With hindsight, one might ask whether this was not perhaps a tactical error on the part of de Gaulle; would a Salan out in the open, in Algiers and under Delouvrier's eye, have proved the lesser liability than the “Mandarin” henceforth taking to the shadows?

QUESTION: The open counterfactual asks whether an open, visible Salan under surveillance might have been a smaller risk than a radicalized exile in the shadows.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1280