Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:



I can't believe we were ever led to be scared of the Russians.

The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two--week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the “Special Training Center” in Moscow . . .

Details about the Mukhabarat’s Russian spy training emerged from some Iraqi agents’ personnel folders, hidden in a back closet in a center for electronic surveillance located in a four-story mansion in the Mesbah district, Baghdad’s wealthiest neighborhood. . . .

Three of the five Iraqi agents graduated late last year from a two-week course in “Phototechnical and Optical Means,” given by the Special Training Center in Moscow, while two graduated from the center’s two-week course in “Acoustic Surveillance Means.”

One of the graduating officers, identified in his personnel file as Sami Rakhi Mohammad Jasim al-Mansouri, 46, is described as being connected to “the general management of counterintelligence” in the south of the country. . . .

His certificate, which bears the double-eagle symbol of the Russian Federation and a stylized star symbol that resembles the seal of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, uses a shortened version of al-Mansouri’s name.

It says he entered the Moscow-based Special Training Center’s “advanced” course in “acoustic surveillance means” on Sept. 2, 2002, and graduated on Sept. 15.

Four days later, the Chronicle reported that the “Moscow-based Special Training Center,” was the Russian foreign intelligence service, known as SVR, and the SVR confirmed the training:

A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Boris Labusov, acknowledged that Iraqi secret police agents had been trained by his agency but said the training was for nonmilitary purposes, such as fighting crime and terrorism.