Sun, Mar 26, 2006 page1

• Russia fed secret US battle plans to Saddam: report

  DAMNING EVIDENCE Documents uncovered in Iraq suggest that a Russian source within the US Central Command was passing intelligence to the Iraqi dictator

  • AP
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  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.
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