As dawn rose over Paris early one morning last week, a volley of rifle shots echoed through dank, grim Ivry Fort. Dead before the firing squad sank ex-Lieut. Colonel Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, 35, convicted ringleader of last summer's abortive attempt to assassinate Charles de Gaulle in the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart as he was motoring to his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.* Though De Gaulle spared two other plotters, he presumably ordered the execution of Bastien-Thiry to discourage other terrorists from further assassination efforts on behalf of the dread Secret Army Organization.
But De Gaulle's...