April 25, 2007 at 09:18:59

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How the US Helped Yeltsin Avoid Another Afghanistan

By Wayne Madsen (about the author)     Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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They were partially designed to intercept the mobile telephone systems used by the big brass in the Soviet and Warsaw Pact high commands. The NSA SIGINT birds were, therefore, extremely useful against the kind of telephone Dudayev had been given by his Turkish friends. Furthermore, the US and Britain were the only Western countries with sophisticated SIGINT satellite capabilities. (In fact, Britain's Government Communications Headquarters merely "rents time" on the NSA's Vortex satellite so it is arguable whether London has its own independent SIGINT satellite capability.

According to intelligence analyst Mark Urban, the NSA and Orion SIGINT coverage of Chechnya was more comprehensive than that of Bosnia. The NSA has concentrated its Vortex and Orion SIGINT satellites on Iraq and Kuwait since the Gulf War. 7

It would not have taken much to steer some of the orbiting SIGINT satellites eavesdropping on Iraq to a position slightly north over the Russian Caucasus mountains.

A French counter terrorism specialist concurred that the US was the only country with satellite technology that could pinpoint Dudayev's location within a few meters of his satellite telephone transmission. After Dudayev was reported killed by the Russians, a US State Department spokesperson scoffed at rumors that the Chechen president might still be alive. He stated unequivocally that he was "certain" that Dudayev was dead.

Clinton's presence in Moscow on the day Dudayev was killed did little to curb suspicions.

Partners in Crime

If, in fact, the NSA did share SIGINT with Boris Yeltsin it would not have been a first. Before the abortive coup against Gorbachev in 1991 the NSA had reportedly intercepted and decrypted messages transmitted by anti-Gorbachev coup plotters Vladimir Kryuchkov of the KGB and Dmitri Yazov, the Defense Minister. President Bush reportedly ordered the messages delivered to Yeltsin who placed so much faith in them that he warned Gorbachev to expect a coup before year's end. Gorbachev ignored Yeltsin's advice.

Clinton had also shared SIGINT information with Yeltsin. On a May 199? visit to Moscow, the US President showed Yeltsin intelligence reports on Iran's nuclear weapons program gleaned from NSA eavesdropping on Iranian communications with foreign companies that had also sold nuclear weapon's technology to Pakistan. NSA also routinely provided sanitized signals intelligence information to the commander of the Russian contingent within NSA'S Implementation Force in Bosnia. The Russian military has apparently been quite impressed with the quality of the NSA intelligence it is receiving.

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