Free Republic

Cuba's Lourdes Radar Base, Terrorist Mohamed Atta and the Kremlin

Dr. Alexandr Nemets and Dr. Thomas Torda
Thursday, Dec. 20, 2001

1. New Data

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.