According to the Russian news agency
Ria-Novosti and the Pravda-run website, on Aug.
14, 2001, Russian Deputy Prime Minister (in
charge of defense industry and arms trade) Ilya
Klebanov and Minister of Defense (MOD) Sergei
Ivanov denied media reports of a possible closure
by December 2001 of the Russian radar data
processing center - a well-known spy hub - in
Lourdes, a suburb of Havana.
During his visit to Cuba this month, Russian
President Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Fidel
Castro, visited the Lourdes center of the Russian
MOD. At a meeting with center specialists, Putin
noted that their work is very much needed, "not
only by the military, but also by the political
leadership of the country."
Putin said at a press conference in Havana that
both Russia and Cuba are currently interested in
continuing the operations of the Lourdes base.
According to Putin, this center serves the interests
of the Russian military and also provides some
information obtained for appropriate Cuban
government agencies.
In a separate report, published by NewsMax and
widely carried on U.S. websites, Orlando
Gutierrez-Boronat of the Center for the Study of a
National Option wrote on Sept. 20, 2001, that
Cuban President Fidel Castro, during a visit to
Iran, Syria and Libya in May 2001, held talks in
Tehran with Iranian Supreme Spiritual Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Castro stated that "America is extremely weak
today" and promised students at Tehran University
that "the imperialist king will finally fall" because
"Iran and Cuba have reached the conclusion that
together they can tear down the USA."
The Castro regime, this report continues, has
continued to harbor international terrorists,
pursued a strategic alliance with terrorist states to
create an 'anti-Western' international front, and
directly engaged in terrorist attacks and
espionage against Americans. In particular,
Cuba's close relationships with Iraq and some
Middle Eastern terrorist groups are well known.
Cuba today, Gutierrez-Boronat writes, continues
to serve as a base for coordination and mutual
support among trans-national terrorist
organizations, including Colombian and some
European-based groups.
It is also known that Cuba is active in bioweapons
development. In October 2000, Cuban Vice
President Carlos Lage and the Iranian
Vice-Minister of Health participated in the
groundbreaking for a biotech R&D facility outside
Tehran. Experts expressed doubts about the
supposed medical objectives of this installation.
The report says that there are links between
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, the Iranian
government and the Castro regime. Castro and
bin Laden have worked hard to build a common
front to bring down the U.S. and to develop
biological weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
In February 1998, bin Laden announced the
creation of an "international front" against the U.S.
According to a document obtained by the PBS
program "Frontline," bin Laden "regards an
anti-American alliance with Iran and China as
something to be considered."
But there may be more to the Castro-bin Laden
connection than the Iran link. In a story dated
March 4, 2000, the Associated Press reported
that a young Afghan who had trained during the
previous winter at a camp in Kunar Province, in
northeastern Afghanistan, said he saw men from
Chechnya, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Cuba and
North Korea. "The North Korean," he said, "had
brought chemical weapons."
A third report, from the December 2001 issue of
Moscow-based Sovershenno secretno (Top
Secret), excerpted here, indicates that al-Qaeda
has sleeper agents and sleeper cells all over the
world. This organization has copied KGB tactics
and has high-ranking protectors in several
"countries of concern."
The following points from this report are of
particular importance:
Baghdad protectors - For many years,
Saddam's regime was the most serious
supporter and protector of al-Qaeda.
Baghdad knew everything about the Sept. 11
attacks in advance.
Iran has supported al-Qaeda in the following
areas: joint planning of terrorist actions;
training of al-Qaeda fighters in camps in Iran,
Syria and Libya; financial support; and
providing fake documents, telecom gear and
explosives.
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, leader of the
Iran-financed extremist organization Egyptian
Islamic Jihad, became not only the closest
associate of bin Laden, but also his
successor and - as judged by U.S.
investigators - chief planner of the 9-11
terrorist attacks. CIA analysts now have no
doubts: Tehran knew in advance about the
9-11 attacks.
The Balkan track and "Borodin dungeon" -
The notorious "Pal Palych" Borodin, long a
Kremlin insider, also has had a definite
connection to al-Qaeda, via a Swiss
businessman of Albanian origin named
Bedget Pakkoli.
Why did they close Lourdes? The Lourdes
spy center was the largest such base in the
Western Hemisphere. It allowed Russia and
Cuba to keep the entire North American
continent under electronic surveillance and to
have access to phone conversations, other
telecommunications, and the databases of the
U.S. and its neighbors.
Former Russian Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev
and Boris Yeltsin were much more pliable than
Putin, but they didn't give up the Lourdes spy
center. Putin himself, as a member of the
intelligence community, knows perfectly well the
value of the Lourdes base, but he had very strong
arguments in favor of closing this station. The
decision to close the center was taken just after
the 9-11 terrorist strikes and wasn't accidental by
any means.
American special services have information that
terrorist Mohamed Atta, the key figure behind the
9-11 attacks, had connections to the Cuban
intelligence services and in spring 1999 met with
their high-ranking representative in Miami, Fla. -
not far from the site where the future suicide
squad got its flight school training.
The Lourdes base, in addition to secret missions,
was also tasked with active tracking of air flights
of all kinds throughout the U.S. The center had a
full set of flight codes for the U.S. Air Force and
civilian airlines. Once, in 1999, the center broke
into the U.S. air traffic control system and sent -
with the help of a powerful, 1,500-kilowatt
transmitter - a fake flight signal, which almost
caused a serious accident in the air.
In short, the Lourdes center had accumulated a
huge database on U.S. civilian airline routes,
schedules and procedures. Cuba very likely
shared this information with al-Qaeda - which may
explain the devilish professionalism behind the
9-11 attacks.
It seems that Putin understood that U.S.
investigative teams could acquire - or had already
acquired - data on the "Lourdes/Castro/al-Qaeda"
connection, which became the decisive factor in
the closure of the Lourdes facility. It should be
mentioned here that Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez has close ties with Saddam's regime - as
well as with Putin and Castro - and has been
known to exchange warm greetings with leading
terrorist Carlos "The Jackal," originally from
Venezuela.
2. Conclusions
The following conclusions are clear: Information
needed to carry out the 9-11 attacks went from
the Lourdes center, via Cuban secret agents in
Miami, to Atta and other members of his suicide
squad. This became the decisive factor in the
successful realization of the 9-11 strikes. The
Kremlin knew in advance of this horrific plot and
blessed the operation. Tehran also knew
everything in advance - from its agents in
al-Qaeda and from Castro himself.
In September-October the authors published in
NewsMax, articles showing that the Kremlin and
Russian Duma (lower house of Parliament) knew
about the forthcoming terrorist strikes on the U.S.
as early as July, and that the Duma's Economic
Commission held hearings to prepare Russia for
the "fall of America" - the title of an article
published by Dr. Tatyana Koryagina in Pravda on
July 12, 2001 - and to get as much benefit as
possible from this foreknowledge.
(See Expert: Russia Knew in Advance,
Encouraged Citizens to Cash Out Dollars and
Russian Expert Who ‘Predicted’ Attacks Warns of
New Ones.)
Now it is easy to find the source of the Kremlin's
knowledge. Moreover, we conclude that Putin,
Castro and Ayatollah Khamenei knew everything
about the coming terrorist attacks by May 2001 or
even earlier. And what of the source of the
anthrax letters that terrified America for months?
The authors feel that now, with the Afghan war
almost over, the Baghdad regime should become
the next target of the global anti-terrorist
campaign. It remains for Putin and Co. to show
where their real support lies - behind President
Bush, or behind Saddam.
Dr. Alexandr V. Nemets is a consultant to the
American Foreign Policy Council. He is co-author
of "Chinese-Russian Military Relations, Fate of
Taiwan and New Geopolitics."
Dr. Thomas J. Torda has been a Chinese linguist
specializing in science and technology with FBIS,
and a Chinese/Russian defense technology
consultant with the Office of Naval Intelligence.
