Russians Told Iraqi Regime of U.S. Troop Movements
WASHINGTON — Russian diplomats passed detailed but sometimes inaccurate information about American troop movements to senior Iraqi officials even as U.S. troops closed in on Baghdad during the 2003 invasion, according to a Pentagon study released Friday.
The revelations, based on captured Iraqi intelligence documents, could jeopardize U.S.-Russian relations more than any single event since the end of the Cold War, analysts said. Although they cautioned that Moscow might have an explanation, the analysts said some of the details were so sensitive that they would be difficult for the government of President Vladimir V. Putin to justify.
One of the documents, which purports to be a summary of a letter sent to Saddam Hussein's office by a Russian official, claimed that Moscow had "sources inside the American Central Command in Doha," the U.S. military's headquarters in Qatar during the war.
Russia had well-known and extensive diplomatic and economic ties to Baghdad before the U.S.-led invasion and occasionally clashed with the Bush administration during the international debate over how to deal with Hussein's regime.
But the documents, made public in a study of the Iraqi military's decision-making, are the first to assert that Russia actively passed sensitive military intelligence to Baghdad during the war.
"This is one step short of firing upon us themselves with Russian equipment," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution. "It's actively aiding and abetting the enemy tactically. It's hard to get more unfriendly than that."
Press officials at the Russian Embassy did not return calls seeking comment. An official who answered the phone in the military attache's office at the embassy said he was unfamiliar with the report.
One of the most sensitive revelations, which came in a captured letter detailing Russian intelligence on American troop movements, accurately informed Baghdad that U.S. forces were massing south of a narrow passage near the southern city of Karbala.
The April 2, 2003, letter, which was reportedly passed through Moscow's ambassador to Baghdad, informed Iraqi leaders that "the heaviest concentration of troops (12,000 troops plus 1,000 vehicles) was in the vicinity of Karbala."
The Army's 3rd Infantry Division eventually captured western Baghdad after pushing through the Karbala gap just days later. Marines moved into Baghdad from the east.
