Man in the Middle

Ex-Army Colonel Antoine Argoud, 49, military mastermind of the terrorist Secret Army Organization, last week was sentenced to life imprisonment. Thin and pale, Argoud scarcely looked the part of a conspirator who might plot the death of De Gaulle; yet his trial put a strain on the fragile new friendship between France and West Germany.

Argoud's terrorist career came to an abrupt end in February 1963 when he was kidnaped in a Munich hotel and deposited in a bloody bundle in the back of an abandoned panel truck in Paris. The French blandly disclaimed any participation in the snatch, and France's Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville asserted that Bonn had never made formal application for Argoud's extradition.

Even though he was technically correct about the absence of a formal note, Couve de Murville's testimony enraged the West German Foreign Ministry because the French Ambassador to Bonn had been handed an aide-memoire* requesting Argoud's return two weeks before the trial began.

* A formal note is signed, an aide-memoire is unsigned.

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