The phantom of the Elysée Palace
FORMER French president François Mitterrand was far from being a run of the mill politician. Author of many books and a Resistance fighter during the German occupation, he remains a great leader, a true intellectual and a hero in the eyes of his admirers.
At the same time his critics accuse him of playing an ambiguous role during the war when Gen Charles de Gaulle was trying to rid France of Marshall Petain, the head of the pro-Hitler regime based in Vichy. Mitterrand and De Gaulle never had an easy relationship even after the liberation of France.
When Mitterrand assumed office in May 1981, he appointed as his personal adviser a mysterious man largely unknown to the French public. François de Grossouvre, an aristocrat by birth, was Mitterrand’s friend since the Resistance days; now his missions as the éminence grise of the Elysée Palace and his ceaseless travels to foreign countries, mainly to Gabon, Morocco, Lebanon and yes, to Pakistan, would remain in the top secret category at the service of the longest ruling of all French presidentsGrossouvre took care of what certainly cannot be categorised as a state secret, but was an essential part of Mitterrand’s private life: his daughter Mazarine born out of wedlock and moving toward adulthood. Often, after work, the two men were in the habit of leaving the Elysée Palace and secretly driving in Grossouvre’s car to an apartment in Quai Branly in Paris where Mazarine lived with her mother.
Although Mazarine’s existence was public knowledge soon afterwards, mystery still surrounds the relationship between the two men and successive books, television programmes, and shortly a movie, still draw attention almost two decades after the end of Mitterrand’s presidency in 1995.
On April 7, 1994, late in the evening, François de Grossouvre was found dead in his office in the Elysée Palace. He had a bullet in his brain and a Magnum 357 lying next to his body on the blood-soaked floor. The verdict following an official investigation was ‘death by suicide’.
But there are many who reject this version and the controversy has taken a new life following the publication of a book “The last death of Mitterrand” by Raphaelle Bacqué, a journalist working for the daily Le Monde, plus a number of television reports on the subject.
The most determined contesters of the suicide thesis are the son, the daughter and the grandson of François de Grossouvre himself. Interviewed by Le Figaro magazine following a TV documentary shown on February 11 by the Fr3 network, they say the final few months of Mitterrand’s relationship with his advisor were cold and distant.The President had deprived Grossouvre of all the State missions, rendering him useless, bitter and dejected.
Wasn’t that the very reason that led to his suicide?
Patrick de Grossouvre, the son, says he would have been much satisfied with that explanation had there not been some other rather troubling details. If his father, a right-handed man, had pulled the trigger, why was his left shoulder found dislocated? Then, the autopsy showed no trace of gunpowder around the wound, a sure sign that the bullet was fired from a distance.
But why should anyone try to murder the President’s top advisor and choose for the purpose his office within the Elysée Palace, with all the tough security measures that surround it?
Nathalie, Grossouvre’s daughter, says she has no answer to that question. All she knows is that her father was at the time busy writing his memoires. There were countless handwritten, typed as well as computer-printed pages that he used to keep in a safety drawer in his office. They were never found after his death.
Nathalie also speaks of death threats during her father’s lifetime; slips of paper in the letter box showing a coffin and messages saying “we never miss our target”.
François, who shares the first name with his grandfather, says he was 14 at the time but remembers well a man at their apartment door claiming he was a technician who had come to fix a fault with their telephone connection. “When my mother insisted on seeing his identity papers, he said he was going to get them from his car parked downstairs in the street. He never came back, leaving his toolbox behind”, recalls François.
The family told Le Figaro magazine Mitterrand’s presence at Grossouvre’s burial ceremony turned out to be a real torture for them. They say they knew the President was there to show to the media he had all the respect and affection for his late advisor, but this was not true. They never addressed a word to him.
François Mitterrand died on the 8th of January 1996, only a few months after leaving the office of the President of France.
But the phantom of François de Grossouvre still haunts the Elysée Palace today!
The writer is a journalist based in Paris.