Counterterrorism Center

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Counterterrorism Center was established in 1986, and is a division of the CIA's National Clandestine Service. It is not to be confused with the National Counterterrorism Center, which is a separate entity. The current director, who has remained anonymous for security reasons, uses the cover identity "Roger" and has led the CTC since 2006.

The Counterterrorist Center was established in February 1986, under the CIA's Directorate of Operations, with Duane Clarridge as its first director. It was an "interdisciplinary" body; many of its personnel, and most its chiefs, were drawn from the CIA's Directorate of Operations, but others came from the Directorates of Intelligence and Science and Technology. Observing that terrorism knew no geographical boundaries, the CTC was designed to cut across the traditional region-based bodies of the CIA.

Discredited by the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986, the original aims later gave way to a more analytical role. This did not prevent the Center contemplating an "Eagle" drone aircraft project in 1986-7, which could have been used to spy on hostage-takers in Lebanon. The idea was unrealistic in terms of the technical abilities of the time, but can be compared to the Predator drone eventually inaugurated in 2000.

Early members of the CTC included Vincent Cannistraro, Chief of Operations and Analysis from 1988–91, Robert Baer, from the Directorate of Operations, and Stanley Bedlington, a "senior analyst".

In the early 1990s, the CTC had no more than a hundred personnel, divided into about a dozen branches. Besides branches specializing in Lebanon's Hezbollah, and secular groups like the Japanese Red Army, another concentrated on Sunni Islamist radicalism, primarily in Algeria.

In January 1996, the CTC opened the Bin Laden Issue Station to track Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, with Michael Scheuer, formerly in charge of the CTC's Islamic Extremist Branch, as its first head. The reasons were similar to those for the establishment of the CTC itself. The new Station, unlike the traditional country-based ones, was not geographically limited, and drew its personnel from across the U.S. intelligence community.

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