Posted at 7:02 a.m. EDT Thursday, October 18, 2001.
The Miami Herald
Cuba: More talks needed on closing of island's Russian spy base
HAVANA -- (AP) -- The Cuban government said Russia had not asked for its
permission to close down a spy base on the island and urged more talks with
Moscow on the announced closure.
The spy base on Cuba was built in 1964, shortly after the 1962 Cuban missile
crisis. The closure of the station, 13 miles south of the capital in Lourdes,
will allow Russia to save at least $200 million a year in rent and an
undisclosed amount in personnel salaries, according to an announcement in Moscow
on Wednesday.
"The agreement about the radar center in Lourdes is not canceled until
Cuba has given its approval,'' the government said Wednesday in a statement on
state television. "Unfortunately, the president (Vladimir Putin), due to
the time difference perhaps, didn't have time to hear our arguments or concerns
about this matter before he made the public announcement.''
Cuba has received intelligence information from the base. It was unclear
when the base would close or what would happen to the equipment.
"We continue to have a huge appreciation and respect for Russia, and
Cuba at this point will abstain from judgments and criticism about this
announcement,'' the Cuban government said.
Moscow said it would close the base in Cuba and a naval support base in
Vietnam in an effort to raise more money for the military in Russia.
Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the Russian armed forces' General Staff,
said the spy facility on Cuba helped to "decide defense issues during that
period of the Cold War. Now, the military-political situation has changed and
there has been a qualitative leap in military equipment.''
He said by closing the bases, Russia can buy and launch 20 communication,
intelligence and information satellites and purchase up to 100 sophisticated
radars.
Facility was a product of the Cold War
It's largest such post for Moscow
By Paul Brinkley-Rogers . pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com
The Soviets established the Lourdes "signals intelligence facility''
near Havana at Wajay in 1962 at the height of the Cold War.
It became the largest such eavesdropping post the Soviets maintained abroad,
sprawling over 28 square miles and run by 750 highly trained technicians backed
up by 1,000 to 2,000 Red Army troops and communications specialists -- the
number varying according to degree of the chill in the relationship between
Washington and Moscow.
Only 100 miles south of Key West, Lourdes enabled the Soviets to listen to
virtually all non-land line commercial and military telephone conversations and
faxes in the southeastern United States and north to Washington. It also served
as a mission ground station and analysis facility for data gathered by Soviet
military satellites.
Constant upgrades and modifications as recently as 1999, when three antennas
were added, kept the listening post on top of developments in microwave
transmissions, including communications satellite downlinks and a wide range of
shortwave and high-frequency radio traffic. But the increasing use of
fiber-optic cable for telephone and data traffic, which Lourdes cannot monitor,
began making the facility increasingly obsolete.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian government continued paying
the Cubans more than $200 million a year rent -- mostly in spare parts for
Cuba's aging Soviet-era planes, ships, trucks and other military hardware -- and
may have been spending an additional $100 million a year to service and maintain
the facility.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Lourdes as recently as last
December, accompanied by Cuban President Fidel Castro, but their public
communiques after the meeting gave no hint of impending closure, or about the
future of Lourdes after the Russians leave.
While Lourdes enabled Moscow to spy on official and military communications,
the Cubans got only limited information related mostly to their defense needs,
military experts say.
John Pike, director of the Washington-based Global Security.org center for
defense, space and intelligence policy, says the state spying and overseas
intelligence arms of Cuba's Ministry of the Interior, and the Defense Ministry,
also have had a presence at Lourdes in recent years and could make use of it to
keep tabs on some U.S. military communications.
Pike said he expects the Russians will leave much of the high-tech
monitoring equipment, including towers and tracking dishes, behind. But the
cash-strapped Cuban intelligence services also have a mini-Lourdes of their own
and may not have access to data gathered by Russian satellites.
Pike said Russian priorities have shifted. It may be cost-effective to
abandon Lourdes, he said, and to shift financial resources to other military
needs, but Russia's post-Cold War intelligence needs are much more related to
industrial espionage than military snooping.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
