Quoting a file from the StB, the Czechoslovak secret services, exhumed by the Czech historian Jan Koura, vice-rector at Charles University in Prague, the weekly reports that Jean Clémentin, one of the great feathers of the "Duck", spied on behalf of this Eastern bloc satellite.

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

"We are obviously not aware, we are flabbergasted," Nicolas Brimo, current director of Le Canard Enchaîné, told AFP, adding that "if there is anything more to add, we will do it in our newspaper. ".

Between 1957 and 1969, "Pipa" (his code name) "delivered 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 + Le Canard enchaîné + articles designed by the StB", affirms the investigation.

"He was even sent to London and Bonn (then the capital of West Germany, editor's note) by the secret service in order to collect information".

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

Mr. 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 colonial army. French.

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.

The journalist admits his attraction to 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 the Obs, which also evokes "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 framework of the Canard, without ever initiating proceedings.

Mr. Clémentin will retire in 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

That is 20 years after his last meeting with an officer from Czechoslovakia, now called the Czech Republic, a member of the European Union.

© 2022 AFP