U.S-French Alliance Targets Terror Groups

Washington Post ^ | July 2, 2005 | Dana Priest

[mdittmar]

PARIS -- 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, codenamed 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.

[mdittmar]

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success.

[bill1952]

U.S-French Alliance

LOL! Only in the WAPO would you see those words in the same sentence.

[Sonar5]

Bill,

Nice Image there, very well done.

Regarding this thug, I hope he rots in Jail the rest of his life.

Regards,
Joe

[river rat]

What possible positive benefit from publicly disclosing this incident or orgainzation?

We talk too much....

Semper Fi

[mdittmar]

"What possible positive benefit from publicly disclosing this incident or orgainzation?"

We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

It may be for terrorist consumption.

[aculeus]

Actually I've never doubted that French counter-intelligence officers are just as determined to defeat Islamacist as are we. They're not cafe intellectuals; they're cops.

[ValenB4]

Really excellent article and very interesting. This is how the war on terrorism can be effectively fought, preemptively dealing with individuals and groups.

[ValenB4]

One quibble. What is Islamofascism? What are its tenets and who are some self-described Islamofascists? There aren't any. It's not an ideology. It's a dumb term invented by neocons who are too afraid to insult Muslims. Islam is bad enough.

[billbears]

It is a good article. Saw something on this operation on NBC News tonight (can only watch so much about Aruba on Faux News). I wonder if those that have been maligning the French these past few years would care that the French have actually been one of our strongest allies in this WOST. I agree with you though. A crime was committed. Handle it as such and you would get a lot further.

Three months into the dispute, the State Department and the CIA made a case for France, citing its intelligence cooperation. Bush eventually told Rumsfeld to desist, according to two former State Department officials. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell wrote a memo saying that punishing the French was not U.S. policy. A. Elizabeth Jones, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, kept it on top of her desk. "I frequently needed to be able to pull it out and quote it to my Pentagon colleagues," Jones said.

But Rumsfeld persisted a year later, excluding the French Air Force from the Red Flag exercise in 2004.

--snip--

Rumsfeld's symbolic jabs baffled some officials inside the Bush administration. "Most things the secretary of defense did I could understand, even if I disagreed with him," said Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Powell. "On this one, it was totally irrational, even dumb."

Well it did its job in getting the armchair generals worked up. Unfortunately it was against one of our strongest behind the scenes ally apparently

[ValenB4]

What is WOST?

[sheltonmac]

The link above wasn't working, but I found the same article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8447307/.

It is an interesting article. I especially liked this part:

Alliance Base demonstrates how most counterterrorism operations actually take place: through secretive alliances between the CIA and other countries' intelligence services. This is not the work of large army formations, or even small special forces teams, but of handfuls of U.S. intelligence case officers working with handfuls of foreign operatives, often in tentative arrangements.

Such joint intelligence work has been responsible for identifying, tracking and capturing or killing the vast majority of committed jihadists who have been targeted outside Iraq and Afghanistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to terrorism experts.

This appears to be a much more effective way to fight terrorism. I've said repeatedly that you can't fight--much less win--a Fourth Generation war with a Second Generation military.

Of course, the kind of war described in the article doesn't involve fancy uniforms, big explosions and pretty flags. It doesn't lend itself very easily to parades or Internet video montages set to patriotic music. In other words, it lacks the audio-visual stimulus the neocons need to feel good about themselves.

[sheltonmac]

What is WOST?

War on Some Terrorism.

[July 4th]

Bump for an interesting article.