Past as Prologue: Safari Club Illuminates Candace Owens’ Allegations

Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

When high-profile American podcaster Candace Owens publicly alleged that a state-sanctioned French assassination plot (with at least one Israeli operative involved) was being planned, most would have written it off as a publicity stunt or paranoid rantings. Yet, for anyone who knows the shadowy history of multinational intelligence alliances, her claim shouldn’t be dismissed so easily. In 1976, the Safari Club, run from secret rooms in Cairo, staffed by French Foreign Legion veterans, Egyptian Sa’ka commandos, Israeli operatives, CIA operatives and other criminal actors, showed the world that states could collaborate beyond borders, laws, and scrutiny. Unproven as Owens’ allegation may seem, the historical record of such clandestine activities makes this story not merely imaginable, but very possible. And that is why Owens’ accusation, as wild as it may seem, lands squarely on covert terrain shaped by decades of clandestine activities conducted by a consortium capable of operating across borders and beyond oversight. To understand why her recent claim didn’t dissipate on impact, one has to understand the secret architecture of parallel intelligence constructs such as the Safari Club and the long shadow it still casts.

When Candace Owens claimed on X that a “high‑ranking French government insider” warned her of an imminent plot to have her assassinated, alleging that President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigette had “authorized and financed” the operation, assigning it to a small National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) team that included an Israeli operative. She also suggested that “Charlie Kirk’s assassin trained with the French Legion 13th brigade with multi-state involvement”.  The claim sounded like it belonged to the realm of conspiracy thrillers, and yet, as the allegation ricocheted across social media, something unusual happened: people did not instinctively laugh it off. Some dismissed it, yes. But many hesitated, paused, or quietly admitted that, given the right circumstances, given the right network of covert actors, such a plot didn’t feel entirely impossible.

URGENT
Two days ago I was contacted by a high-ranking employee of the French Government. After determining this person’s position and proximity to the French couple, I have deemed the information they gave me to be credible enough to share publicly in the event that something…

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 22, 2025

That hesitation doesn’t come from trust in Owens. It comes from history.

Because once you understand the Safari Club, a real, documented, multinational intelligence alliance created in 1976 by France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and pre‑revolutionary Iran, operating from a secret headquarters in Cairo, Owens’ claim stops sounding like pure delusion and starts sounding like an echo. A faint, distorted echo of something the world has seen before: powerful states coordinating in the shadows, conducting deniable operations beyond borders, and deploying special units and hired mercenaries to eliminate obstacles to their geopolitical designs.

Owens is yet to provide supporting evidence and the receipts, something she has done in the past, and on several occasions whilst investigating the public execution of her friend Charlie Kirk on her YouTube Channel. But history has already shown that such alliances can exist, have existed, and did directly involve the same actors she now names: France, Israeli intelligence circles, and Arab partners. It is that history, combined with the growing lack of trust in institutions and mainstream media, which makes people unable to dismiss her outright.

IMAGE: Adnan Khashoggi’s Mount Kenya Safari Club, from which the alliance derives its name. Attribution: Collectie Wereldmuseum (v/h Tropenmuseum), part of the National Museum of World Cultures/CC BY-SA 3.0.

The official origin story of the Safari Club begins in 1976 at the Mount Kenya Safari Club, a lush resort better suited to couture safaris than clandestine war rooms. But beneath the palm trees and cocktail dinners, French intelligence chief Alexandre de Marenches orchestrated the birth of a covert alliance designed to do what the CIA, freshly restrained by congressional oversight, could no longer do openly. France brought technological expertise, Egypt and Morocco brought troops, Saudi Arabia provided financing, and Iran’s Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State (SAVAK) offered reach. Together, they built something that did not need public scrutiny or democratic accountability.

Owen’s allegation, involving French and Israeli operatives, elite units, and political figures, gains its eerie plausibility here because this exact constellation of countries has, in the past, worked together on covert operations far more violent, far more intrusive, and far more geopolitically consequential than the alleged targeting of a political commentator.

IMAGE: The 13e DBLE of the French Foreign Legion commemorating the 37th anniversary of the unit’s activation, February 1977. The event was organised annually in the Grand Bara Desert, in southern Djibouti (Source: Foreign Legion)

French involvement in the Safari Club was never delicate or distant. Beyond diplomacy, France supplied much of the manpower, not through official channels but through deniable ones. Veterans of the French Foreign Legion, men hardened by Algeria, Indochina, Chad, and Djibouti, were quietly recruited into operations that operated outside formal chains of command. Brokers with ties to the French External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service (SDECE), the precursor of the French Secret Service – DGSE,  approached Legionnaires near the end of service. Some ended up in Zaire during the Shaba crisis; others in covert missions across the Sahel. These were not press-release missions. Even inside the Legion, “neutralisation” had a specific meaning: actions designed to remove individuals permanently.

SEE ALSO: Kill Lists, Covert Ops: Candace Owens’ Alarming Allegation

Owens claims that French forces or French-aligned operatives could be involved in a covert assassination plot may be unproven, still, it is not absurd in the context of a state whose intelligence legacy includes decades of deniable operations, some conducted through exactly the kind of networks the Safari Club institutionalised.

Egypt, too, offers historical resonance. Under Sadat and intelligence chief Kamal Hassan Ali, the Cairo headquarters of the Safari Club became the alliance’s nerve centre. It had a secretariat, a planning directorate, and an operations wing shielded by layers of compartmentalisation. Egyptian memoirs hint at a third, ultra-restricted tier where “special actions” were designed, a phrase whose ambiguity serves as its own warning. The Sa’ka commandos, Egypt’s elite special forces, executed missions throughout Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, and the Red Sea corridor. Publicly, these were “security support”; privately, they were very capable of covert eliminations.

Owens pointing at French and Israeli actors may seem random to the uninitiated. But those who know about the Safari Club’s Cairo operations understand something: the network’s architecture was explicitly built to allow such transnational coordination.

IMAGE: Jeffrey Epstein associate and Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a commander of Sayeret Matkal in 1973 (Photo: IDF)

Israel’s role, though unofficial, was equally significant. Even though it was not a formal member, Israeli intelligence shared overlapping interests with the Safari Club, particularly in the Horn of Africa. Israeli advisers were active in Kenya, Ethiopia, and later anti-Soviet Sudanese factions. Mossad officers, Israeli technical specialists, and commandos from Sayeret Matkal provided training, surveillance capability, forged documents, and strategic intelligence. While no document proves Israel carried out assassinations for the Safari Club, the operational overlap was real, deep enough that most historians suspect at least informal coordination and some tactical support.

Owens’ allegation that Israeli-linked operatives could conspire with French circles to conduct a targeted killing may not be grounded in fact or solid evidence (at least not yet), but it is certainly grounded in precedent. Israel has long worked with foreign intelligence services on covert missions, including lethal ones.

And there is another layer, the diplomatic one. The Safari Club was not just a covert war machine; it was also a clandestine diplomatic instrument. Through back-channel communication fostered by shared intelligence networks, the alliance facilitated quiet exchanges between Egypt and Israel in the late 1970s. These covert contacts helped set the stage for the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, the first recognition of Israel by an Arab state. A covert alliance, staffed by generals, spies, and mercenaries, helped midwife a regional peace. It sounds improbable until you examine the archival fragments and memoirs. Just as Owens’ allegations sound improbable until you recall that improbable things have happened before under the cover of intelligence alliances.

The Club’s military interventions were significant and demonstrate the scale of coordination states can achieve when operating beyond public oversight. In Zaire in 1977, when the Soviet- and Cuban-backed FNLC invaded Shaba Province, the Safari Club orchestrated a Franco-Moroccan airlift and Egyptian support to restore Mobutu, a transnational military response executed with a speed that only a covert alliance could manage. In the Ogaden War (1977–1978), the Club supplied arms to Somalia after Ethiopia swung into the Soviet orbit. These were not small actions. They were continental manoeuvres executed through channels invisible to the public.

This is why Owens’ allegation feels, at least to this author, like a modern iteration of an old pattern. Because the pattern exists.

Even the darker mysteries, unexplained deaths around the  BCCI network (Bank of Credit and Commerce International financial), the 1977 car-bombing of American investor Ray Ryan, and the shadowy figures who moved through African warzones, reinforce the sense that the Safari Club operated in a world where accountability rarely reached. Owens is not alleging anything of this scale, but she is alleging activity of the same type: extrajudicial, multinational, deniable.

IMAGE: Theodore “Ted” Shackley (left) was a key CIA contact for the Safari Club (Source: Fandom)

The CIA’s role is equally instructive. Constrained by Congress after Watergate, the CIA needed allies who could conduct operations the U.S. could no longer touch. Figures like Theodore “Ted” Shackley and Thomas Clines, according to multiple investigative accounts, maintained relationships with the Safari Club as a “second channel”, a way for allied services to carry out actions aligned with American interests without implicating Washington. Owens’ allegation, which envisions a clandestine web where multiple states are involved in a military-style hit on a political figure like Charlie Kirk, mirrors the architecture Shackley and others helped create: operations beyond borders, beyond oversight, beyond traceability.

Historically speaking, it was George H.W. Bush who achieved a significant shift during his tenure as head of the CIA by changing the focus of regional intelligence from Israel to Saudi Arabia. Following the Watergate scandal, an informal intelligence network was established outside the United States with assistance from Sheikh Kamal Adham, the head of Saudi Intelligence; during this period, covert operations worldwide for the Agency (CIA) were financed through various Saudi banking and charitable organizations. Reportedly, Ed Wilson, a former CIA and Office of Naval Intelligence officer who was convicted in 1983 of illegally selling weapons to Libya, was a great supporter of this network, which, as we mentioned earlier, encompassed France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran, and became known as the infamous Safari Club. With Bush’s “official endorsement,” Sheikh Adham established “the largest secret financial network ever” at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).

This is not to validate Owens. But it is to explain why her claim does not evaporate on contact with reality. People intuitively understand that states have collaborated in silence before. They know that intelligence alliances have existed in which French commandos, Israeli advisers, Arab intelligence chiefs, and U.S. liaisons coordinated lethal actions together. They know there are rooms, in Nairobi, in Cairo, in Djibouti, where decisions were made that never reached any democratic chamber.

Some will say Owens may be wrong, she may be exaggerating or wildly mistaken, but history affords a reflection of credence to her allegations. And the image in that reflection is the Safari Club, a multinational covert alliance that once operated without fingerprints, without documentation, and without hesitation. It proved that when powerful states decide someone is an obstacle, and when they share the will to remove that obstacle, they can pool their assets and act across borders, and even continents.

Whether the same structure still exists today remains uncertain. But its blueprint survives, its logic remains persuasive, and its historical shadow stretches long enough that even what some deem to be wild allegations may indeed be grounded in reality. Which is why, when Candace Owens says France and Israel conspired to assassinate her, people shouldn’t be quick to dismiss it out of hand, because the Safari Club may have been born in 1976, but the idea behind it never died.

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21st Century Wire is an alternative news agency designed to enlighten, inform and educate readers about world events which are not always covered in the mainstream media.

Source: https://21stcenturywire.com/2025/11/27/shadows-of-power-from-the-safari-club-to-owens-allegations/