Mitterrand Leaves a Legacy of Secrets

While alive, he was a secretive leader who fascinated the French. And even though former President Francois Mitterrand was buried a week ago, he continues to captivate this nation, where startling secrets about his life and lies are laid bare almost daily.

“In the end,” a French radio commentator observed Wednesday, “Francois Mitterrand dead has created just as much controversy as Francois Mitterrand alive.”

In fact, Mitterrand’s death last week, at age 79 from prostate cancer, has loosened the lips of friends, associates, doctors and in-the-know journalists, who are concluding their years of respectful silence with a flood of disrespectful revelations.

Among the disclosures has been the large role that Mitterrand’s mistress and their daughter played in his later years.

After his second term of office ended in May, the French now know, he had lived alone in an apartment where he entertained his “second family.” Before his death, local newspapers had called that apartment his “office.”

In addition, associates have said Mitterrand decided two days before he died to stop his cancer medication and hasten his death, which occurred just hours after he completed a book of memoirs.

But the most prominent disclosure has involved Mitterrand’s medical condition.

Mitterrand was widely applauded for courageously revealing after an operation in 1992 that he had cancer. But it turns out that the president had long been living a lie.

Just months after his 1981 election, the president was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had spread to his bones, according to Claude Gubler, Mitterrand’s personal physician from 1969 until he was fired in 1994.

Mitterrand had promised during the campaign to be open about his health. But when faced with the bad news, he ordered his doctor to keep it “a state secret.”

Gubler did keep the secret, dutifully issuing rosy descriptions of the president’s health through the first seven-year term, the successful reelection campaign in 1988 and for four years of the second term, until the president’s own admission in 1992.

Still, Gubler kept silent about the preceding years.

But, dismissed by Mitterrand in 1994, Gubler began writing a book. And he broke his vow of silence this week with “The Great Secret,” which details a cunning presidential conspiracy to hide the cancer from the public to keep himself in office and ensure his reelection.

Mitterrand apparently responded well to treatment for years, showing few outward signs of illness. But Gubler contends that, by 1994, the president was in no shape to govern, a claim that is disputed by others, among them Mitterrand’s political opponents.

A chorus of doctors from the French medical establishment have criticized Gubler for breaching doctor-patient confidentiality. So far, though, no doctor has taken him to task for lying to the public about the president’s condition.

“Dr. Gubler knew many things about the president--his illness, but also other little secrets,” said Bernard Debre, a urologist who treated Mitterrand in 1994. “And if someone begins to divulge these secrets, I have to wonder why. Possibly the only reason is for Dr. Gubler to justify himself.”

Gubler, a tall man with silver hair and thick mutton chops, has been on television almost constantly since his disclosure, promoting his book and defending his decision to go public.

The doctor now contends that Mitterrand once told him that he knew it would one day be necessary to reveal the truth.

But Mitterrand’s family has sued Gubler, attempting to have his book pulled from the shelves. The book is expected to be a sellout, bringing Gubler about $80,000 in royalties.

More important than the debate over Gubler’s actions is the effect of Mitterrand’s lie. It has raised questions for a French electorate that has long adored secretive, monarchical leaders.

“The French desire for a monarchy, and the power of the media, have made our presidents into stars,” said Denis Lacorne, a Paris political analyst. “So we have the same curiosity about our presidents as we do about our stars.”

And Lacorne predicted that “we will have other surprises that are just as astonishing. It isn’t over.”

Gubler’s account is likely to cause long-term damage to Mitterrand’s reputation.

Many in France considered Mitterrand’s egalitarian brand of socialism a welcome change from the aloof, conservative leaders who preceded him, and he was hailed for creating a more “transparent” government, one open to public scrutiny.