One dark night last September, Charles de Gaulle's black Citroen was speeding toward his country home in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises when suddenly flames erupted in the car's path. Miraculously, the plastic bomb that had been planted beside the lonely road did not explode. Shaken but unhurt, De Gaulle murmured: "Just a joke in bad taste." Last week the punch line of the joke was delivered in a drab courthouse at Troyes, 90 miles from Paris, where the S.A.O. terrorists who had plotted to assassinate France's President stood trial.
In almost any society the five...
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