Alliance Base was the cover name for a secret Western Counterterrorist Intelligence Center (CTIC) that existed between 2002 and 2009 in Paris. The existence of CTICs were first revealed by Dana Priest in a November 17, 2005 Washington Post article, while she referred to the Alliance Base in a July 2, 2005, article. The name was chosen in reference of Al Qaeda, which means "The Base" in Arabic. It was headed by a French General assigned to the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), and largely funded by the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. It hosted officers from Great Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the United States and was used for intelligence exchange and operational planning. Its existence was confirmed on 8 September 2006 by Christophe Chaboud, chief of the UCLAT ("Unité de Coordination de la Lutte contre le Terrorisme", "Fight against Terrorism Coordination Unit"), in an interview to RFI. Although intelligence exchange between intelligence agencies has become more and more widespread in the last decade, in particular following the September 11, 2001 attacks, this organisation also engaged in operations.
Read more about Alliance Base: International Cooperation Between Intelligence Agencies, Christian Ganczarski and Ahmed Medhi
Famous quotes containing the words alliance and/or base:
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Your top has sunk too low,
Your base has spread too wide,
For you to roll one stone
Down if you tried.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)