On March 7, 1956, the trial of the leaks case began.
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On July 8, 1954, Pierre Mendès-France, PMF for close friends, has been President of the Council for barely a month.
He is in Geneva, in the midst of peace negotiations between France and the Viêt Minh, who have been fighting each other for 8 years in what is called the Indochina War.
He learns from Christian Fouchet, Minister of Moroccan and Tunisian Affairs, that leaks have taken place. The French Communist Party has the report of a meeting held on June 28 by the Higher Committee for National Defense.
It is serious, very serious. This would mean that national defense strategies would ultimately be communicated to the USSR, an ally of the Viêt Minh.
François Mitterrand, first suspect in the case of the leaks.
The one who revealed the leak is called Jean Dides. He’s a commissar in charge of monitoring the Communist Party and he has a suspect. He accuses François Mitterrand, then Minister of the Interior, of being the mole.
PMF asks that we investigate Mitterrand, without even informing his minister of the accusations made to him.
Quickly, Mitterrand is exonerated. There are leaks that took place during the previous government, when he was not part of it.
But the rumor persists and, on December 3, the deputies attacked him directly. Their goal is to weaken politically, and Mitterrand, and PMF, by accusing them of having betrayed France for the benefit of the Viêt Minh and the USSR.
This also allows PMF to be discredited, in the midst of negotiations with the Americans concerning the rearmament of Germany.
The truth finally revealed.
Those responsible are finally unmasked. They are René Turpin, collaborator of Jean Mons, permanent secretary general of national defense, and Roger Labrusse, head of the civil protection service.
The two men, acting out of a pacifist ideal according to them, forwarded the documents to journalist André Baranès, close to the Communists. It was he who warned Jean Dides.
The trial of René Turpin, Roger Labrusse and André Baranès began on March 7, 1956. The first two men were sentenced to 6 and 4 years in prison respectively. Baranes, him, is acquitted.
François Mitterrand’s entourage has long claimed that the latter had held a stubborn grudge against PMF.
He allegedly accused him of having launched an investigation concerning him without warning him. But the one who was President of the Republic declared in 1995: “He was doing his job. I never considered him disloyal to me.”
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