[2] The organisers of the putsch were opposed to the secret negotiations that French Prime Minister Michel Debré's government had started with the anti-colonialist National Liberation Front (FLN).

[3] The following day, President De Gaulle made a famous speech on television, dressed in his World War II uniform (he was 70 years old and long since a civilian head of state) ordering the French people and military to help him.

On 22 April 1961, the retired generals Maurice Challe, André Zeller and Raoul Salan, helped by colonels Antoine Argoud, Jean Gardes and civilians Joseph Ortiz and Jean-Jacques Susini (who would later form the pro-colonialist OAS terrorist group), took control of the territory's capital, Algiers.

[10]During the night the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1e REP), composed of 1,000 men and headed by Hélie de Saint Marc, took control of all of Algiers' strategic points in three hours.

The head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, and the director of the Sûreté nationale, formed a crisis cell in a room of the Comédie-Française, where Charles de Gaulle was attending a presentation of Racine's Britannicus.

During the entracte the president was informed of the coup by Jacques Foccart, his general secretary of African and Malagasy Affairs and closest collaborator, in charge of covert operations.

The three rebel generals—Challe, Jouhaud, and Zeller—had the government's general delegate, Jean Morin, arrested as well as the National Minister of Public Transport, Robert Buron, who was visiting, and several civil and military authorities.

[11] He then proclaimed a state of emergency in Algeria, while left-wing parties, the trade union CGT and the [12][dubious – discuss] NGO Ligue des droits de l'homme (LDH, Human Rights League) called to demonstrate against the military's coup d'état.

The putsch met with widespread opposition, largely in the form of civil resistance,[14] including a one-hour general strike called by the trade unions the day after de Gaulle's broadcast.

[19] The only known fatality was French Army Sergeant Pierre Brillant, who was killed by the parachutists while defending the radio transmitter at Ouled Fayet, Algiers.

Salan and others later founded the OAS, a terrorist paramilitary organization that attempted to stop the ongoing process of the April 1962 Independence Evian Agreements for the Algerian territories of France.

Salan, Jouhaud and six other generals (Pierre Bigot, Jacques Faure, Marie-Michel Gouraud, Gustave Mentré, Jean-Louis Nicot and André Petit) benefitted from this law.

Suggestions began to appear in French media that the perpetrators might have the backing of reactionary elements in US President John F. Kennedy's administration, particularly the CIA.

A day after the rebelling generals completed the takeover of Algeria, Italian newspaper Il Paese first editorialized that "It's not by chance that some people in Paris are accusing the American secret service headed by Allen Dulles of having participated in the plot of the four ‘ultra’ generals.” The next day in Russia Pravda stated that the mutiny was encouraged by NATO, the Pentagon and the CIA.

[23] French officials seemed to want to put out the story that "the generals plot was backed by strongly anti-communist elements in the United States Government and military services.

"[24] Within days Le Monde ran a front-page editorial that the CIA involvement was rogue and not politically approved: “It now seems established that some American agents more or less encouraged [Maurice] Challe.... President Kennedy, of course knew nothing of all this".

"[25] During a June 1961 hearing before a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary in the United States Senate, Richard Helms testified that the article published by il Paese was likely part of a Soviet propaganda campaign designed to divide the U.S. and French governments.