Following the dissolution of Grand Orient Freemasonry in Vichy France on 13 August 1940,[4][6] Plantard wrote a letter dated 16 December 1940 to Marshal Philippe Pétain offering his services to the collaborationist government, referring to a 'terrible Masonic and Jewish conspiracy'.
[7] On 21 April 1941, Plantard wrote to the Paris Police Prefecture that his group the French National Renewal was to take possession of the unoccupied premises located at 22 place Malesherbes, 1st floor "which are currently let to an English Jew, Mr. Shapiro, who is presently fighting alongside his fellows in the British armed forces.
"[8][9] By 1942, Plantard wanted to form another association, the Alpha Galates, membership prohibited to Jews, but the occupying German authorities refused permission.
[4][5] The statutes of the Alpha Galates were deposited on 21 September 1942, describing itself as a tripartite order composed of the Temple, la Cité and les Arches.
[11] Claude Charlot of the Paris Prefecture of Police stated on a CBS News 60 Minutes documentary that the Alpha Galates "had only four regular members".
[12] According to a police report on the Alpha Galates dated 13 February 1945, the organisation was only composed of at most 50 members, who resigned one after the other as soon as they sized up the president of the association (Pierre Plantard) and figured out that it was not a serious enterprise.
[5] According to a more reliable source, given in a letter written by Léon Guersillon the Mayor of Annemasse in 1956, contained in the folder holding the 1956 Statutes of the Priory of Sion in the subprefecture of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois,[12][16] Plantard was given a six-month sentence in December 1953 for abus de confiance (breach of trust), relating to other crimes.
[17] On 25 June 1956, Pierre Plantard and André Bonhomme legally registered in the town of Saint-Julien-en-Genevois a new association called the Priory of Sion, based in Annemasse close to the French border near Geneva.
[4][5][6] The "Sion" in the name did not refer to the ancient Land of Israel, but to a local mountain, Mont-Sion (or Mont-de-Sion), where the order (according to its statutes) intended to establish a retreat center.
[19][20] In 1959, Plantard edited a second series of the journal Circuit, subtitled Publication Périodique Culturelle de la Fédération des Forces Françaises.
In 1962, author Robert Charroux published his book Trésors du monde telling the story of Noël Corbu, who claimed the 19th century priest Bérenger Saunière had discovered the treasure of Blanche of Castile in the village of Rennes-le-Château.
Philippe de Chérisey, Plantard's friend and accomplice, later claimed that Abbé Pichon was the pseudonym of François Dron (a completely different historical person who was a numismatist).
"[37] In 1981 Plantard circulated a French newspaper cutting of unknown provenance stating the parchments were stored in a Safe deposit box of Lloyds Bank, London.
[38] A book published in 1983 by Louis Vazart[39] reproduced two fake "notarised documents" allegedly dating from October 1955 naming Captain Ronald Stansmore Nutting (altered from Captain Ronald Stansmore),[40] Major Hugh Murchison Clowes and the Right Honourable Viscount Leathers as the legal owners of the parchments discovered by Saunière "whose value cannot be estimated", and requesting the parchments - all containing proof of the survival of the line of Dagobert II - to be removed from France.
[4][5] A new revived series of Vaincre appeared during the late 1980s, containing a "good luck message from Valéry Giscard d'Estaing", proponent of the United States of Europe,[47] as well as an article attributed to Frederick Forsyth.
The previous claims found in the notarised documents published in Vazart's book in 1983 were made out of "errors of decipherment" and were falsified because of "political pressures of 1956".
[49] In a letter dated 4 April 1989, Plantard wrote that Victor Hugo "drew up the constitutions of the Priory of Sion on 14 July 1870, on the same day that he planted the oak-tree of the United States of Europe".
Pelat was a friend of the then President of France François Mitterrand and centre of a scandal involving French Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy.