France: Bombs v. the Press

France-Soir, the largest evening newspaper in Paris (circ. 1,380,000), last week was the latest victim of the Secret Army Organization. Under tough, brilliant Editor Pierre Lazareff, 54, France-Soir has doggedly called for strong government action against the S.A.O., whose double aim of overthrowing De Gaulle and keeping Algeria French has resulted in hundreds of bomb explosions.

In August a plastic bomb was detonated at Lazareff’s country home in St. Cloud. Other bombs have wrecked the apartments of three France-Soir reporters. Last week the S.A.O. struck again in the huge rabbit warren of a building on Paris’ Rue Réaumur, where France-Soir is edited and printed. At 3 o’clock each working afternoon, some 20 news editors usually leave a conference and walk down a narrow staircase to their offices. On Wednesday, the conference was fortunately a little late in ending. At five minutes after 3, while the editors were still talking, a plastic bomb exploded on the stairway, destroying three rooms and starting a fire. Instead of killing any descending editors, the explosion succeeded only in wounding a 50-year-old woman clerk.

What most unnerved the editors was the realization that those who placed the bomb evidently knew their way around the building. Said a France-Soir official: “They almost certainly benefited from the complicity of one of the 2,200 people working here.” He added: “What is S.A.O. really concerned with? It wants to prevent us from speaking the truth, from drawing attention to its activities as blackmailers and murderers. The whole thing recalls the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.”