A journalist from the “Canard Enchaîné” was allegedly an Eastern Bloc spy

Jean Clémentin, one of the pillars of the French satirical weekly 

worked in the 1960s for the secret services of Czechoslovakia.

That's what 

said on Tuesday .

Quoting a file from the StB, the Czechoslovak secret services, exhumed by the Czech historian Jan Koura, the weekly reports that this great pen of the

spied on behalf of this satellite of the Soviet Union.

"From 1957 to 1969, Jean Clémentin was also a paid spy for the Czechoslovakians, therefore from the Soviet camp", explains

in its investigation.

"We are obviously not aware, we are flabbergasted", affirmed Nicolas Brimo, current director of the

, adding that "if there was anything more to add, we will do it in our newspaper".

Items designed by the Secret Service

Between 1957 and 1969, “Pipa”, the code name of Jean Clémentin, “submitted no less than 300 notes, during 270 meetings in France and abroad.

He also participated actively – and consciously – in three disinformation operations, by publishing in

articles designed by the StB, ”says the investigation.

“He was even sent to London and Bonn by the secret service in order to collect information.

»

Jean Clémentin, still according to the same survey, would have assumed his first sympathies for the Eastern bloc during his coverage of the Indochina war (1946-1954), where he was disgusted by the methods of the French colonial army. .

It was on this theme that he began his collaboration with a member of the Czechoslovak embassy in Paris, who would become his case officer.

Counterintelligence doubts

The journalist admits his attraction for the “popular democracies” of the East, “but (…) there is also the lure of profit”, assures the investigation.

"He loves money," wrote his attending officer, noting that the man already married twice, who claims to have "five mistresses", does not have sufficient income to support his lifestyle.

“In total, in the first five years of his active collaboration, his dealing officers (…) will hand him over 23,600 francs, or around 40,000 euros today”, explains

, which also mentions “a house in Meudon, in the bourgeois suburbs of the capital”.

The survey also indicates that in Paris, the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST, in charge of counter-espionage, provided today by the DGSI, General Directorate of Internal Security) had many doubts about the role of the part of the

, without ever initiating proceedings.

Jean Clémentin retired in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell.

Twenty years after his last meeting with an officer from Czechoslovakia, split since 1993 into two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The journalist, currently 98 years old, is protected from any prosecution by the statute of limitations.

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