Vincent Jauvert has this talent for investigating where other journalists have not yet gone. After recounting the hidden side of the Quai d’Orsay, then the back kitchens of the senior civil service, the former major reporter at The Obs explore, in In the pay of Moscow (Threshold), to be published on March 1, the secrets of the archives of the Statni bezpecnost (STB), the Czechoslovak intelligence services. He found names of French people there, recruited by this satellite of the USSR during the Cold War. Leading journalists, police officers, politicians…
Jauvert immerses us in a half-world, with its codes and operating methods. The ease with which the Czechs operated was disconcerting, as was the impunity of the spies. The similarities with what Iegor Gran presents in The KGB job interview (Bayard), taken from a spy school manual dated 1969, are obvious. We discover the art of Eastern agents for slow manipulation, “progressive implication”, we read in the breviary, like a slowly woven web which ends up closing on its target. The STB did this with Gérard Carreyrou. Jauvert reveals that the former head of the political service of Europe 1 and director of information at TF1 informed the STB for four years, from June 1981 to November 1985. He had lunch 37 times with Daniel Litecky, a Czech agent under diplomatic cover, until having a code name, “Frank”, then “Fantl”. Against his will? Carreyrou says it today. “It’s a web of lies. I wasn’t in anyone’s pay,” he claims to the Pointexplaining that “it was part of the job to go out, meet people, have lunch.”
Mitterrand’s cancer
Naive journalist or knowing agent? Deciding the debate is important but the raw facts are interesting enough: 1) Carreyrou provided confidential information to his interlocutor; 2) the STB considered him one of its associates. Never payment in cash, however, only in lunches and gifts. This relationship tells of the methods of Eastern spies: maintaining, in some cases, ambiguity about the nature of their arrangement with the target. “I told him that our collaboration was not really espionage,” wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel Litecky, one day that Carreyrou was worried about, according to STB archives obtained by Vincent Jauvert.
Among the information that Carreyrou shares, the major health problems of François Mitterrand, who regularly receives treatment in Val-de-Grâce. At the time, his cancer was still a secret. The head of the political service of Europe 1 also gives information on a synagogue frequented by Americans from NATO in Belgium. Litecky plans to infiltrate him. From the end of 1984, however, the journalist distanced himself. After a year of chasing him, the STB ended the collaboration.
The other espionage relationships discovered by Vincent Jauvert sometimes draw versatile profiles, used by the STB for various dirty work. So does Albert-Paul Lentin. This journalist at New Observer, recruited on ideological grounds, was the Czechoslovaks’ handyman in French political circles. He wrote biographical notes on the personnel of power – 107 in eleven years – as well as analytical notes. For his work, “Heman”, his code name, is paid 1,000 francs per month. He will even help recruit one of his colleagues from The Obs, operation ultimately aborted. The STB still asks him, on occasion, to misinform in the columns of The Obs. In December 1966, he broadcast a false American diplomatic bulletin on the fate of Algeria, with the aim of angering Paris and Washington.
Adenauer’s false will
Disinformation was the STB’s specialty. Jean Clémentin, known as “Pipa” (tap in Czech), prominent editor at Chained duck, will agree to indulge in it several times. In 1963, he published the false will of former German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, containing pro-French remarks, with the aim of “increasing divisions” in West Germany. As always, this obsession with widening the divides in Western countries. Like Lentin, “Pipa” is recruited using both ideology and money: the STB helps him pay for his house in Meudon.
Generally speaking, the agents from the East were groping their way forward in their recruitment: first oral exchanges, we will remain at this stage with Claude Estier, called to become president of the PS group in the Senate thirty years later . Then written reports on general political themes: Paul-Marie de La Gorce wrote them for the GRU, Soviet military intelligence from 1960, STB learned. He will be ministerial advisor to Matignon under Pompidou, and probably one of the most important spies of the USSR in France in the 1970s, under the name “Argus”. Jean-Claude Levy, known as Jean-Claude Dumoulin, also produced this type of report for the Czechs. He is the right arm of André Ulmann, whose newspaper, The Tribune of Nations, was financed by the KGB. Prague transmitted all its information to Moscow anyway.
More complex operations were requested only afterward, if the agent had been officially approved. It will take five years for the STB to proceed with the formal recruitment of “Samo”, undoubtedly the best catch in their history. Police officer Gérard Leconte, advisor to the Paris police prefect, is a sympathizer of the SFIO, the socialist left. He was approached by a fake Czech diplomat on March 3, 1960, during a film screening in Paris. A few meetings followed during which the police officer gave oral information and spoke of his “lack of money”. The Prague officer got the message.
“Samo”, the “perfect spy”
On July 15, 1965, Gérard Leconte became “Samo”, his wife was “Pozorna”. He accepts a first envelope of 1,000 francs, then 5,000, then 6,000. In exchange, the prefect’s advisor delivers secret documents, including notes from the SDECE, the ancestor of the DGSE, on KGB techniques. He also shares reports of wiretapping of ministers or journalists to whom he has access; or even “white notes” from General Intelligence. The STB knows everything about the customs of all of Paris.
Finally, in September 1966, the secret service activated its favorite maneuver, disinformation using a false document. “Samo” sends a fake anonymous letter to a police chief, claiming that Pavel Tigrid, a Czech opponent in exile, is in reality… both an agent of the East and a spy for the CIA. The prefect immediately alerts French intelligence. The operation is a success, Leconte receives a bonus.
But all risky things come to an end. This “perfect spy”, as Jauvert writes, will end up being heavily suspected. As in a spy film, a Czech agent makes a coded call to “Pozorna”, on January 26, 1971. The Leconte couple will be questioned, they will only recognize confidences to the PCF. The matter is buried, “Samo” is simply transferred to a less sensitive department. When the left came to power in 1981, he was promoted to director of the Maison de Nanterre, a reception establishment for the homeless. Like nothing ever happened.
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