Journalists, elected officials, advisors, diplomats… They all assiduously frequented the Elysée. Their other point in common? They were Kremlin spies. The KGB and its successors recruited these “moles” by banking on ideology, ego, sometimes compromise, often money. They had to report everything they saw. On special occasions, they were sent to poison the “Château”. Revelations on Russian penetration within French power, up to the Presidency of the Republic, from General de Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron.
EPISODE 1 – Russian spies at the heart of the Elysée, our revelations: how the DGSI protects presidents
EPISODE 2 – “André”, the KGB spy at the newspaper “Le Monde”: the last secrets of an elusive agent
EPISODE 3 – A KGB spy alongside General de Gaulle? Investigation into the Pierre Maillard affair
An actor’s charisma, sovereignist ideas and… clandestine meetings with the KGB. In the archives of Vassili Mitrokhine, this Soviet intelligence colonel who moved to the West in 1992, the career of French deputy Jacques Bouchacourt revealed its last secrets. From 1970 to 1981, he maintained an ongoing relationship with Russian spies in France, until being recruited as an agent, under the code name “Nym”. A rare case involving a sitting parliamentarian, who is also a Gaullist. Bouchacourt was paid in “expensive gifts”, specifies the KGB, a modus operandi used when handing over money might offend the target. The motivation for his recruitment appears clearly in the few lines devoted to him in these administrative documents: the politician acted out of ideology. “Nym aims for national independence, aims to avoid any situation that would lead to a military confrontation between France and the USSR,” the spies comment.
On behalf of Soviet espionage, Jacques Bouchacourt led anti-American and anti-European community propaganda campaigns. “La Rezindentura [NDLR : c’est-à-dire le KGB en France] asked him to push the idea that a deeper integration of France into the European Union would cause France to lose its weight and its authority on the international scene”, it is written in these archives copied by Mitrokhine, of which The authenticity was recognized by all Western governments. The links between the KGB and Bouchacourt were such that his handling agent broke a basic rule of intelligence which requires recruits to know nothing about their counterparts. The French MP knew the identity. of “Simon”, another Soviet secret agent in France, to the point of “preparing his interventions on RTL”, indicates the sheet sent by Russian intelligence in France to Moscow.
Before becoming a Gaullist parliamentarian between 1968 and 1973, Jacques Bouchacourt was a figure of the short-lived Fourth Republic. The episode is narrated at length in History of the Fourth Republicby Georgette Elgey. From 1951, this diplomat, aged 28, took up the cause against the European Defense Community (EDC) project. Administrator in the German affairs department, he is convinced that a “secret treaty” will give Germany military predominance in Europe. Ignoring hierarchical rules, he obtained meetings with the President of the Republic, Vincent Auriol, with Antoine Pinay, the President of the Council, with Michel Debré, then senator of India-et-Loire. His fight is pushed, according to Elgey, by several committed journalists, including André Ulmann. The founder of The Tribune of Nations is an Eastern agent, known under the pseudonym “Durant” in the KGB, the Mitrokhin archives indicate. His newspaper was financed to the tune of 3 million francs (the equivalent of 3.7 million euros in 2023, according to the INSEE coefficient) by Soviet intelligence.
The CED rejected in 1954, Jacques Bouchacourt left the Quai d’Orsay. He joined the Federation of Mechanical Industries, crowned with a new political network. Michel Debré took him under his wing. In 1963, his warm correspondence with Pierre Lefranc, advisor to General de Gaulle at the Elysée – they spoke informally and called each other “my dear friend”, attested to by letters in the national archives – led to the latter’s intervention in favor of of his appointment to the Economic and Social Council, which Bouchacourt joined in 1964. In June 1968, he won the legislative elections in Nièvre, where he was born, in Fourchambault, in 1923, in a street bearing the name of his grandfather, an industrialist. It was at this time, and not before, that the KGB became more interested in him. The documents collected by Mitrokhine describe a period of contacts, between 1970 and 1975, during which Bouchacourt was “used energetically for active measures”, that is to say intelligence or propaganda operations, by Soviet spies . That same year, 1970, the deputy went to the USSR and founded the parliamentary group for pan-European friendship, a sovereignist group in the National Assembly. The politician formally joined “the network of agents of the first general directorate of the KGB”, responsible for political intelligence, in 1976.
A transhumance to the left
In the National Assembly, Jacques Bouchacourt did not stand out for his left-wing sympathies. In July 1968, he vilified the “red and black rags” of May, and in October 1970, he tabled a bill to restrict the right to strike in public services. He was also indignant at the recruitment of “the former general secretary of a Marxist trade union organization” as a law professor in Nanterre, in August 1971, in fact Eugène Descamps, ex-boss of the CFDT. In the legislative elections of 1973, he presented himself for the majority of President Georges Pompidou as the bulwark against “totalitarian Marxism”. With 43.2% of the votes in the second round, he lost his seat.
From then on, understanding with the USSR was established on geopolitical questions. In September 1976, one of his stands in The World made a strong impression on his KGB interlocutors – they cited the article in their archives. “Here has come, for the French who want to remain so, the moment to proclaim that the affairs of France are too serious to be left to the diplomats and politicians of a so-called European Council remotely controlled from Washington,” thunders the former parliamentarian in this contribution. Jacques Bouchacourt then begins a transhumance towards the left. From March 1976, he joined a “progressive front”, composed of opposition Gaullists, open to dialogue with the Communist Party, while continuing to participate in the friendly Presence and Action of Gaullism, alongside Michel Debré. In April 1977 and then in May 1978, he joined the work of the Peace Movement, a pacifist organization linked to the communists and the USSR.
During the 1981 presidential election, after having supported Jacques Chirac, he called to vote… François Mitterrand, in the second round. The KGB regrets that the politician is beginning to “move away from the political line” assigned to him. His file was closed that same year, 1981. In April 1982, François Mitterrand requested and obtained that he be reinstated at the Quai d’Orsay. In July 1990, Jacques Bouchacourt was named Commander of the Legion of Honor. He died on December 27, 2000.
.