André Moyen

André Michel Moyen was a Belgian teacher, journalist, and intelligence agent. In World War II, Moyen was a member of the Belgian Resistance, and during the Cold War, he founded the Belgian Anticommunist Bloc (BACB). He was a member of the Belgian General Information and Security Service (GISS). During the war, Andre also coordinated activities in Belgium for the Office of Strategic Services, and his OSS contact Robert Solberg. Throughout his life, he groomed hundreds of intelligence agents in Belgium, Africa and Asia where he served as intelligence advisor to several governments. Historians have linked Moyen's "stay-behind network" to high-profile anti-communist actions and attacks during the Cold War, most notably the 1950 murder of Julien Lahaut.

The Belgian stay-behind network was officially managed by the Service General de Renseignement/Service de Documentation, de Recherce et d'Action (SGR/SDRA). Moyen was appointed Deputy Director of SGR/SDRA. The clandestine intelligence group around Moyen had direct ties to the official police services. It was furthermore supported by prominent corporations and financial institutions including the Société Générale, the Union Minière and . Moyen's network was allowed to set up its headquarters free of charge in a building owned by the Union Minière in the Komediantenstraat in the center of Brussels, and intelligence reports by Moyen were shared both with the official military intelligence services and with the companies that supported him.

The CIA finds Moyen's information suspicious The CIA wrote in a 1952 intelligence report on Paper Mills that Moyen's intense hatred of communism led to a kind of intelligence that was not discriminatory (meaning that Moyen did not filter information collected before passing it on to analysts), and was suspicious in its veracity.

The CIA wrote:

"MOYEN's very sensational "information' on Soviet activities consists largely of exhumed espionage stories of the war period... Any topic which presents possibilities of sensationalism or scandal inspires MOYEN, and he is known to write inaccurate and derogatory reports even on his supposed friends, including the American and Belgian intelligence services, as well as on his enemies, the Communists... Supposedly secret reports by MOYEN - for instance, reports on the parachuting of arms by the Soviets into Belgium in the summer of 1948 and on Soviet espionage and sabotage in the Congo - have been proven by OSO to be wholly false... The French, Belgian, Swiss and Dutch intelligence services continue to receive MOYEN's product but, except for the Swiss Air Intelligence Service, apparently give it the low evaluation that MOYEN's reputation for unreliability merits... He claims, in addition, to have a private network of agents established in the Belgian Congo, operating independently of the Belgian Surete de l'Etat, and has implied that his activities are supported by the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga. Whatever actual sources MOYEN may have, however, they appear incapable of providing items of intelligence value." The Antwerp police commissioner Alfred Van der Linden in particular got his teeth into the case in 1961. The commissioner pointed Liège to the suspected linchpin, André Moyen. The archives of the State Security Service (VSSE) provided evidence that Moyen founded the BACB and that the insurance agent François Goossens from Halle was a member. In 2007, an episode of the television programme Keerpunt on the chain Canvas featured Eugeen Devillé, an elderly man from Halle, who stated that he had personally partaken in the murder of Lahaut alongside his brother Alex, their brother-in-law Jan Hamelrijck, and Goossens. In 2002, senator Vincent Van Quickenborne publicly revealed the true identity of Goossens. In it, Moyen defends the "execution" of Lahaut as a "necessary measure" because the Belgian government was supposedly not taking sufficient action against the perceived fifth column which the communists constituted. Ils ont craché sur nos tombes : l'espionnage et la résistance belges sous l'occupation et dans la guerre jusqu'à la capitulation allemande (as Capitaine Freddy), Éd. Fasbender, Arlon, 1947. La Réforme agraire dans les pays en voie de développement, Éd. Infor, Brussels, 1954. L'assassinat d'Alexandre Galopin, Gouverneur de la Société Générale de Belgique, le 28 Février 1944, remains unpublished.

Books about subject

Rudi VAN DOORSLAER & Etienne VERHOEYEN, The murder of Lahaut. Communism as a domestic enemy, Leuven, Kritak, 1985. Emmanuel GERARD (ed.), Widukind DE RIDDER & Françoise MULLER, Who Killed Lahaut? The Cold War in Belgium, Leuven, Davidsfonds, 2015. Investigation into the murder of Julien Lahaut was doomed, in: Knack, 12 May 2015. Roger COEKELBERGS et al., Memorial Book of Intelligence and Action Agents, Antwerp/Apeldoorn, Maklu, 2015. Françoise MULLER, "Cette vie si pure du combattant de la guerre secrète" : the anti-communist network of André Moyen, UCL, 2016. Etienne VERHOEYEN, André Moyen, in: Nouvelle biographie nationale, T. 14, Brussels, 2018.