Murder on Boulevard Emile-Augier

An American diplomat is another victim of terrorism

The husky U.S. Army officer dressed in civilian clothes headed down the staid Boulevard Emile-Augier on his way to work at the U.S. embassy in Paris. Quietly, a man with a dark complexion and frizzy hair began to follow him. Before Lieut. Colonel Charles Robert Ray, 43, could reach his metallic blue Chevrolet with diplomatic plates, he was killed by a single shot that struck him in the back of the neck. The killer, who was glimpsed by several witnesses, ran down the quiet avenue and disappeared into a crowd of commuters.

Except for the outcome, the attack on Ray resembled an assault last November on another U.S. diplomat in Paris, Embassy Charge d'Affaires Christian Chapman. But Chapman had been lucky enough to spot his Arab assailant in time and had escaped a fusillade of shots by ducking behind his car. Security for U.S. embassy personnel had been strengthened after the attempt on Chapman's life. But Ray, who was one of four assistant military attaches, did not have enough rank in the 400-member embassy hierarchy to rate the special protection of a French police car that today follows top officials, or the use of an embassy car and driver.

Who killed Ray? Not the assailant who shot at Chapman, apparently, since the descriptions of the two men do not match. In Beirut, a previously unknown group calling itself the Lebanese Army Revolutionary Faction claimed credit for "executing" the officer because of American "crimes" against the Lebanese people. Western intelligence officials did not know whether the group was an offshoot of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a hit squad from Libya or some other Arab country, or indeed whether the report was simply a hoax.

The Ray case illustrated once again the growing problem of defending U.S. diplomats abroad against the threat of abduction or assassination. Some two dozen U.S. embassies abroad have been specially fortified against mob assault, and stepped-up security measures are being used to protect officials living in diplomatic compounds. But U.S. officials admit that it is next to impossible to give 24-hour security to people living in private apartments, such as Ray, Chapman and Brigadier General James Dozier, who was abducted by the Red Brigades in Italy on Dec. 17. Officials in Rome said last week that they saw no link between the Ray murder and the Dozier kidnaping.

The continuing search produced no solid clues to Dozier's whereabouts, but did lead to the discovery of some fascinating details about a Red Brigades plan to attack the congress of the Christian Democratic Party on Jan. 22. Police learned that the Brigades had scheduled the raid for 1:30 p.m., the hour when live television coverage had been due to begin. While about 15 terrorists would throw grenades and spray the delegates with machine-gun fire, according to the plan, one of their comrades was supposed to dash before a TV camera to read a political manifesto to a horrified nation. Police arrested the terrorists who were to launch the attack, and the congress met as planned.

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