Rumors and Lives

In the U.S. it’s election day, so I’m going to write about . . . France. But first, a word about the presidential campaign. Are you as sick of it as I am? I mean really, how much blood and gore can we stand? It reminds me (figuratively; I’m not that old) of the John L. Sullivan/Jake Kilrain heavyweight championship. It was the last big fight under bare-knuckles rules, in 1889. Went seventy-five rounds of a scheduled eighty. Sullivan won, thus becoming the first to earn the title "World Heavyweight Champion." I’ll just bet there were a lot of spectators that day who got more than they bargained for. Can't you inagine the whispers? Throw in the towel! Stay down! Do us all a favor and don’t answer the damn bell! That’s how I felt halfway through the third Obama/McCain debate. I kept hoping one of them would say, "Enough already. Let’s all go get a beer."

Anyway, France. The character who caught my attention this week is Yves Bertrand. Bertrand was formerly the head of Renseignements Generaux, the French domestic spy agency. The French tolerate a lot more domestic spying than most countries. In fact, they have a law on the books that allows the government to spy on anyone who has a "significant political, economic, social or religious role" in the country.

Bertrand used his spying powers with gusto. He had his people keep tabs on rock stars, politicians, cardinals, and business magnates. (I wonder if France has the equivalent of Joe the Plumber? If so, there’s a file on that guy, too.) Because Bertrand had so many agents looking into so many things, he heard a lot of gossip, much of it plain unvarnished tripe. He wrote it all down, longhand, in twenty-three spiral-bound notebooks. There’s the rub.

Bertrand’s notebooks were seized by government agents investigating the Clearstream affair, a complicated French political and business scandal. Someone with the police or magistrate’s office leaked the contents, and the juicer bits were published in Le Point, a popular magazine. There was the usual sexual tittle-tattle (in great detail), vague allusions to bribery and extortion, drug deals, and political favors owed and paid off. One entry said Jacques Chirac, while president, "had a facelift in Canada." Other entries were more personal to Bertrand, like "go to dentist," and "buy more cat litter."

There are a lot of problems here, but perhaps the biggest is that most of this "information" was just rumor. Even Bertrand claims eighty percent of it is probably false. Why on earth did he keep track of it all then? He says it was his job: he would have looked like an idiot if his bosses in the government heard about gossip before he did.

Now the lawsuits are flying, with the most prominent a libel suit filed by current president Nicolas Sarkozy against Bertrand (but, interestingly, not against Le Point). It all leads to a few intriguing questions. What should public officials do about gossip? Ignore it—at their peril? Follow up and turn gossip into fact? Or, as Bertrand did, just jot it down for future reference? And what "zone of privacy" can the big-wigs of society expect in our time of instant news? Should domestic life be off limits? Or the narrower category of sexual activities? What about their children: should they be subject to the public spotlight?

Intriguing questions, yes, but I’m more interested in Bertrand, the man. Bertrand left his job with RG in 2004. If he was no longer in government service, why didn’t he just destroy the notebooks? Were they even "his" to keep, or should they have been left behind as background information for his successor?

Bertrand lives alone with his three cats. That sounds like a lonely and dull existence, after being a spy. I can imagine him curled up by the fire with his kitties, reading back over his notebooks, nodding and chuckling. That has all the creepiness of J. Edgar Hoover, and the makings of a fine first chapter for a thriller.