The French magazine L’Express reported on Thursday that its director in the 1970s, Philippe Grumbach, was a spy for the Soviet special services, AFP reports. “A brilliant journalist. But also a traitor to France, who worked for the KGB for thirty-five years,” the magazine caption reads.

“His closest circle confirmed this secret relationship to L’Express. A close friend of Mitterrand and Giscard, he was, unbeknownst to anyone, one of the greatest Soviet spies of the Fifth Republic,” said editor Etienne Girard, who, together with Anne Marion, wrote a lengthy investigation with information from the KGB archives.

Grumbach, who went by the stage name “Brock,” died in 2003 at the age of 79.

“It was impossible not to reveal this shadowy sphere in a magazine that, from Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber to Jean-Francois Revel, from François Mauriac to Raymond Aron, has always been engaged in the struggle against totalitarian utopias and destructive communism,” write Etienne Girard and Eric Scholl in a magazine editorial.

Who was Philip Grumbach

Philip Grumbach was editor-in-chief from 1956 to 1960 before becoming editorial director in 1974.

He was also editorial secretary of Agence France-Presse (formerly AFP) from 1946 to 1948. After a brief stint at the daily newspaper Libération, he joined the daily newspaper L’Express in 1954 as an editor.

In 1965, he founded Pariscope (a guide to Parisian cultural activities), then ran Crapouillot (a satirical newspaper).

He then returned to L’Express, where he was director of the political department from 1971, then editor-in-chief and editorial director.

A member of the Audiovisual Council (1977-1981), an advisory body, he then became a film producer before returning to the media in 1984, working for the daily newspaper Le Figaro.

Was he a spy “for ideology” and then “for the taste of money”?”, asks the current editor-in-chief of L’Express.

“The name of Philip Grumbach, on the basis of dishonor, joins the names of other Eastern European agents who infiltrated the highest levels of government or the media and were exposed,” he declares, emphasizing, in particular, that “since 1996, L’Express has shown how the former minister Charles Gernu worked for the KGB and its satellites.”

“This Soviet infiltration of power during the Cold War should be a constant reminder of our duty to be vigilant,” says Eric Scholl, referring to recent attempts at foreign intervention in France.