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Home Front: WoT

Help From France Key In Covert Operations

2005-07-04

French intelligence has a looong working knowledge of the arab world, and has been working on sunni islamists since the 90's (not to mention the 1986 iranian-based bombings).
Paris's 'Alliance Base' Targets Terrorists
By Dana Priest

When Christian Ganczarski, a German convert to Islam, boarded an Air France flight from Riyadh on June 3, 2003, he knew only that the Saudi government had put him under house arrest for an expired pilgrim visa and had given his family one-way tickets back to Germany, with a change of planes in Paris. He had no idea that he was being secretly escorted by an undercover officer sitting behind him, or that a senior CIA officer was waiting at the end of the jetway as French authorities gently separated him from his family and swept Ganczarski into French custody, where he remains today on suspicion of associating with terrorists.

Ganczarski is among the most important European al Qaeda figures alive, according to U.S. and French law enforcement and intelligence officials. The operation that ensnared him was put together at a top secret center in Paris, code-named Alliance Base, that was set up by the CIA and French intelligence services in 2002, according to U.S. and European intelligence sources. Its existence has not been previously disclosed.

Why disclose it now, then?

Funded largely by the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, Alliance Base analyzes the transnational movement of terrorist suspects and develops operations to catch or spy on them. Alliance Base demonstrates how most counterterrorism operations actually take place: through secretive alliances between the CIA and other countries' intelligence services.

There are routine alliances between European and Anglosphere countries that don't involve the CIA, too...

Posted by:anonymous5089

#4 WaPo Francophile Alert
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday

"John E. McLaughlin, the former acting CIA director who retired recently after a 32-year career, described the relationship between the CIA and its French counterparts as "one of the best in the world. What they are willing to contribute is extraordinarily valuable."
The rarely discussed Langley-Paris connection also belies the public portrayal of acrimony between the two countries that erupted over the invasion of Iraq. Within the Bush administration, the discord was amplified by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has claimed the lead role in the administration's "global war on terrorism" and has sought to give the military more of a part in it.

But even as Rumsfeld was criticizing France in early 2003 for not doing its share in fighting terrorism, his U.S. Special Operations Command was finalizing a secret arrangement to put 200 French special forces under U.S. command in Afghanistan. Beginning in July 2003, its commanders have worked side by side there with U.S. commanders and CIA and National Security Agency representatives."

Posted by: Red Dog 2005-07-04 22:23

#3 Indeed I hold with make scratch for all, I will have my 25 percentum tho.

Peace Be Upon Me.

Posted by: Allah 2005-07-04 15:00

#2 Carl in N.H. The CIA uses a technique that is universal to those a-holes, they pay them. That is one thing anyone can be turned with, money. Jihad is fine, but surely allah wouldn't begrudge a man from scoring a little scratch.

Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-07-04 12:33

#1 The CIA arranged for an asset to suggest that Mehdi stop in Paris on his way to Reunion to surveil targets.

Hmm, one of the few public pieces of evidence that the CIA has something useful to offer to the WoT.

A background concern for me is how much the French are learning about our operations that will be useful for their spy activities against the U.S.

Posted by: Carl in N.H. 2005-07-04 10:01

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