“A brilliant journalist. But also a traitor to France who, for 35 years, worked for the KGB.” He hid behind the alias “Brok” and died in 2003, at age 79. Philippe Grumbach was the former director of The Express in the 70s and a spy for the secret services of the USSR, reveals the magazine in its Thursday edition.
“One of the greatest Soviet spies of the Fifth Republic”
“His intimate entourage confirmed this occult relationship to The Express. Close to Mitterrand and Giscard, he was, unbeknownst to everyone, one of the greatest Soviet spies of the Fifth Republic”, says the company’s editor-in-chief Etienne Girard, who with Anne Marion signed a long-term investigation, conducted in the KGB archives.
“It was impossible not to reveal this gray area within a newspaper which, from Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber to Jean-François Revel, from François Mauriac to Raymond Aron, has always strived to combat utopias totalitarianism and the ravages of communism”, write Etienne Girard and Eric Chol, editorial director, in the magazine’s editorial.
Philippe Grumbach served as editor-in-chief from 1956 to 1960, before becoming editorial director in 1974. He was also editorial secretary at the French Press Agency (the former AFP) from 1946 to 1948. After a detour to Release then Paris-Presse-l’Intransigeant, he joined The Express in 1954 as editor. He founded Pariscope in 1965, then directed Crapouillot. He then returns to The Express where he held, from 1971, the functions of political director, then editor-in-chief, editorial director. Member of the High Audiovisual Council (1977-1981), he then became a film producer then returned to the press in 1984, in Figaro.
Spy by “ideology” or “by taste for money?”
Was he a spy “by ideology” then “by a taste for money?”, asks the current editorial director of The Express. “On the field of dishonor, the name of Philippe Grumbach thus joins that of other agents of the East infiltrated in the highest spheres of the State or in the media, and now unmasked,” he asserts, recalling in particular that, “from 1996, The Express had revealed how former minister Charles Hernu worked on behalf of the KGB and its satellites.
“This Soviet penetration into the spheres of power during the Cold War must constantly call us to a duty of vigilance,” underlines Eric Chol, referring to recent attempts at foreign interference in France.