The SAC was officially created as a 1901 law association on 4 January 1960, in the proclaimed aim of providing unconditional support to de Gaulle's policy.
It was then officially directed by Pierre Debizet, a former Resistant, but its real leader was Jacques Foccart, in charge of the African policy of France for several decades.
Etienne Léandri, a friend of Charles Pasqua, was thus a former Collaborationist, reconverted in illegal drug trade and protected by the Central Intelligence Agency for his anti-communist activities[citation needed].
General de Gaulle then sent the SAC against the Organisation armée secrète' (OAS) terrorist group which launched a campaign of bombings and assassinations to try to block the implementation of the March 1962 Evian agreements on a cease-fire with the National Liberation Front (FLN).
It has been suspected of participating in 1965 in the "disappearance" in Paris of Mehdi Ben Barka, leader of the Moroccan opposition to King Hassan II and of the Tricontinental Conference.
After the June 1968 legislative election, the SAC expelled from the Youth Centres ("Maisons des Jeunes") various movements and associations, including the Maoists and the so-called "Katangais".
Despite this cleaning-up of the organisation in 1968-69, SAC members have had problems with the law between 1968 and 1981 for various reasons, including: "assault (coups et blessures volontaires), illegal possession of fire-arms, fraud, aggravated assault, money counterfeiting, pimping, racketeering, arson, blackmail, illegal drug trade, holdup, abuse of trust (abus de confiance - i.e. corruption), bombings like during the Besançon courthouse attack, robberies and handling, being a member of a criminal organisation (association de malfaiteurs), degradation of vehicles, use of stolen cheques, outrage to public morality (outrage aux bonnes mœurs).
"[1] Some SAC members have upheld a theory of the "two SAC" to defend themselves, alleging the coexistence, under the same appellation, of on one hand a group of staunchly right-wing Gaullist activists, often recruiting honourable persons (a magistrate, a certain number of workers' activists often linked to "yellow trade-unions" such as the CGSI, the CFT or the CSL), and on the other hand individuals located at the cross-roads between intelligence activities, organized crime and far right movements, used for the most shady actions.
In the 1970s, journalist Patrice Chairoff published in Libération left-wing newspaper, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and others, a plan of the SAC envisioning the internment of leftists in stadiums.
The departmental responsible of the SAC was a de jure member of the departmental committee of the Union des Démocrates pour la République (UNR), then of the Union des Démocrates pour la République (UDR) and Rally for the Republic (RPR) (successive incarnations of the Gaullist party), even though he was often not an adherent of the Gaullist party.
After the 1982 dissolving of the SAC, Charles Pasqua, future Interior Minister, created the "Solidarité et défense des libertés" organisation ("Solidarity and Defense of Freedoms"), which gathered RPR and Union for French Democracy (UDF) members, former SAC activists and even some members of far-right movements such as the "Parti des forces nouvelles" (PFN, Party of the New Forces).