KGB spy who rubbed shoulders
with French elite for decades
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
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caption,
For decades, KGB spy Philippe Grumbach rubbed shoulders with countless
political figures and celebrities
By Laura Gozzi
BBC News
16th February 2024
Major
French magazine L'Express has revealed that its prominent former editor,
Philippe Grumbach, spied for the Soviet Union for 35 years.
Grumbach was an exceptionally well plugged-in figure in French society
for decades.
He counted presidents, actors and literary giants as close friends. He
was a legendary figure in journalism who shaped the editorial direction of one
of France's most successful publications. When he died in 2003, Minister of
Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon said Grumbach had been "one of the most
memorable and respected figures in French media".
But he was also "Brok", a spy for Russia's KGB intelligence
agency.
Extensive proof of Grumbach's duplicitous life can be found in the
so-called Mitrokhin archives - named after the Soviet major who smuggled
thousands of pages of documents out of Soviet archives and handed them to
Britain in 1992. They were later compiled into a book by Christopher Andrew and
Vasili Mitrokhin himself.
Among the thousands of pages of documents are profiles outlining the
characteristics of Westerners who spied for the Soviet Union.
Several months ago, a friend of Etienne Girard, the social affairs
editor at L'Express and the co-author of the Grumbach exposé, informed him that
an acquaintance who was researching the Mitrokhin files had come across
mentions of L'Express. The documents said that an agent with the code-name of
Brok worked for the KGB - and spelled out biographical details that matched
Grumbach's.
Mr Girard's interest was piqued immediately.
"I started to dig into it and found Grumbach's name written in
Russian, and some photos," Mr Girard told the BBC. "And then things
got much more serious. I got in touch with the French secret service to confirm
that Brok was indeed Grumbach - and things snowballed from there."
Born in Paris in 1924 into a Jewish family, Grumbach fled France with
his mother and siblings in 1940 - the year Nazi Germany invaded and Marshal
Philippe Pétain took power in Vichy with a collaborationist regime. Grumbach
joined the US army almost immediately and fought alongside the resistance in
Algeria in 1943. After the war, he joined the AFP news agency - but resigned
soon after in protest at the French government's actions in the war in
Indochina.
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
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Philippe Grumbach as a young journalist
In 1954, Grumbach was hired to work at L'Express by Jean-Jacques
Servan-Schreiber, its founder.
From then onwards, Grumbach began rubbing shoulders with some of
France's most prominent figures of the 20th Century.
He helped rehabilitate the then-senator - and future president -
Francois Mitterand's reputation when he was accused of staging a fake
assassination in 1960. He was close to the powerful Servan-Schreiber, President
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and prominent statesman Pierre Mendès France, among
others. Actors Alain Delon and Isabelle Adjani were guests at his 1980 wedding,
where writer Francoise Sagan and Pierre Berge, co-founder of Yves Saint
Laurent, were the legal witnesses.
And Grumbach was a spy throughout.
Some may view his decision to spy for the Soviet Union as a romantic
tale of loyalty to a doomed regime. But Mitrokhin himself speculated that while
it was probably ideology that initially attracted Grumbach to the KGB, after
only a few years his reasons for staying on as a spy had less to do with
wishing to advance the cause of communism in Europe, and more with his desire
to make enough money to buy a flat in Paris.
The financial incentives were certainly appealing. According to the
Mitrokhin files, between 1976 and 1978 alone Grumbach was awarded the
equivalent of today's €250,000 (£214,000) for his services to the KGB. On three
other occasions in the 1970s, he received an extra bonus for being one of the
top 13 Soviet spies in France.
Yet it is unclear what missions he carried out exactly. The Mitrokhin
files show that during the 1974 presidential election the KGB gave him
fabricated files which were meant to create tensions between right-wing
presidential candidates. Although L'Express quotes documents as saying that
Grumbach was entrusted with the mission of "settling delicate issues"
and "liaising with representatives and leaders of political parties, and
groups", there are few other concrete examples of Grumbach actively
helping the USSR.
Maybe that is the reason why, in the early 1980s, the KGB severed ties
with him. According to the Mitrokhin files book, KGB agents in Paris deemed
Grumbach "insincere" and felt he exaggerated his abilities to gather
information and the value of his intelligence. He was let go in 1981.
We will never know whether Grumbach was relieved that his double life
was no more, or how he felt about his years of service to the KGB.
Whether because of shame or a lingering sense of loyalty, he rebuffed
the only known attempt in 2000 by a journalist, Thierry Wolton, to find out
more about his years as a spy. Grumbach initially appeared to obliquely admit
to his past, but later rowed back, threatening to sue Wolton if he went ahead
with the tell-all book he was planning.
Wolton dropped the project, but it seems the incident sparked in
Grumbach a desire to talk about his experience.
His widow Nicole recently told L'Express that, soon after the Wolton
visit, her late husband told her the truth. "He explained to me that he
had worked for the KGB before we got married," she told the magazine. She
said he mentioned having been "revolted" by the racism he witnessed
in Texas while he was in the US army, and implied this led him to seek a
collaboration with the USSR instead. "He immediately added that he wanted
to stop almost right away, but that he had been threatened," Nicole told
L'Express.
Mr Girard says he had no problem unearthing the truth about its former
editor-in-chief.
"I definitely had the sense that I was doing my job. It's up to us
to do the investigation, because it concerns us - even if it means unearthing
uncomfortable truths," he said.
Writing the piece took three months, but it has paid off. Almost every
media outlet in France has picked up the story - possibly because many still
remember Grumbach as a towering figure who dominated the French media landscape
for decades.
Some may be tempted to dust off their old copies of L'Express from the
Grumbach years in search of subliminal pro-Soviet messaging. But they're
unlikely to find anything. In the 1950s, under Grumbach's first stint as an
editor-in-chief, L'Express leaned left without ever endorsing communism; in the
1970s, when Grumbach was again at the helm, L'Express moved to a resolutely
moderate, liberal, centrist space.
As the report in L'Express points out, Grumbach's work as a spy was
never to spread propaganda.
"He was careful to keep his work as a spy separate from his work as
magazine editor," Mr Girard said. "But this is precisely why it all
worked. The KGB wanted him to hold on to his cover of a centrist bourgeois to
keep flying under the radar."
"It was fully in the spirit of the KGB. It was a smart move. And it
worked."
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