In his memoirs de Gaulle declares that, “In saying this I was giving my audience an inkling of my intention to recognise Algeria’s right to self-determination,” and he adds that before leaving Challe that day he informed him in private “precisely what I was soon to announce publicly. Challe replied: ‘It’s feasible!’ and assured me that I could count on him whatever happened.” Challe, however, insists that he was left no wiser than any of the hundred other officers present at the earlier briefing, and never once in his whole tournée des popotes did de Gaulle actually mention the key-word, “self-determination”, which was to create such a furore a few weeks later.

XREF: Contradictory testimony in memoirs — connects to the broader reliability question of self-serving memoirs in historical reconstruction, akin to other contested event narratives.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1039