They are "financed mostly by the agency and employ some of the best espionage technology the CIA has to offer". They also have "computers linked to the CIA's central databases, and access to highly classified intercepts."
They are used by the CIA and the foreign services to jointly "make daily decisions on when and how to apprehend suspects , whether to whisk them off to other countries for interrogation and detention, and how to disrupt al Qaeda's logistical and financial support."
They are distincts from the CIA "black sites", or secret detention centers.
The CTIC were modeled on the CIA's counternarcotics centers in Latin America and Asia. In the 1980s the CIA persuaded these states to let it select individuals for the assignment, pay them and keep them physically separate from their own institutions. Officers from the host stations serving in the CTICs are vetted by the CIA, and usually supervised by the CIA's Chief of Station and augmented by officers sent from the Counterterrorist Center at Langley. According to two intelligence officials interviewed by Dana Priest, "the first two CTICs were established in the late 1990s to watch and capture Islamic militants traveling from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt and Chechnya to join the fighting in Bosnia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia." The National Security Agency is a partner in the CTICs, and has established a Foreign Affairs Directorate that now handles sharing information and equipment with 40 countries. CIA former director George Tenet convinced Yemenite president Ali Abdullah Saleh to work with the CIA. Tenet sent material and 100 Army Special Forces trainers to help Yemen create an antiterrorism unit after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. He also obtained the authorizations to fly Predator drones over Yemen. The CIA killed six al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Ali al-Harithi, suspected mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, with such a drone, sent from the French military base in Djibouti.
Italy was not invited to participate in Alliance Base, allegedly because of jealousies between the SISMI and the SID. However, in the current Imam Rapito affair, the Milan magistrates have spoken of a "concerted CIA-SISMI operation." Former CIA responsible in Italy, Jeffrey W. Castelli, Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady, as well as 24 others CIA officers, and head of SISMI Nicolò Pollari and his second Marco Mancini have been indicted in 2006 by the Italian justice for this affair.
