Vidal-Naquet, himself a declared opponent of the established government, admits freely that “no country involved in similar horrors has ever permitted publication of such complete documentation on the subject”. The vehemence of the public outcry, however, was also to have its repercussions in other directions. Army generals like General Allard, corps commander for the Algiers area and Massu’s immediate superior, themselves immaculate of any reproach of association with torture, protested bitterly to the Ministry of Defence against the anti-army attacks in the Press. Their “incessant repetition”, he wrote, “places at risk the morale of the army”. All through the army in Algeria, and, of course, particularly among the paras who saw themselves as the principal target of such attacks, there was an increasingly savage feeling that they had been called in to carry out the dirty work of the civil authorities and were now being carted for it. Once again the plaint, “On nous a fait le coup”, began to be heard in the messes. It was yet another brick in the wall of resentment and contempt rapidly rising against the politicians of the Fourth Republic.

XREF: Connects to the broader theme of civil-military friction and how exposing institutional wrongdoing widens the gap between enforcers and the public, like later leaks exposing abuses. QUESTION: How did France's willingness to publish torture documentation compare with other colonial powers' secrecy, and did that decisively shape the army's alienation?

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 735