Based on personal interviews as well as writings of a sample of 43 former student leaders and members of the Union Générale des Etudiants Musulmans Algériens (UGEMA, 1955-1963), this paper will trace the brief history of the Algerian Revolution’s only autonomous NGO and the consequent patterns of cooperation and competition over the years of its leadership. The sample represents a broad political spectrum of Algeria’s recently retired civilian elite. It is biased toward students who achieved high office in subsequent years. Elected leadership positions in UGEMA seem nevertheless to have anticipated subsequent promotions and co-optation by the Boumedienne (but not the Ben Bella) regime. This study of career patterns shows a UGEMA elite broadly divided into five overlapping categories, the captains and cadres of industry, diplomats, educators, civil servants, and private sector professionals. Led by Belaid Abdesselam, the captains of industry flourished between 1965 and 1978 but were subsequently marginalized while still in their forties, victims of Algeria’s campaign of “deboumediennization” following the president’s death. The educators tended to survive through the Chadli era (1979-1992), whereas some of the diplomats also retired early from public life. Finally in the early 1990s some of UGEMA’s captains of industry and diplomats returned to high positions in the state’s formal hierarchy. But unwilling or unable in the course of their careers to act in concert, they never acquired real authority. Even taking into account the constraints on an alien Francophone elite in a violent popular revolution, there were also more immediate causes. UGEMA was effectively “suicided” in 1961, the summer before external military forces outgunned those of Algeria’s Provisional Government and seized power. Neither outcome was inevitable but these events set postcolonial Algeria on the path of military dictatorship. For better or worse, UGEMA’s potential civilian leadership remained hostage to competing military factions and seriously divided, its captains of industry opposed to Arabizing educators. Shutting down its only autonomous intermediary left independent Algeria with a weak, politically impoverished state.