Informed sources allege that the security services of France’s Presidential Palace are in unprecedented disarray.

They had lost track of the President, before finding him luckily thanks to a popular magazine whose name we are too discreet to reveal. President Hollande had gone out on a spree, but returned safe and sound. Thanks to the vigilance of his bodyguard, equipped with binoculars and gifted with exceptional flair, he narrowly escaped from a vile abduction in the building where he was frolicking, an apartment block which, if we are to believe Mediapart, belongs to a branch of the Corsican mafia. It is reported by other observers that he also escaped a political abduction ordered by Al Qaeda. Naturally France, faithful to her principles in such cases, would not have paid out any ransom.

But there has been a new and tragic development in this crisis.

During the President’s sentimental adventures his nuclear briefcase went missing. This is something that follows him absolutely everywhere, as Hélène Vissière (the Washington correspondent of Le Point) pointed out on 15 May 2012 : « Every French president, when moving about, is always accompanied by an aide whose chief task is to carry the nuclear case, an attaché-case containing a portable terminal through which a nuclear strike can be triggered. » (1)

This case is large and weighs about 20kg. Was it entrusted to the President’s personal bodyguard, preceding the Presidents’ scooter? Did the bodyguard carry it on the luggage-rack of his own scooter? Could someone have taken it while he was exploring that venue where the president played at the lottery of love? Our sources are silent on this matter.

Perhaps a third person, the case-carrying aide, was shadowing the bodyguard and the President during their nocturnal escapades? Was he perched on a third scooter, or at the wheel of a street-sweeping truck? If the former, did the case vanish while he was killing time in a bar? If the latter, was it nicked from the back seat of the truck when he dozed off? On these matters too our sources are silent.

One thing is certain: the case is missing. Until it is retrieved, France will be deprived of defense for the first crisis that breaks out, no longer being able to dispatch all those megatonnes to other parts of the globe and kill thousands of people. France is plunged into insecurity.

The affair is complicated by the fact that the President himself has lost the « biscuit »: the card with the nuclear code written on it. He had one and lost it, as did Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Reagan... and Mitterrand in France. He doesn’t know what he did with it: did he lose it in his office, at home, in Valérie’s room, at Julie’s flat, or in a suit sent to the cleaners, as Mitterrand once did? Did somebody pick his pocket? But if so, where, when, how, and above all who? This is a crucial question: if the nuclear code reaches the same hands as the briefcase, France becomes not only impotent, but threatened by her own nuclear weapons. In Australia, that would be called a boomerang strike, I kid you not.

Let’s hope that at the press conference this Tuesday afternoon, the President will face at least one journalist willing to ask:

"Monsieur le Président, what happened to the nuclear case and code during your amorous romps?"

If that question is too daring, others might be possible, such as this :

"Monsieur le Président, since you love people so much and women in particular, why are you to set on possessing weapons that permit you to slay millions in a single stroke?"

An even softer version of this question was put to François Hollande on 5 June 2012 by Mgr Christophe Dufour, the Archbishop of Aix and Arles:

"Monsieur le Président, are you in favour of France participating with the others states concerned in the complete elimination of nuclear weapons under mutual and international control that is strict and effective ?" (2)

That is exactly the question that ACDN has been asking for 17 years and seeking to have put to the French people. It is the question that we asked François Hollande eight times before he became president, without receiving a reply. It is the question we would have liked a chance to put to him directly, looking him in the eyes. But a hunger-strike of 42 days was not enough to open the doors of the Elysée to us. It is true that none of the hunger-strikers answered to the names Julie or Valérie.

This President is not just a woman-chaser - something which, in view of French tradition, we could forgive "turn a blind blinker to". In political matters he is a coward, a lightweight, a liar (see his campaign promises), and an irresponsible. In short, he’s a rascal.

That is my finding, and I stand firm waiting for the President to sue me for « insult to the Head of State ». If he did so, I could raise the Prior Question of Constitutionality: "Is it acceptable under the French Constitution to claim to defend the homeland of Human Rights while preparing for crimes against humanity?"

That is the fundamental question which the "affaire Julie Gayet" ought to enable us to ask. If only there were journalists who could dare to ask it, and members of the Constitutional Council who would dare to answer it.

Jean-Marie Matagne, 14 January 2014

- 1 Article, Le Point, 2012-05-15

- 2 Letter from Archbishop Dufour to François Hollande, 2012-06-05

Two atomic suitcases!
Are you a terrorist? If that were the case, which case would you steal?

Yellow NUCLEAR Biefcase

Black NUCLEAR Briefcase