Posted on 07/02/2005 11:10:38 PM PDT by quidnunc
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, 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.
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. 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.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
How many times have we heard the claim that Bush's decision to invade Iraq, by prompting other countries to be less than cooperative, has made the prosecution of the war on terror more difficult and less effective? If memory serves me correct, Kerry made this argument on numerous occasions during last year's presidential campaign. So did other Democratic party chieftains, as well as the New York Times and other representatives of the left-leaning MSM.
No country was more opposed to the coalition of the willing's toppling of Saddam than was France. And yet, as Dana Priest reports in the Sunday Washington Post, there has been extensive, persistent and valuable cooperation between American and French intelligence agencies both before and after the fall of Baghdad to American forces. The Left — along with Kerry, other Democrats, the New York Times, and the MSM's anti-war pundits — have had the rug taken out from under their feet. French cooperation in the war on terror has not suffered as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now that the Post has shed light on the truth, I hope that the Bush administration can find a way to use it to favorably influence public opinion.
Priest discloses the existence of a top secret center in Paris, code-named Alliance Base, that was set up by the CIA and French intelligence services in 2002. 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. Most French officials and other intelligence veterans will talk about the partnership only if their names are withheld because the specifics are classified and the politics are sensitive. John E. McLaughlin, the former acting CIA director who recently retired, 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."
-snip-
(Marc Schulman in American Future, July 2, 2005)
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Well, I'll have to take back half of the bad things I said about them today...
Excellent article.
I still think the French are smelly, rude and has persistent delusions of imperialistic grandeur from its former colonial days.
Well, there are some good French people out there.
I hope that there is a very good reason to make such a disclosure now -- otherwise, it would seem to me to be wiser to have this quiet for as long as possible.
That is either an "Oops" or an effort to make nice with the frogs.
I'm fundamentally opposed to either alternative.
http://americanfuture.typepad.com/american_future/2005/07/the_french_conn.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/02/AR2005070201361.html
"Well, there are some good French people out there"
I wonder if they are still selling military equipment to Syria?
What did they sell? and when? Do you have more informations? Or do you confuse Syria with another country?
Look around the middle east...Libya, Syria, Iraq. Lot's of french weaponry.
I doubt the frogz have sold weapons to Libya and Syria. But the soviets...
Look back in history: whitch country was responsible for the Paris attacks in the 80's and 90's? Was Khadafi not responsible for the bombing of UTA flight 772 over Niger? Who defeated the Lybians in Tchad in 1983 and 1986? Where in the world Carmen Sandiego is? Your assertions are vague.
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