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The violent police repression of the Algerian demonstration of October 17, 1961 has given rise to considerable political and historical debate. Through the use of previously undisclosed police and intelligence reports, as well as a large volume of captured FLN internal documents available in the Archives of the Paris Préfecture de Police, a new insight is provided into the clandestine structure of the FLN Fédération de France in 1961 and how and why the demonstration was planned. The paper discloses the existence of a previously unknown, centralized Federal structure based in Paris and how this body liaised, via a network of porteurs de valises (porters), with the Federal Committee in Germany. It is argued that the demonstration was organized against the wishes of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Algeria, as part of a gambit for pre-independence power. The Fédération leadership, disappointed by previous lack of support from the French left, did not seek PCF (French Communist Party) and wider left participation in the demonstrations and this decision left the Algerian demonstrators more exposed to police repression.