Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it had been widely accepted that French counter-espionage and its flagship, the Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DST, now known as DGSI), had escaped infiltration by the Soviet KGB’s Cold War intelligence services. Le Monde‘s dive into the thousands of pages handed over to the British in 1992 by defector Vasili Mitrokhin, former head of the KGB archives, challenges this long-held belief. Our investigation lifts the veil on the considerable damage caused by a mole nestling at the heart of a service that long considered itself immune.

The story began in 1949, in a Berlin still in ruins. In December, in East Berlin, a certain Valentina Yukum, also known as Jadwiga Wilgemovna, a KGB agent of Estonian origin and translator for the Soviet military administration in Germany, had good news for her superiors. After months of effort, she had just recruited a French policeman from the West Berlin Territorial Surveillance Brigade, one of the 20 decentralized branches of the DST. His name: Pierre Chaignot.

The man was born on August 30, 1921, in Verdun, eastern France. His father died because of an injury from the First World War, and his mother, a schoolteacher, ensured that he was recognized as a ward of the nation. In 1941, Chaignot graduated from high school in Poitiers, specializing in philosophy. He was a compliant pupil, diligent without being brilliant, and was even somewhat obsequious. He had a good command of foreign languages, especially German. His blond hair was styled in a crew cut, and round glasses framed his delicate face, marked by a slight smile. In November 1941, the regional education district appointed him dormitory master at the boys’ school in Saintes.

The honey trap

You have 89.13% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.