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Two Huge US Intelligence Centers Go up in Iraq
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 113
June 25, 2003, 1:07 PM (GMT+02:00)
This exclusive report appeared for the first time in
DEBKAfile’s intelligence weekly published on June 20.
The Americans are secretly building two giant
intelligence facilities in Iraq at a cost of some half a billion dollars,
according to an exclusive report received from
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources. US engineering and
construction units are setting up what amounts to an “intelligence city”
on a site north of the oil city of Mosul in Kurdistan and a second
facility in Baghdad’s Saadun district on the east bank of the Tigris. Our
military experts infer from the vast dimensions of the two projects and
their colossal expense that it is Washington’s intention to retain a large
US military presence in Iraq in the long term, for a decade at least.
The new installations will greatly enhance America’s
military, intelligence and electronic command and control over Iraq and
its neighbors, notably Iran and Syria. The Mosul facility will guard
northern Iraq’s oilfields and the pipelines carrying Iraqi gas and oil to
Mediterranean terminals. Its instruments will reach into every corner of
Iran and Syria, replacing America’s electronic eyes and ears in southern
Turkey. This facility will be activated a section at a time according to
need. Upon completion at the end of 2005, it will employ an operating
staff of around 4,000 American intelligence personnel and electronic
engineers.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Middle East sources
report that the intelligence center going up near Mosul is causing much
nervousness in Damascus and Tehran. Both governments understand that when
the first sections are activated in three months time, not a single
military or intelligence move of theirs will go unseen by America’s
electronic spies – and that goes for terrorist activity as well.
The functions assigned the Baghdad station are different.
While the Mosul center will provide early warning against external threats
to the US military presence in Iraq, the Baghdad station will stand guard
over America’s political and military control of the capital and its
satellite towns, including the Sunni enclave cities of Falluja, Ramadi and
Tikrit.
To clear a site for the giant facility,
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report the Americans
expropriated the luxury Baghdad Hotel complex that straddles Saadun Street
to the east and Abu Nuw’as Street, which is a section of the Corniche
along the Tigris, as well as the surrounding blocks between Firodos Square
and the city’s main bus terminal to the north at Naser Square.
Since the beginning of this week, an American airlift has
been running large containers crammed with electronic parts from American
army bases to Baghdad international airport.
Once the Baghdad electronic station is up and running it
will aid US forces in their fight against guerrilla and terrorist
assailants picking off GIs almost every day. These assaults are harmful
but they do not detract from the overall American control over security in
the broad expanses of a large country. There is every indication that the
US civil administrator Paul Bremer is gradually pulling ahead of the
difficulties. His recipe is simple. No Iraqi associated in any way with
the overthrown Saddam regime or the outlawed Baath party is to be allowed
to take part in government. Bremer equally bars from public service all
Iraqis with foreign political connections, even American. This means that
all political hopefuls from whatever party, ethnic group or religious sect
will fight level for a place in government when the time comes – all
standing at the same starting line.
This formula, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s
sources, has brought a measure of calm to the rival Shiite factions who
make up more than half the populace and who were on the verge of rising up
against the American presence in the country. Now they are more ready to
collaborate with the US civil administration, as are the Kurds under their
rival leaders, Mustafa Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Since Bremer took over
in Baghdad, the two tribal leaders are talking about merging their
movements into a single political entity. Without this union, neither
holds much chance of office in the future central government.
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