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Report #025 11/01/2001 AGENTURA.RU - The news I had been looking for appeared on 18 October when Russian President Putin stated that the electronic spying center at Lourdes, Cuba would be closed. It was just last December when Putin met with Cuban President Fidel Castro and indicated the importance of the Lourdes facility. But the Russians have determined the site closure would save at least $200 million a year which could be used to upgrade military technological items. The Cubans are upset about the base closure and have denounced that decision. The Cubans claim that the base agreement has not been canceled because Cuba has not approved of such action. ("Yeh, dream on"). There has been some speculation that the Lourdes base would be turned into a tourist attraction, a museum housing various displays such as a Mig 21 aircraft, an SA-2 surface-to-air missile, and an Ilyushin-28 bomber. Other items will represent the "Bay of Pigs" operation & the Cuban missile crisis. Some FAPSI surveillance dishes may also be on display. The Russians have also indicated they will be closing the base they maintain at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. This closure is scheduled for 1 January 2002. As of now, there has been no definite date announced for the closing of the Lourdes base. THE SECURITY & INTELLIGENCE DIGESTS FROM ALEKSEY SHCHERBAKOV - Akin Fernandez, publisher of "The Conet Project", a book describing the operation of "Numbers Stations" plus a 4-CD set containing the signals of such transmissions says the UK "D" notice had been applied to the above. The "D" notice system is reportedly used for suppressing publication of subjects that could affect the defense of the UK. Fernandez mentioned he believed the Taleban may be using Shortwave Numbers messages for some of their communications. DOSSIER - In this section of AGENTURA.RU there are two quite comprehensive reports written by a member of the UK Ministry of Defense. The SVR - Russian Intelligence Service, is 18 pages in length. There are a few historical remarks but the bulk of the report is concerned with the period of 1991 to date. The treatment of FAPSI, 22 pages, also mainly deals with the same time frame as the SVR document. Of note was the fact that the KGB had not been able to recover its enciphering equipment located in the Baltic countries. Therefore the FAPSI placed the older cryptological devices on sale for those who did not care if their traffic was readable in Moscow. FAPSI has given equipment demonstrations in Switzerland, Abu-Dhabi, Singapore, and Brazil. The report also contains details on some hanky-panky by certain FAPSI big-shots. Both reports are very interesting. FAPSI AMERICAS LINK - The 1445 UTC sked was monitored on 01, 03, and 17 October. On each date the HF relay station in Cuba had traffic for the Field station. The serial number of the 2nd message sent on the 17 October sked was 818. This indicates that since 1 January 2001, an average of 20 messages were sent each week from Cuba to the Field site.
OCTOBER LOGGINGS In kHz order with comments and UTC date/time
For further information on numbers stations, and other mystery communications we recommend . . .
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©2001 Don Schimmel.
