This is a tad bit long, but not a bad read. Pretty revealing, however still a bit speculative.
Question: Is this any different than the sort of "equal opportunities" arms dealing that the U.S. does? Also, is this any different than the counter-insurgence training America became famous for through entities such as the SOA.....?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...type=printable
Iraq-Russia spy link uncovered
SECRET FILES: Documents reveal Iraqi agents trained in Moscow
Robert Collier, Bill Wallace,
Chronicle Staff Writers
Sunday, April 13, 2003
Baghdad -- A Moscow-based organization was training Iraqi intelligence agents as recently as last September -- at the same time Russia was resisting the Bush administration's push for a tough stand against Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi documents discovered by The Chronicle show.
The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two-week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the "Special Training Center" in Moscow.
The Russian government, which has expressed intense disagreement with the U. S.-led war on Iraq, has repeatedly denied giving any military or security assistance to the Hussein regime. Any such aid would violate U.N. sanctions that have severely limited trade, military and other relations with Iraq since 1991.
U.S.-Russian relations have been strained by the split over Iraq. It is unclear whether these revelations, coming on top of U.S. charges that Moscow has been supplying other forms of forbidden assistance to Baghdad, may damage them further.
The U.S. State Department reacted cautiously Friday to the information unearthed by The Chronicle, saying it could not comment on matters that are the subject of current intelligence operations.
But Lou Fintor, a State Department spokesman, said the U.S. government has repeatedly criticized Russian officials for giving assistance to Iraq and has had recent contacts with the Russian government in which it complained about the problem.
"We consider this a serious matter and have raised it with senior levels of the Russian government," Fintor said. "They have repeatedly denied that they are providing material assistance to Iraq, but we gave them sufficient information (during the last two contacts) to let them know that we expected them to take action."
Attempts to contact officials at the consulate for the Russian Federation in Washington were unsuccessful, and calls to the home of Sergey Ovsyannikov, the head of the consular division in Washington, went unanswered.
However, experts in Iraqi and Russian intelligence operations were not surprised that Mukhabarat officials had received specialized training in Russia.
"I can't think of anybody in the Iraqi security service that hasn't been trained in Russia," said Ibrahim Marashi, a research fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Details about the Mukhabarat's Russian spy training emerged from some Iraqi agents' personnel folders, hidden in a back closet in a center for electronic surveillance located in a four-story mansion in the Mesbah district, Baghdad's wealthiest neighborhood.
Each personnel file was contained in a thick folder with documents that reflected the agent's Mukhabarat career.
Three of the five Iraqi agents graduated late last year from a two-week course in "Phototechnical and Optical Means," given by the Special Training Center in Moscow, while two graduated from the center's two-week course in "Acoustic Surveillance Means."
One of the graduating officers, identified in his personnel file as Sami Rakhi Mohammad Jasim al-Mansouri, 46, is described as being connected to "the general management of counterintelligence" in the south of the country.
Born in Basra, he joined the Mukhabarat on May 1, 1981, according to his file. His "party position" -- a possible reference to the ruling Baath Party --
is listed as "lieutenant general."
His certificate, which bears the double-eagle symbol of the Russian Federation and a stylized star symbol that resembles the seal of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, uses a shortened version of al-Mansouri's name.
It says he entered the Moscow-based Special Training Center's "advanced" course in "acoustic surveillance means" on Sept. 2, 2002, and graduated on Sept. 15.
"The studying program has been fulfilled completely and successfully," says the certificate, which bears an illegible signature of the center's director.
The Chronicle was unable to determine whether the Special Training Center was a Russian government organization or a privately run facility, though U.S. analysts said it is unlikely that any private firm could train foreign intelligence agents in Russia without government permission.
The facility is not mentioned on the official Web site of the Russian Federal Security Service. The Web site for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service was not in operation this weekend.
SECRET POLICE OPERATIONS
The same Mukhabarat office where al-Mansouri's personnel files were found contained many other documents, including orders for wiretaps and for break- ins at places ranging from the Iranian Embassy to the five-star al-Mansour Hotel to doctor's offices.
The documents were only part of a store of espionage paraphernalia scattered throughout the building, which served as headquarters for a telephone and electronic surveillance operation that helped Hussein's regime keep the Iraqi people under tight control.
The Mukhabarat -- formally known as the Da'irat al-Mukhabarat al-Amah, or General Department of Information -- was formed through the consolidation of several Iraqi intelligence units in 1973.
According to an analysis by the Monterey Institute, the organization is divided into three major bureaus that are responsible for political affairs, regional intelligence and special operations. Last year, experts estimated that the organization had 8,000 personnel.
Besides spying on the Iraqi people and other nations, the agency operated clandestine weapons development programs and an arms-smuggling operation. It reputedly relied on torture and assassination, and was allegedly behind an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate former President George Bush during a 1993 visit to Kuwait.
LOOTERS UNCOVER SECRETS
The Mukhabarat building, located on a street lined with mansions belonging to such high-ranking members of Iraq's power structure as Hussein's son Odai, apparently had been hit by two U.S. missiles that penetrated from the fourth to second floors but did not explode.
Most of the buildings in the area were broken into and looted by mobs last week, as U.S. troops occupied main avenues in the district.
The sprawling, four-story Mukhabarat mansion has no sign indicating its purpose and is not known to the general public. The spy agency's main headquarters building is about two miles away in the Mansour district on the other side of the Tigris River.
After the doors of the mansion were battered open Wednesday, nearly everything that could be removed -- high-tech surveillance gear, bathroom sinks and even staircase bannisters -- was ripped out and hauled away by crowds of Baghdadis who swarmed through Mesbah and other districts, looting and pillaging.
The impressive yet bewildering variety of functions of the Mukhabarat was on view throughout the four-story mansion.
In the basement was a metal workshop with several large lathes and milling machines, apparently for making precision tools. Adjacent to the workshop was a room with a long bank of electronic equipment, apparently for taping and listening to wiretaps.
On the ground floor was a workshop for making master keys to pick locks. Upstairs was a workshop for manufacturing and adapting surveillance transmitters placed in offices and homes.
On tables and in file cabinets were catalogs from companies around the world -- mainly Germany, Italy and Japan -- that sell such spy equipment as transmitters hidden in flowerpots, table lamps and clock radios.
In one room was a bank of machines for listening to telephone calls. Another held a media monitoring center that taped and cataloged transmissions by Arab television channels.
RUSSIAN-IRAQI TIES
For years, the relations between Iraqi and Russian intelligence services have been the subject of speculation but little hard information.
In late March, the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that Russian intelligence agents were holding daily meetings with Iraqis, possibly with the intent of gaining control of the Mukhabarat archives if Saddam Hussein's regime fell.
The newspaper said the archives could be highly valuable to Russia in three major areas: in protecting Russian interests in a postwar Iraq; in determining the extent to which Hussein's regime may have financed Russian political parties and movements; and in providing Russia access to intelligence that Iraqi agents conducted in other countries.
The close relationship between the two countries is largely economic. Iraq and Russia are major trading partners, and Russia has billions of dollars tied up in deals with Iraqi businesses -- including debts Iraq has owed to the Russians since the Soviet era.
In addition, the two countries were parties to an agreement that gave Russia a stake in developing new Iraqi oil fields as well as electricity generation facilities and other types of crucial infrastructure.
Finally, the Iraqis were a major consumer of Russian military equipment and material before 1991. Most of Iraq's weapons systems are Russian, from its tanks and missiles to the assault rifles issued to its infantry troops.
Marashi, who has written a detailed study of the Iraqi security apparatus for the Monterey Institute, said Russia's training of Iraqi intelligence agents started in 1973.
"That was when the first exchanges were made. The level of cooperation increased in 1981 after the Israelis bombed the Iraqi nuclear facility," Marashi said, referring to Osirak, a French-built atomic power plant outside Baghdad.
Peter Brookes, who worked for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before becoming a national security specialist with the Heritage Foundation think tank, said he had no specific knowledge of the training program revealed in the Mukhabarat's personnel files, but said he was not surprised given Iraq's importance to Russia.
"Russia," he said, "has a lot of interests in that part of the world."
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MOSCOW CONNECTION
This certificate - discovered by The Chronicle in a Baghdad office of Saddam Hussein's secret police - shows that an Iraqi intelligence officer named Sami Rakhi Mohammad Jasim al-Mansouri successfully completed a course in acoustic surveillance techniques administered by the Moscow-based Special Training Center last September. Providing that training would violate United Nations sanctions that severely have limited trade, military and other relations with Iraq since 1991. The Russians have consistently denied violating those sanctions.
The agent's personnel file
Text from this document is translated into English below.
Confidential and Personal Annual Performance Evaluation
General Information
Employee name:
Sami Rakhi Mohammad
Jasim al-Mansouri
Job title: Employee
Education level and specialization:
BS in Physics
Party position: Lieutenant General
Social status: Married
Birth: 1957
Birth place: Basra
Management level assigned to him
First - Division
Technical division
Second - Branch
(no answer)
Third - Management
The intelligence management for the southern area
Fourth - General Management
The general management for counter intelligence
Date of appointment in the department
May 1, 1981
Length of service in the governmental departments
None
Language proficiency
First - Writing
Arabic / writing - reading - speaking
Second - Reading
English / writing - reading
The Certificate
The certificate of completion for the course in acoustic surveillance techniques bears the double-eagle symbol of the Russian Federation and a stylized star symbol that resembles the seal of the Russian Foriegn Intelligence Service.
The Russian issued certificate uses a different version of al-Mansouri's name - Mohammad S. Radhi. The hand-scribbled note in Arabic at the top of the certificate is the same name as the personnel file.
Printed text
"This is to certify that MOHAMMAD S. RADHI entered in Sept. 2, 2002, and graduated from the advanced training course of the Special Training Center in Sept. 15, 2002 in speciality 'Acoustic surveillance means.' The studying program has been fulfilled completely and successfully."
The course was administered under the Director of the Special Training Center. The signature is illegible.
-30-
Robert Collier reported from Baghdad and Bill Wallace from San Francisco. Translations from Arabic documents provided by Jalal Ghazi and Muhammad Ozeir. / E-mail the writers at
rcollier@sfchronicle.com and
bwallace@sfchronicle.com.
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
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