Alliance Base

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.

Its existence was first revealed by a November 17, 2005, article by Dana Priest in The Washington Post, who also broke the story concerning the existence of the CIA's "black sites". In the article, both the CIA and the French government declined to comment on Alliance Base, while all intelligence officers requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the project, in particular relating to its political and judicial dimensions. "No country wanted to be perceived as taking direction from the CIA," wrote Dana Priest, while France was the only European state willing to engage in more than simple information exchange. "To play down the U.S. role, the center's working language is French," told an anonymous source to the Washington Post investigative reporter. "The base selects its cases carefully, chooses a lead country for each operation, and that country's service runs the operation." Furthermore, this cooperation permits "German case officers to read information from their own country's law enforcement authorities", which is prohibited by German law.

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