Guess Who Else Was Listening To Newt Gingrich’s Phone Call — And To Those Of Millions Of Other Americans Every Day?

(Washington, D.C.): This week’s
revelations that a phone conversation
involving House Speaker Newt Gingrich and
other members of the Republican
congressional leadership was intercepted,
taped and released to the news media has
brought a compelling security policy
issue into sharp focus: To a
staggering degree, American
telecommunications — whether government,
commercial or private — are not
secure.

This is because not only conversations
made on analog cellular phones, like that
used by Rep. John Boehner in the Gingrich
conference call, and portable telephones
are susceptible to interception. So
too are communications (both electronic
and voice) involving microwave
transmissions. As an
increasing number of intracity calls,
e-mails and faxes, as well as virtually all
long-distance ones, are now carried via
microwave systems, a mind-boggling amount
of information — including much that is
sensitive either from a personal,
proprietary or official point of view —
is at risk of compromise.

The good news is that such microwave
communications are, for the moment at
least, not susceptible to the sort of
interception by amateur eavesdroppers
using illegally-modified, Radio
Shack-supplied scanners that allegedly
was the source of the Gingrich et.al.
tape recording. ⁽¹⁾
(It must be said, however, the
explanation given for how the Gingrich
conference call was serendipitously
accomplished by two political activists
driving around northern Florida sounds
about as plausible as the contortions
Mary Rose Woods claimed were responsible
for her erasure of a potentially
incriminating 18 minutes of President
Nixon’s taped conversations!)

Russia’s Cuba-Based ‘Big
Brother’ Operation

The bad news is that the
capacity to vacuum up microwaved,
satellite and other telecommunications is
already in hands far more skilled and
dangerous than American citizens who
break the law by indulging in “audio
voyeurism.” One of the
world’s largest signals intelligence
(“sigint”) facilities is
located in and near the Havana, Cuba
suberb of Lourdes. It is operated by the
most secret element of the Russian
national security system — the Main
Intelligence Directorate (or GRU) of the
General Staff of the Russian Armed
Forces.

The principal purpose of this
facility is to intercept U.S. military,
governmental, commercial and other
communications conducted throughout the
eastern United States and some of the
Midwest. ⁽²⁾
A similar facility at Cam Ranh Bay in
communist Vietnam affords the Kremlin
coverage of most of the western U.S. and
much communications traffic in the
Pacific Basin. These ground-based assets
are complemented by — and fully
integrated with — electronic
intelligence satellites, as well as
Russian airborne and naval intelligence
assets.

Worse still, it is believed that both
the Russians and Cubans are developing
capabilities at Lourdes to conduct information
warfare (IW). Such a capability
would permit these facilities to be
employed not only to intercept
information (for example, to reap
lucrative benefits about proprietary
market developments and other sensitive
commercial activities). It could also
make it possible for Moscow or Havana to manipulate
telecommunicated information so as to
deny the American people and their
government vital services or otherwise to
work against U.S. interests.

Stanislav Lunev, a former GRU colonel
with a detailed knowledge of Lourdes’
operations and capabilities who has lived
in the United States since 1992 told the
Casey Institute:

“The strategic significance
of the Lourdes facility has grown
dramatically since the
secret order from Russian
Federation President [Boris
Yeltsin] of 7 February 1996
demanding that the Russian
intelligence community step up
the theft of American and other
Western economic and trade
secrets. It currently
represents a very formidable and
ominous threat to U.S. national
security as well as the American
economy and infrastructure.”

Russian intelligence processes the
enormous daily take from these various
sources, searching for information that
could be of strategic or commercial
benefit to the former Soviet Union. It is
all but certain that at least some of the
phone, fax and e-mail transmissions
involving targeted individuals, companies
or organizations that relay politically
sensitive or potentially compromising
information could wind up in the hands of
people prepared to exploit it. Indeed, as
the director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency told the Senate Intelligence
Committee in August 1996, Lourdes
is being used to collect “personal
information about U.S. citizens in
the private and government sectors.“

The Clinton Attitude: ‘See
No Evil’

Without the acquiescence of Fidel
Castro, of course, it would not be
possible for Russia to have some 1,000
GRU intelligence professionals and
technicians in Cuba monitoring military,
diplomatic and commercial communications
throughout much of the eastern United
States as well as trans-Atlantic
telecommunications traffic.
In light of the threat to the personal
privacy and freedoms of the American
people — not to mention sensitive
official communications — one would
think that terminating the operations of
Moscow’s Cuban sigint facility would be
an undertaking of the highest priority
for the United States Government.

Incredibly, the Clinton
Administration refuses even to ask Russia
to curtail its activities at Lourdes.
Indeed, in testimony given on 16 March
1995 before the Western Hemisphere
Subcommittee of the House International
Relations Committee, Assistant Secretary
of State for Inter-American Affairs
Alexander Watson stated that:

“Provisions of the
[Helms-Burton] bill ⁽³⁾
which would require the President
to withhold an amount equal to
the assistance and credits Russia
provides to Cuba in return for
the use of the Lourdes signal
intelligence facility could limit
our ability to promote reform and
stability in Russia. In addition,
pressing Russia to cease
its use of Lourdes could be seen
by the Russians as interfering
with their exercise of their
right under the START Treaty to
monitor compliance with the
agreement, and could complicate
Russian ratification of START
II.”

While the Administration subsequently
issued clarifications to make it seem
less enthusiastic about the Lourdes
sigint operation, the Russians have
clearly gotten the message that the
Clinton team views this facility through
a Cold War prism of moral equivalence. As
Izvestia noted on 30 November
1996: “…The United States…does
not object in principle to the continuing
existence of the electronic center in
Cuba, which Washington regards as a
counterweight to an analogous American
station in Turkey.”

Russian
Help on a Cuban Chernobyl — Part of the
Price for Lourdes

Whether the U.S. actually approves of
Russia’s electronic espionage or simply
accepts it as a fact of life, Moscow,
for its part, clearly perceives the
Lourdes facility and its products to be absolutely
critical assets. Indeed,
one of the members of a high-level
Russian delegation to Cuba in October
1995, headed by First Deputy Prime
Minister Oleg Soskovets, called Lourdes
“a unique facility of Russia’s
national security system.”

Fidel Castro has recently decided to
exploit the high value which Russia
places on maintaining this massive GRU
facility on his island — one of the few
leverage points he still has over his
post-Cold War benefactors in the Kremlin.
He is reportedly pressing Russia to
increase the annual “lease” for
Lourdes (and associated military
facilities) fivefold, from the equivalent
of approximately $200 million per year to
nearly $1 billion per annum. Although
Moscow is certain to resist this Cuban
proposal (in part, because of Havana’s
estimated $20-30 billion debt owed the
former Soviet Union), it is evidently
prepared to meet a raised ante in order
to keep Lourdes in business through
in-kind contributions in the form of oil,
timber, military equipment and other
types of cooperation.

The most sinister of the latter
appears to be Russia’s readiness to
complete two Soviet-era, VVER-440 nuclear
reactors under construction in Juragua,
Cuba. As noted in the Casey Institute’s
recent Perspective on
this project (an adaptation
of which appeared Monday in the European
edition of the Wall Street Journal and
is attached hereto), these reactors are
irretrievably flawed. According to
experts previously involved in their
construction, the General Accounting
Office, a congressional committee and NBC
News, if allowed to come on line, the
shoddy construction, defective materials
and unsafe design of these reactors would
more likely than not result in a
catastrophic nuclear accident. Depending
upon the prevailing winds, somewhere
between fifty and eighty million
Americans downwind could be exposed to
dangerous — if not lethal — levels of
radiation.

Despite this prospect, Russia is
prepared to help bring the Juragua
reactors on-line, among other reasons,
because the Castro regime has made such
cooperation a quid pro quo for
continued operation of the Lourdes
facility and Russia’s substantial
military presence on the island. With
respect to the latter, former GRU Col.
Lunev, observes: “By its willingness
to see through the Juragua nuclear
project, Russia will have [a] chance to
maintain, secure and expand its military
presence in this geostrategic region —
and preserve the opportunity to deploy
various elements of the Russian air,
naval, army and missile/space forces.
near the United States.”

The Bottom Line

One thing should be clear: The
United States has a critical, keen
interest in terminating both aspects of
this Faustian bargain — the wholesale
eavesdropping against American officials,
companies and private citizens performed
by the Lourdes facility and the
Cuban Chernobyls-in-the-making that
Russia is prepared to complete in order
to keep performing such eavesdropping.
The second term Clinton national security
team and the Congress that will confirm
them and oversee their tenure in office
must make a fresh and urgent assessment
of these dual threats — and map out a
strategy for eliminating them.

If experience to date is any guide,
this task may fall entirely to the
Congress, though. After all, the Clinton
Administration seems determined to give
the Russo-Cuban dangers the sort of
wink-and-nod it previously gave Iranian
arms shipments to Bosnia. This is all the
more astounding insofar as Mr. Clinton’s
is an administration that takes great
pride in indulging in environmental
zealotry and anti-nuclear activism
(notably on the part of Vice President Al
Gore and outgoing Energy Secretary Hazel
O’Leary).

No less remarkable is the evident
indifference of the “green”
movement operatives — people who would
be raising Cain if even one,
safe nuclear reactor were being built in
the United States — to say nothing of
two fatally flawed nuclear power plants. Like
radical feminists willing to look the
other way over Paula Jones’ accusations
against President Clinton, however,
left-leaning environmentalists seem to
think it is politically incorrect to
worry about an environmental catastrophe
in the making 180 miles offshore — so
long as the perpetrator is Fidel Castro.

Congress must not be complicitous in
such behavior. Should it do so, the
legislative branch will fully share
responsibility for failing to halt the
gross Russo-Cuban evisceration of
American public and private sector rights
to confidentiality and privacy — and be
held accountable for refusing to prevent
an avoidable radioactive disaster.

– 30 –

1. Unfortunately,
highly sophisticated and experienced
eavesdroppers can obtain
equipment in this country which would
give them this capability.

2. The Cubans also
operate a companion facility near
Lourdes, whose products they presumably
share with the Russians, just as they
previously did with the Soviet Union.

3. At the time of
Secretary Watson’s testimony, the Clinton
Administration was opposed to the
Helms-Burton legislation. It subsequently
chose to sign the bill in the run-up to
the 1996 presidential election. For more
on that decision, see How to
Respond to the Cuban K.A.L. 007: Shut
Down the Cuban Chernobyl ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_19″>No. 96-D 19,
26 February 1996).