- HAVANA - Just south of the
Cuban capital,- Jose Marti airport,-and clearly visible to passengers on
final approach,-is a little known Russian military base, one without weapons
systems but with scores of antennas and satellite dishes straining to hear
some of America,- closest held secrets.
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- NEARLY 28 miles square, Russia,- ,"Radio-Electronic
Station/Cuba," near the abandoned Cuban village of Lourdes is the
largest and most productive spy station the Russians ever built, a base
that specializes in ,"telephone espionage.," It is the last and
most valuable jewel in their electronic crown, the Russian version of ,"Echelon,,"
a worldwide spy network that includes bases inside Russia and overseas
,- a network that is reportedly called ,"Dozor.,"
-
- Lourdes is operated by Russia,- GRU, its military intelligence
arm, and the Federal Agency for Government Communications (FAPSI), an electronic
spy agency that evolved out of the old KGB in the years after the collapse
of the Soviet Union. Lourdes is an ,"intelligence cornucopia,,"
as one official of America,- National Security Agency once described it.
Its primary target is American telecommunications. Its primary weapon ,-
satellite dishes that steal signals.
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- Other dishes at Lourdes direct spy satellites as they
fly over North America, and Lourdes has long hosted a secret cell of Russian
security services experts who look for damaging information on potential
recruits, according to the Pentagon. In all of this, it takes advantage
of Cuba,- geographic position just south of Florida. Lourdes lies within
the ,"footprint," of every U.S. communications satellite as well
as most international satellites. And it is close enough to the U.S. mainland
to pick up wireless communications as diverse as military radios and taxi
dispatchers throughout the southeast United States on a good day, Florida
on a bad one.
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- Raul Castro, Fidel,- brother and as Cuban defense minister
the Russians,Äô landlord, bragged to friendly Mexican journalists
in April 1994 that 75 percent of Russia,- ,"strategic intelligence,"
flowed through Lourdes. Essential to the Soviet Union during the Cold War,
it still has great, if diminished value to the Russian government. Intelligence
analysts say that its value has dropped not only because of changing Russian
priorities, but because much of what Russia has long targeted at Lourdes
and elsewhere is no longer available.
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- CLOSING COMMUNICATIONS
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- Its big base at Andreyevka in the Russian Far East remains
open, but one of its two other big satellite intercept bases, near Aden
in Yemen, is closed and the other doesn,Äôt operate full-time.
And instead of being carried by microwave beam to and from communications
satellites, critical commercial and military intelligence is now being
carried instead by transatlantic and transpacific fiber optic cables or
digital cell phones that are more often than not encrypted. And in the
superpower spy battle, the United States has another advantage the Russians
don,Äôt: much of the world,- telephone traffic crosses or at
least touches America,- or its allies,Äô shores. Few networks
traverse Russia or Cuba.
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- So, today, Lourdes and the entire ,"Dozor,"
system are increasingly hard of hearing. Their priorities are less dramatic
as well. Lourdes no longer makes much of an effort to ensure that Moscow
gets advance word of a surprise missile attack as it did in the days of
the Reagan administration. It now has to try harder to grab faxes or emails
that tell of U.S. commercial and technological advances as well as making
sure the U.S. is living up to its strategic arms accords.
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- Yet while Lourdes is not what it used to be, it remains
critical to Russia,- intelligence needs because it is Russia,- only big
ear on America. ,"The need for its is permanent, both for Moscow
and Havana,," Col. Gen. Mikhail Kolesnik, Russia,- current chief of
staff, said in late 1995 when he visited the base, and there is no indication
the Russians have changed their minds since. The base, which fell on hard
times in the early 1990s, is now being upgraded. How well it is doing,
of course, is a state secret.
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- The history of Lourdes and U.S. efforts to protect sensitive
government secrets provides an interesting insight into the beginnings
of the debate on the government,- effort to control encryption technology,
for it was Lourdes,Äô capabilities that raised the specter of
Soviet spying in the 1970s which in turn led to government efforts to secure
society.
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- LITTLE-KNOWN FACILITY
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- Little has been written about Lourdes or ,"Dozor,,"
unlike U.S. electronic spy stations in England, Germany, Australia or New
Zealand, which have commanded TV documentaries and books. And while the
U.S. National Security Agency has attracted a lot of critical attention
in the digital community, Russian as well as other nations,Äô
,"telephone espionage," has been virtually ignored. Lourdes,Äô
history raises a number of questions for the digerati: does it matter whose
flag Big Brother salutes ,- your own government,-, a private entity,- or
another government,-? Which is worse, or does it matter? And how do you
deal with a threat from a foreign government?
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- These questions are difficult to answer without knowing
how a superpower goes about what was once quaintly called ,"wiretapping.,"
And the questions are no longer abstract. Around the world, nation after
nation is emulating Russia and the United States, using electronic eavesdropping
to gather most of their intelligence, particularly economic and commercial
data.
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- The rapid growth of communications media, like satellites,
cell phones and Internet, as well as the equally rapid growth of information
that flows through those media, whether email, trade secrets, or blueprints
make such spying both easier and more tempting.
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- In addition to the nations of the U.K.-U.S. spy alliance
,- the so-called ,"Wasp Alliance," of the United States, United
Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand ,- other nations, big and small,
are involved in the eavesdropping business. The intelligence agencies of
Germany, France, China, India, Cuba, even Burma all use secret satellite
intercept facilities to downlink voice, data, fax, video and email. Worldwide,
the army of people involved in listening, processing and analyzing communications
numbers in the hundreds of thousands.
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- But no nation, with the possible exception of the United
States, has been as successful at remote wiretapping as Russia ,- and the
Soviet Union before it. And nowhere has its success been as stunning as
it has been at Lourdes ,- long the central processing facility for a multitude
of electronic eavesdropping operations scattered throughout Cuba.
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- Fifty miles to the west of Havana, at Los Palacios, are
short-wave and high-frequency receivers, while 20 miles to the east of
the capital, near Alamar, are giant, concave ,"ears," pointed
toward the East Coast and aimed at microwave links that carry long-range
communications. Nearer Lourdes are 700-foot towers festooned with smaller
dishes aimed at Florida.
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- COMPREHENSIVE COMPLEX
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- At Lourdes itself, the Russian headquarters complex has
more than 50 buildings of various sizes and shapes, manned mainly by analysts
who record and listen to what is intercepted ,- and prepare it for transmission
back to Moscow, some by encrypted satellite relay, some by special planes
flown out of Havana. Lourdes strains to intercept satellites that fly over
the U.S., trying to retrieve information like communications from cell
phones and wireless data systems.
-
- And south of Lourdes, near the city of Bejucal, is a
Cuba,- own spy base, using some of the same equipment Russia has, part
of the price Russia paid Cuba to keep Lourdes operating in the post-Soviet
era.
-
- ,"The Cubans have everything they need,," said
one U.S. intelligence analyst.
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- How good is Lourdes? The U.S. intelligence community
is not as impressed as it used to be with it. Some in the CIA call it a
minor annoyance. Others see it as having great value still. Here is what
the Defense Intelligence Agency told the Senate Intelligence Committee
in May of 1996 in the most recent public assessment of its capabilities:
,"The Lourdes facility enables Russia to eavesdrop on U.S. telephone
communications. U.S. voice and data telephone transmissions relayed by
satellites visible to the facility are vulnerable to Russian intercept.
Most other unprotected telephone communications in the United States are
systematically intercepted.,"
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- And although commercial intelligence is the top priority,
it is not the only one, says the DIA: ,"Personal information about
U.S. citizens in private and government sectors also can be snatched from
the airwaves and used by Russian intelligence to identify promising espionage
recruits in these sectors.,"
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- In other words, the DIA says, Lourdes can grab most international
telephone traffic carried by satellite as well as commercial data. And,
yes, the facility could be used to engage in blackmail.
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- WIDE ARRAY OF TARGETS
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- Lourdes,Äô targets are varied: the commercial
data dumps from the one branch office of a multinational bank to another,
the latest progress of a microchip assembly plant under construction, the
White House political office,- travel arrangements, or a reporter talking
to his sources ,- if it is carried by satellite rather than fiber optic
cable. In the early days of the Clinton administration, one high-ranking
CIA official told a gathering of journalists who cover national security
issues: ,"Everyone of you in this room has his or her phone calls
monitored out of Lourdes.,"
-
- The most telling indicator of Lourdes,Äô value
has been how much money the Soviet Union and Russia laid out to build and
maintain the complex. The NSA long ago estimated that the Soviet Union
spent $3 billion to build it and the Russians themselves admit that each
year they pay their Cuban landlords $200 million worth of fuel, timber
and spare parts for various equipment, including military equipment. That
doesn,Äôt include the tens of millions of dollars the Russians
spend operating the facility each year ... including the millions of dollars
paid to the 800 to 1,000 Russian technicians who man the antennas and tape
recorders. The Russians know that to maintain a decent standard of living
in Cuba, you need dollars. And now, 10 years after the end of the Cold
War, U.S. analysts say new money is being spent to upgrade the operation.
-
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- Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News.
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