The Kremlin learned of U.S. battle plans for the Persian Gulf War through its electronic spy network based in Cuba and now may be seeking information for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the Miami Herald reported today.
It once was "unheard of that Soviet intelligence agents would work for other countries," former Soviet military official Stanislav Lunev was quoted as saying. "But now it looks like they have begun to look for information in the interest of Saddam Hussein."CIA spokesmen would not comment on the claims by Lunev, a colonel in Soviet military intelligence, known as GRU. Lunev defected in 1992, a year after the gulf war and months after the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991.
Other U.S. intelligence experts told the newspaper his description of Russia's Lourdes spy center in Cuba was accurate - and that he is considered credible.
Lunev said he learned that Moscow knew of the war plans when his GRU bosses asked him to analyze possible U.S. strategies based on secret cables sent by Moscow to the Soviet Embassy in Washington in late 1990 and early 1991.
The cables summarized intercepts of U.S. communications, from the chatter of U.S. warplane pilots in flight to the private telephone conversations of soldiers and their families.
He said he knows the information in the cables came from Lourdes because of the coding, and because friends and officials at the GRU told him so when he vacationed in Moscow after the war.
Built by the GRU in the 1970s in a Havana suburb, Lourdes' antennas can reportedly pick up electronic signals - cellular, cordless or microwave phone calls, as well as CB and radios - up to 1,000 miles away. The U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. forces in the Middle East, is within range because it is based in Tampa.