1960s: May 1968 and The "disappearance" of Mehdi Ben Barka
After this period, which saw the longtime Gaullists quit the organisation, the SAC began to recruit more and more from underworld groups. It then became involved in all sorts of shady moves and covert actions for the Gaullist party. 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. Furthermore, Jaqueline Hémard and Ali Bourequat, "disappeared" under Hassan II, have accused the SAC of financing itself by drug trade with Morocco.
During May 1968, SAC members, disguised as ambulance crew, took demonstrators to their headquarters, rue de Solférino, where they were beaten up. They then prepared the Gaullist counter-demonstration which assured de Gaulle of the support of (parts of) the French people. 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". Continuing this "policy of order", the SAC created in 1969 the right-wing students' union Union Nationale Inter-universitaire (UNI) in 1969 to counter the "leftist subversion" in the students' movement. Until 1976, the SAC supported the UNI in daily organisation, while many UNI members were also in the SAC. After 1976, double membership of most activists still existed, but the two organisations had different leadership.
Jacques Foccart called back Pierre Debizet to the head of the SAC during May 1968. Foccart excluded Charles Pasqua in the beginning of 1969, suspecting him of trying to take control of the militia. Furthermore, Pierre Debizet decided to change the membership card, which looked too much like a police card, and requested of each member an extract of its judicial record. However, despite this cleaning-up of the organisation in 1968-69, between 1968 and 1981, SAC members have had problems with the law 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, 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)."
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 amount 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 document was attributed to the Marseillese Gérard Kappé, a lieutenant of Charles Pasqua who claimed it was a forgery.
One of the main roles of the SAC, although not well known, was the surveillance of the Gaullist party. 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. It is through this tight network covering France that Jacques Foccart was very well informed. On many times, the notes communicated to Pierre Debizet by his departmental responsibles permitted to push out of the Gaullist party elected (or not) officials of the party suspected of some illegal activities, before having the French justice take care of it.
According to Daniele Ganser (2005), in 1975, the SAC had as president Jacques Chirac, who later became prime minister several times before being elected president in 1995.
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