Iraqi Archives Show Russia's Hidden Hand

Insight ^ | 5/1/03 | J. Michael Waller

[Jean S]

The captured archives are starting to show that post-Soviet Russia hadn't stopped its old Soviet ways in Iraq. Among the initial revelations:

• Russia's SVR foreign-intelligence service recently spied on British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, eavesdropping on their conversations and passing the information to Saddam Hussein's regime.
  
  
• As recently as last fall, Russia was continuing to train the Iraqi secret police. Rooting through an office of the Mukhabarat secret police, Robert Collier of the San Francisco Chronicle discovered documents showing that the SVR trained five Iraqi officers in "phototechnical and optical means" and "acoustic-surveillance means" of snooping and eavesdropping. Moscow first denied the report but later confirmed it, saying it was trying to help Iraq fight organized crime and terrorism.
  
  
• U.S. soldiers found a letter from a Russian arms company dated July 2001, signed by Russian Col.-Gen. Vladislav Achalov, offering to sell conventional arms to the regime in violation of U.N. sanctions. Most controversial, at least in Russia, was the widely reported incident during the fighting when coalition forces opened fire on a Russian diplomatic convoy fleeing Baghdad for Syria. The Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, which has strong sources within the Russian military and intelligence services, cites "intelligence sources" as saying that U.S. Army commandos tried to stop the convoy based on the CIA's belief that the Russians were attempting to smuggle some of Iraq's most sensitive political secrets out of the country. Australian SAS forces initially blocked the vehicles.
  
  According to the report, in late March SVR officers met daily with Iraqi officials to plan to gain control of Mukhabarat archives. The Kremlin wanted material for three purposes: to protect Russian interests in post-Saddam Iraq, to establish Baghdad's covert financing of Russian political groups and to gain access to Iraqi intelligence assets in other countries.
  
  "The CIA was under the impression that the SVR was evacuating Saddam's secret archives under the diplomatic cover of the ambassador's convoy," according to the Russian report. "This also explains why at several occasions after the firing the American troops had tried to search the Russian vehicles." SVR spokesman Boris Labusov claims, "This information is completely untrue and ungrounded."
  
  Russian Ambassador to Iraq Vladimir Titorenko denied to Pravda that the Russians had been trying to spirit sensitive Iraqi archives out of the country into Syria.
  
  What really happened? U.S. intelligence sources aren't talking. But Russian tradecraft and practice show a precedent. A parliamentary investigation in post-Communist Poland found that before many archives in Central and Eastern Europe were destroyed, they were copied and shipped to Russia. A Czech parliamentary probe reached a similar conclusion. Moscow then penetrated the newly democratic societies by controlling former internal-security agents of the old Communist regimes. Jiri Ruml, in the early 1990s chief of a parliamentary commission to investigate the StB Soviet-era security forces, reported to lawmakers that the files of 10,000 StB agents and informers were missing, and that "former collaborators of the StB are still continuing their activity, and their network reaches into the new parliament."
  
  Germany discovered a similar problem. Chief Prosecutor Alexander von Stahl said publicly in mid-1992 that the Russian intelligence service had reactivated approximately 400 ex-East German Stasi officers and agents against the federal republic and other NATO countries.
  
  J. Michael Waller is a senior writer for Insight. Read his in-depth story on this subject at "Secrets Within Iraq's Archives."

[onedoug]

Russian links to Saddam, Al-Qaeda and 9/11? I'm very suspicious. ComIntern is yet very much alive.

[headsonpikes]

Ummmm...'Quelle surprise'! as the diplomats put it.

;^)

[JasonC]

"Hidden"? Nothing about it has been hidden. Russia is an enemy of the US, and backs irresponsible states for the sole purpose of making trouble for us. This extends from diplomatic interference running at the UN, all the way to providing Iranian fanatics with nuclear technology. Anybody who is surprised about any of it simply hasn't been paying any attention to their deeds rather than their words, in the Putin era. The only thing different about Putin is that he lies to your face about such things, instead of bragging about them and banging his shoe on the table.

[GOP_1900AD]

CBS News reported today that SVR penetration of the DoD resulted in our war plans being sent to Iraqi intel in the Feb - early March time frame. Mole hunts urgently needed with charges, trials and executions to follow forthwith. Joseph McCarthy and James Jesus Angleton once again are being further vindicated and those who fought them most strongly are in my book prime suspected moles themselves. I am glad Golitsyn is still alive, clear minded and writing; apparently his new book is nearing completion from what I have heard. I pray that he lives to write one more beyond that regarding everything that is happening now.

[RusIvan]

Russia is an enemy of the US, and backs irresponsible states for the sole purpose of making trouble for us. +++

What states Russia backed for that purpose?

Saddam was no more bad then Musharaff of Pakistan. Both dictators.
Saddam's allerged link with Al-Kaeda never proved.
Russia helped US year ago to destroy the stronghold of Al Kaeda the Taliban regime. You already forgot?

If Russia didn't see Saddam that dangerous as US did it doesn't mean that she is enemy of US. But you can make her one youself if you will do hostilities to her.

[RusIvan]

CBS News reported today that SVR penetration of the DoD resulted in our war plans being sent to Iraqi intel in the Feb - early March time frame.+++

Seriously? I didn't think that SVR so formidable organization.
If they share with Saddam thier findings then they definetely don't affraid to compromise thier sources. It means they have of them a plenty. How it can be?

[JasonC]

Iraq, Iran, North Korea. Also Syria, to a degree.

When Russia pulls the plug on the Iranian nuclear program, I will start listening to Russian apologists for Putin claiming he just wants to be our friend. Until then, talk is cheap and Russians lie for a living.

[GOP_1900AD]

Don't argue with me, argue with CBS news. That's who reported it.

[GOP_1900AD]

The US are being duped by Pakistan, who talk as if they are an ally but continue to overtly benefit from being a PRC satellite, and benefit covertly from Russian support. While Pakistan continue to dupe the West, they work along side with Myanmar and the PRC to engage in a long term military build up in Myanmar so that at some point, a strategic wedge can be driven between India and ASEAN. The invasion of ASEAN by these same forces cannot be discounted and may well factor into plans for a dash by the Axis to grab the Strait of Malacca as initially surmised by Yossef Bodansky nearly 10 years ago. But I digress. Even if we would accept your assertion of moral equivalency between Russia's now fully exposed and illegal support of the Ba'athist National Socialist regime that we have just destroyed, and, the US' inadvisable relations with Musharraf, then I must point out the continuing satellite arrangements between the Kremlin and Cuba, newly Communist Brazil, newly Communist Venezuela, many anti Western nations in Africa, Syria, Iran, Myanmar, Laos, the PRC and the DPRK. Hmmm... it seems to me that neither Perestroika nor the supposed "fall of the Eastern Bloc" changed much of anything in terms of Moscow's support for the enemies of the West. In fact, if anything, since 1991, there are even more enemies of the West, all of them supported either directly by Moscow or indirectly via middle man Beijing, than their were in the sad days of the late 1970s. What does this tell us?

[GOP_1900AD]

Ping.

[GOP_1900AD]

... oh and by the way, the West are also being duped by the PRC. The PRC, in flattering imitation of Lenin's NEP, welcomed businesses (and money) from the West and our Asian allies. They have far exceeded Lenin's wildest dreams of seizing the means of production. The West, naive as we are, cannot see this fact, and remain largely unalarmed regarding how we have relocated the means of production to behind enemy lines during a period of false peace and deception. Naturally, not only are these means of production being used to efficiently extract capital from the West but they are also being used as mass high tech production training grounds for large numbers of Chinese engineers and managers. These well trained individuals will come in most handy for the Forbidden City when the inevitable end comes to the false peace. So too will all of the high tech factories financed by Western market hedonists who left their anti Communist vigilance in the bars and brothels of Shen Zhen.

[RusIvan]

The US are being duped by Pakistan, who talk as if they are an ally but continue to overtly benefit from being a PRC satellite, and benefit covertly from Russian support. ++

Just aone moment. Russia doesn't support Pakistan. Russia supports India.

I must point out the continuing satellite arrangements between the Kremlin and Cuba, newly Communist Brazil, newly Communist Venezuela, many anti Western nations in Africa, Syria, Iran, Myanmar, Laos, the PRC and the DPRK.+++

Sattelite arragements? If you point on CIS countries I would agree. But those what they good for Russia?
BTW Russia closed her military base in Cuba. Did America?
Still pays to Castro regime?

Others sinply buy russian weaponry. For US dollars:). To much for sattelites?

[RusIvan]

the West are also being duped by the PRC. ++

Here I wholeheartly agree with you. Quicker USA dumps PRC better we all will stand.
But here the pofit zone for american corporations who duped by cheap chinese work force. What you can do with that?

[El Gato]

Saddam was no more bad then Musharaff of Pakistan. Both dictators.

There are dictators and then there are monsters. Saddam is/was a monster. By dictator standards, Musharaff is pretty mild. Milder than Fidel Castro for instance.

Saddam's allerged link with Al-Kaeda never proved.

Depends on what you mean by "proved", but be that as it may, more and more evidence is surfacing daily from left behind Iraqi documents.

I don't want Russia to be our enemy, the few Russians I've met I've liked. That includes my sister in law, although she's really from Krygistan. She made me a nice cake for my birthday that was different than I'd ever had, and she gave me a great haircut too. A multi-talented lady, she can also field strip and reassemble an AK-47 blindfolded, and is a good shot with rifle or pistol. Another sister in law, who I've not met, is from Ukraine.

Russia could have have shown herself a friend by supporting us in the UN. However if she couldn't do that for whatever reason, she could have at least not opposed us, not collaborated with the despicable Frenchman Chirac. A friend would not have done that.

[Orion78]

"The captured archives are starting to show that post-Soviet Russia hadn't stopped its old Soviet ways in Iraq."

[RusIvan]

A multi-talented lady, she can also field strip and reassemble an AK-47 blindfolded, and is a good shot with rifle or pistol. +++

Heh heh:). I can do it too I think. So I didn't do it many years.
We were teached of this in schools. Our school has a range in basement. So we were trained there during classes.
I remember that girls from our class shot better then guys. The future women-snipers they were I guess.
We didn't shoot AK47 much but the bolt rifles of 0.22 caliber. Distance was 50 yards. So our girls consistenly did 45-48 scores from 50. Few did 50. I did 42 or so.

Russia could have have shown herself a friend by supporting us in the UN. +++

Russia did that about Afgan campaign. Everyone here semms already forgot that.
But Saddam owed money to Russia. If US garanteed that new goverment will return them then Russia could do help US again.
Agree that friends have to help friends. When America needs Russia she is all nice. But if Russia needs America then I see the negligence all over. "Russia is irrelevant" who told that?

[TLBSHOW]

russia is a enemy and always has been

[RusIvan]

Your enemy was Soviet Union.
Russia is the country which helped young United States republic many times.

If you don't realise that it is bad.

[TLBSHOW]

what ever you say Putin!