To be fair on the French Watergate.

I don't know if many people will buy it, but when French opposition party leader expresses shock at the political scandal:

The intelligence services were used, I would say manipulated, for ends that have little to do with their mission.

Imagine that?! As if it never happened before. I may be a liberal at heart but to be fair, it must be said that it is a Socialist president (F. Mitterrand) who used an "anti-terror cell", under illegal presidential orders, to obtain wiretaps on journalists, politicians and other personalities who may have been have known about his affair and illegitimate daughter. Manipulating intelligence services for a personal agenda is nothing new. And it is not strictly French either.