Letter from Paris: The real history of France's Fifth Republic, established in 1958, has been kept secret, say the authors of Histoire Secrète de la Ve République launched yesterday, writes Lara Marlowe
The secrecy surrounding military and intelligence activities, the abuse of power, financial and sexual scandals, has been all but impermeable because of the monarchical powers of the presidency, and the failure of the media to act as a counter-balance, say seven investigative journalists who wrote the 752-page catalogue of scandal.
Much of the book is devoted to the misdeeds of French intelligence agencies - the RG, DST, SDECE and DGSE, which have over the past century indulged in kidnapping, murder, bombing and all manner of manipulation.
In the early days of Charles de Gaulle's presidency, murky methods were used to fight Algerian nationalists and the extreme right-wing OAS. That period established a legacy for his successors. "Inadmissible practices were institutionalised when Charles de Gaulle was in power, persisted under Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, did not disappear when Francois Mitterrand arrived for 14 years, and continued under Jacques Chirac," Roger Faligot and Jean Guisnel, the editors and co-authors of the book write in their preface.
"The Fifth Republic is obviously a monarchy," says Guisnel, who covers the French military and intelligence services for Le Point, a leading weekly magazine. "And a monarch needs a sceptre. That sceptre is the atomic bomb." Some of the book's most fascinating revelations concern the French nuclear programme, and French largesse in selling nuclear prowess to Israel and Iraq.
France began nuclear co-operation with Israel at the time of the disastrous Suez intervention in 1956. Officially, France was helping the Hebrew state build a civilian power programme. But a secret annex to the accord provided for the construction of a plutonium-producing reactor at Dimona, in the Negev desert - passed off as a plant to desalinate sea water. Officially, de Gaulle opposed support for Israel's military nuclear programme, but in practice he made the president of the France-Israel association minister for atomic affairs, and co-operation continued until 1960, by which time most of the French equipment had been delivered. Israel is believed to have exploded its first nuclear device in 1966 or 1967.
Israel also looked to France for a delivery system. A contract for Mirage IV jets fell through, but de Gaulle referred the Israelis to the arms manufacturer Marcel Dassault, who provided them with solid fuel missiles. The missile programme continued in secret after de Gaulle declared an embargo over the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
De Gaulle believed France could not remain a great power if she failed to compete in the arms race. Britain had detonated a fusion, hydrogen bomb in 1957, China in 1967. Try as they might, French engineers could not replicate the feat, and de Gaulle grew impatient.
Secret History explains how General André Thoulouze, the French military attaché in London, repeatedly met William Cook, one of the fathers of the British H bomb, at cocktail parties. Cook explained to Thoulouze how Britain had mastered fusion technology.
The French remain convinced that Harold Wilson's Labour government sent the British scientist to them in the hope that de Gaulle would withdraw opposition to British EU membership, Guisnel says. But five months after France detonated an H-bomb in August 1968, de Gaulle again vetoed British accession.
A two-page chart in the centre of Secret History provides details of 47 assassinations in France between 1971 and 1981. Much of the killing was middle eastern - the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad murdering Palestinians; Palestinians murdering each other; Armenians murdering Turks . . .
Faligot accuses French intelligence agencies of turning a blind eye or in some cases collaborating in the wave of assassinations. For example, Mario Bachand, a militant with the Québecois independence movement FLQ, was the first murder victim in 1971. "He was killed by FLQ dissidents working for Canadian intelligence, with the complicity of the French, who told them where to find him," says Faligot.
Faligot says successive purges and restructuring - and the end of the Cold War - have improved French intelligence agencies: "Today they try to make peace in Africa, or get [the French journalist] Florence Aubenas out of captivity. There's hope." But they are still not accountable to French voters.
The authors included a chapter entitled "Dragueurs, baiseurs, coureurs: les 'chauds lapins' de la République" which might charitably be translated as "Ladies' Men". Until recently, they note, the private lives of French politicians were taboo.
But journalists have felt liberated by politicians' attempts to portray themselves as happy family men.
Presidents Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterrand were both betrayed by their drivers, who revealed details of infidelities in tell-it-all books. On the night that Princess Diana died in 1997, the interior minister tried in vain to reach Mr Chirac. The first lady, Bernadette Chirac, used the incident to have her husband's driver and accomplice sacked. "In France, secrecy is one of the attributes of power," says Francois Malye, who wrote the chapter on sexual scandal. "Citizens are treated like children. It's a republican monarchy and it hasn't changed much."