He was a legendary figure in journalism who shaped the editorial direction of one of France’s most successful publications.
The important French magazine L’Express recently discovered that its famous former editor, Philippe Grumbach, spied for the Soviet Union for 35 years.
Grumbach was a exceptionally well connected figure in French high society for decades.
He considered presidents, actors, and literary giants close friends.
When he died in 2003, Culture Minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon said Grumbach had been “one of the most memorable and respected by the French media.”
But It was also “Brok”, a spy for the Russian KGB intelligence agency.
Comprehensive evidence of Grumbach’s deceitful life can be found in the so-called Mitrokhin archives, named after the Soviet commander who smuggled out thousands of pages of documents of Soviet records and handed them over to Britain in 1992.
Later, they were collected into a book by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin himself.
Between the thousands of pages of documents There are profiles that describe the characteristics of Westerners who spied for the Soviet Union.
Several months ago, a friend of Etienne Girard, social affairs editor of L’Expresstold him that an acquaintance who was investigating the files of Mitrokhin had found mentions of the French weekly.
The documents said that an agent with the code name “Brok” worked for the KGB and detailed biographical details that matched Grumbach’s.
Girard’s interest was immediately piqued.
“Brok” was indeed Grumbach
“I started investigating and found Grumbach’s name written in Russian and some photographs,” Girard told the BBC.
“And then things got much more serious. “I contacted the French secret service to confirm that “Brok” was indeed Grumbach, and things started to snowball from there.”
Born in Paris in 1924 to a Jewish family, Grumbach fled France with his mother and siblings. in 1940, the year Nazi Germany invaded the country and Marshal Philippe Pétain took power in Vichy with a collaborationist regime with the Nazis.
Grumbach joined the US Army almost immediately and He fought alongside the resistance in Algeria in 1943.
After the war, he joined the AFP news agency, but resigned shortly after in protest at the French government’s actions in the Indochina War.
In 1954, Grumbach was hired to work on L’Express by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, its founder.
From then on, he began to rub shoulders with some of the most prominent French figures of the 20th century.
He helped rehabilitate the reputation of then-senator (and future president) François Mitterrand when he was accused of organizing a fake assassination in 1960.
He was close to the powerful Servan-Schreiber, to President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and the prominent French statesman Pierre Mendès. among others.
The actors Alain Delon and Isabelle Adjani They were invited to their 1980 wedding, where the writer Francoise Sagan and Pierre Berge, co-founder of Yves Saint Laurent, were the legal witnesses.
Money to buy an apartment in Paris
And all the time, Grumbach I kept spying.
Some may see his decision to spy for the Soviet Union as a romantic story of loyalty to a regime doomed to failure.
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 remaining a spy had less to do with a desire to promote the cause of communism in Europe, and more with his ambition to earn enough money to buy an apartment in Paris.
The financial incentives were certainly attractive.
According to Mitrokhin’s archives, only between 1976 and 1978 did Grumbach receive the equivalent to US$270,000 current euros 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.
However, it is not clear exactly what missions did he carry out.
Mitrokhin’s files show that during the 1974 presidential elections, the KGB gave him fake files intended to create tensions among right-wing presidential candidates.
Although L’Express cites documents that say Grumbach was entrusted with the mission to “resolve sensitive issues” and “liaising with representatives and leaders of political parties and groups,” there are few concrete examples of Grumbach actively helping the USSR.
He was “insincere”
Perhaps that is why, in the early 1980s, the KGB cut ties with him.
According to Mitrokhin’s archive book, KGB agents in Paris found Grumbach “insincere” and they felt that he exaggerated their information-gathering abilities and the value of their intelligence. He was fired in 1981.
We will never know if Grumbach was relieved that his double life no longer existed, or how he felt about his years of service in the KGB.
Whether out of shame or a lingering sense of loyalty, he rejected the only known attempt in 2000 by a journalist, Thierry Wolton, to know more about his years as a spy.
Grumbach initially appeared to obliquely admit to his past, but then backtracked, threatening to sue Wolton if he went ahead with the tell-all book he was planning.
Wolton abandoned the project, but it seems that The incident sparked Grumbach’s desire to talk about his experience.
His widow Nicole recently told L’Express that, shortly after the visit to Wolton, 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.
Threatened
She said he mentioned feeling “revulsion.” for the racism he witnessed in Texas while in the US military, and hinted that this led him to seek collaboration with the USSR. “He added that he wanted to stop almost immediately, but that he had been threatened,” Nicole told L’Express.
Girard says he had no problem uncovering the truth about his former editor-in-chief.
“I definitely had the feeling that I was doing my job. The investigation depends on us, because it concerns us, even if that means discovering uncomfortable truths,” he said.
Writing the article took three months, but it was worth it. Almost all means of communication in France have collected the historypossibly 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 pro-Soviet subliminal messages. But it’s unlikely they’ll find anything.
In the 1950s, during Grumbach’s first stint as editor-in-chief, L’Express He leaned to the left without ever supporting communism.
Back in the 1970s, when Grumbach was back in charge, L’Express moved to a decidedly moderate, liberal and centrist space.
As noted in the report L’ExpressGrumbach’s work as a spy It was never about spreading propaganda.
“He was careful to keep his work as a spy separate from his work as a magazine editor,” Girard said.
“But that’s precisely why it all worked. The KGB wanted him to stick to his centrist bourgeois façade. to continue going unnoticed.”
“He fully complied with the spirit of the KGB. It was a smart decision. And it worked”.
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