson]

There is no necessity for differing interpretations ("truth in the eye of the beholder") in relation to the origin of the Alpha Galates in 1942 because we have the evidence in the form of a Secret Service Report dated 13 February 1945 (the second Report on the organisation) - the Alpha Galates were founded by Pierre Plantard and he was imprisoned by the French authorities for not registering the organisation - if the Alpha Galates happened to be founded by someone else at an earlier period then that other person would have been convicted at an earlier period, but this is not the case.

The Alpha Galates was Pierre Plantard's Third Attempt at forming an organisation - when permission was refused on 2 previous occasions in 1937 and in 1941 - Plantard eventually went ahead and formed the Alpha Galates in 1942 without seeking the required authorisation and he paid the penalty for it.

Because he was so desperately keen in wanting to form a Group and to keep it going, an effort to impress the authorities as to its credibility was attempted by filling the pages of "Vaincre" with articles by people like Louis Le Fur, Le Comte Moncharville and Camille Savoire - it is evident that the material concerned was either pilfered and re-written to make it appear as if it were intended for that publication, or the articles were written from scratch by Plantard using those people's names. This was all done in an attempt to impress the French authorities and to convince them that the Alpha Galates had respectable "support".

However, because Plantard tried to establish an organisation in Paris, in the Nazi-occupied Zone of France, the French authorities had to do as they were told by the ruling authorities - the Alpha Galates and "Vaincre" were not the only French right-wing esoteric group that was on the receiving end of the Nazis - fringe Gallic Traditionalism of the Plantard variety just did not fit-in with the Aryan Ideolgy of the Germans.

The big expert on all of this is the French researcher Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who discovered that Pierre Plantard's past was linked with Vichy, found the issues of "Vaincre" in the Bibliotheque Nationale and also discovered the 2 Police Reports relating to the Alpha Galates. Chaumeil has done a biography on Le Comte Moncharville and is categoric [sic] that he never met Pierre Plantard.
 

Most Sincerely Yours,

Paul Smith