Iraqi documents captured by US forces in 2003 say Russian intelligence had sources inside the US military that enabled it to feed information about US troop movements and battle plans to deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, according to a Pentagon report.
The unclassified report released on Friday does not assess the value or accuracy of the information Saddam got or offer details on Russia's information pipeline. It cites captured Iraqi documents that say the Russians had "sources inside the American Central Command" and that intelligence was passed to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia's UN mission in New York, said the allegations were false.
"To my mind, from my understanding it's absolutely nonsense and it's ridiculous," she said, adding that the US government had not shown Russia the evidence cited in the report. "Somebody wants to say something, and did -- and there is no evidence to prove it."
The Iraqi documents leave unclear who may have been the sources at Central Command's war-fighting headquarters, which is at Camp As Saliyah just outside Doha, the capital of Qatar. No Russians were authorized to be at the closely guarded base.
A classified version of the report, titled Iraqi Perspectives Project, is not being made public. It was assembled by US Joint Forces Command, which reviewed a vast array of captured Iraqi documents and interviewed Iraqi political and military leaders, not including Saddam.
The report does not address the possibility that the US military deliberately fed false information to the Russians, expecting them to pass it to Saddam. It does say that "such external sources of information were only one of the fog-generators obscuring the minds of Iraq's senior leadership."
Among the information the Iraqis said they received from the Russians, some of which proved inaccurate, was:
* That the movement of US troops into southern Iraq from Kuwait was a diversion. In fact it was the main avenue of attack, supported by special forces entering from Jordan and paratroopers flying into northern Iraq.
* That the ground assault on Baghdad would not begin until the Army's 4th Infantry Division was in place, around April 15. In fact, the 4th Infantry, whose originally planned invasion route from Turkey was blocked by the Turkish government, was not yet on Iraqi territory when the Baghdad ground assault began on April 7. Thus, by design or chance, the information from the Russians actually reinforced a US military deception effort.
* That the main focus of US ground forces moving toward Baghdad from the southwest was the area around the city of Karbala. (This was true. After crossing a bridge over the Euphrates River outside of Karbala, the 3rd Infantry Division had a clear path to the Iraqi capital and Saddam's chances of stopping the assault had ended.)
That US troops moving through southern Iraq would not attempt to occupy cities but instead bypass them. (This was true and was a central feature of an invasion plan that stressed speed and tactical surprise.)
The lead author of the Pentagon report, Kevin Woods, told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that he was surprised to learn that the Russians had passed intelligence to Saddam, and he said he had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the Iraqi documents.
"But I don't have any other knowledge of that topic," Woods added, referring to the Russian link.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Barry Venable, referred inquiries seeking comment to Central Command. At Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, officials did not immediately respond to a request.
It is standard procedure for Russia and other countries not part of a US coalition to try to gain inside information on US military plans. It's certainly not surprising in the case of Iraq, a country which had such long-standing economic and military ties to Moscow. But until now the Pentagon had not indicated that the Russians might have succeeded.
Pavel Felgenhauer, a respected independent Moscow-based military analyst, said on Friday that a Russian military intelligence unit, known only by its abbreviation GRU, was actively working in Iraq at the time of the US invasion.
The information about a Russian intelligence link to Baghdad was a small part of a much broader report by Joint Forces Command that attempts to explain the forces and their motivations behind Iraqi military decision-making in the months leading up to the invasion and in the first few weeks after the capital Baghdad fell in April.
The report paints a picture of an Iraqi regime that was largely blind to the threat it faced, hampered by Saddam's inept military leadership, preoccupied by the prospect of a Shiite uprising and deceived by its own propaganda.
"The largest contributing factor to the complete defeat of Iraq's military forces was the continued interference by Saddam," the report said.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
RSS