I thought the following provided some interesting perspectives on the so-called Cold War and much more besides…Rixon…

Defector’s Startling Revelations

From Jan Lamprecht <pbs@iafrica.com>

The View From South Africa

1-3-01

I thought I'd share something with you from GRU defector, Colonel Stanislav Lunev. The GRU is Russian Military intelligence. Lunev defected to the US in the early 1990's. The GRU is highly professional, even more professional than the KGB, and Lunev did well in it. He eventually became disillusioned with communism and also realised that most of what he had been told about the USA and the West were lies. He spent 30 years in the Russian military/intelligence establishment and was a very successful spy.

Lunev's story is told in a little book called "Through the Eyes of the Enemy". It is an amazing book and well worth buying and reading. It tells of how the GRU has smuggled approximately 40+ "back pack" nuclear bombs into the USA which they will use one day if there should be a war. They aim to use Spetznaz forces to wage a massive terrorist campaign prior to any conflict. These mini nuclear bombs will be used for that as well as for blowing up Air Force One with the US President on board.

I was told by someone who has spoken personally to Lunev (he is under a witness protection program), that a terrorist campaign would be launched against the USA 2 weeks prior to any nuclear attack going in. Several thousand Russian Special Forces would be infiltrated into the USA to cause havoc using these "suitcase bombs" among other things (including possibly poisoning water supplies to major cities). Lunev also said that he heard talk among Russian officers of the General Staff that seismic weapons existed which they aimed to use to trigger Earthquakes on the US West Coast since it is seismically unstable. That's just background. Here's the real thing I thought would interest you - talk of US POWs from Vietnam and Korea...

Lunev talks of how he spied against the USA, China, etc. during his career. Incidentally, he predicts that China will become a threat to the world - and be more dangerous than Russia. He also said that during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, that President Kennedy removed US nuclear weapons from Turkey when Russia removed theirs from Cuba - so it seems as if the Russians actually didn't do all that bad in the stand-off - so much for Kennedy getting them to back down. Lunev said the quid pro quo was that the Russians would keep quiet so that Kennedy wouldn't lose face.

But he has a section in his book about US POWs and other comments. The quote is long and I'll see how much I can type up for you, but I found it fascinating and it may relate to your politics. Lunev says that US POWS probably exist. From Page 167, he writes:

"I was never sent to Vietnam, but I can relate what I know about this issue. When I was a teenager at the Suvorov Military School high in the mountains of the Northern Caucasus, we heard rumours that criminals assigned to death sentences and American POWs from the Korean War were working in the secret lead mines nearby. A few years later in the mid-1960's, when I was a student at the Tashkent Military Academy (the Soviet equivalent of West Point), there were rumours of American POWs working in the Uranium mines in Central Asia. There were also other rumours, but these were the ones that were repeated and stood out.

During the Vietnam War, rumours increased about hundreds of American POWs being brought into the Soviet Union via other countries to "Socialism Camps" where they would be used as human guinea pigs. Supposedly these people were subjected to nuclear, medical, climate, and other tests to see the effectiveness of new weapons of mass destruction. These poor souls were possibled subjected to chemical, seismic, biological, and other weapons to see how Americans physically differed from the Soviet prisoners that were subjected to the tests. There were also other rumours that American pilots were used to train Soviet pilots.... Definitive confirmation of these stories is hard to come by. For many years the Soviet Union denied that they captured crew members from airplanes shot down during the Cold War. These denials were later shown to be false. In 1992 President Yeltsin stated that there were no Americans held against their will in Russia... As a matter of fact Boris Yeltsin was shown contradicting himself on NBC's Dateline on June 16, 1992, saying that American POW's were possibly taken from Vietnam to the Soviet Union. Yeltsin's aides unofficially said Yeltsin was drunk and tried to discredit his comments.

There were several hearings held by the U.S. House National Security Subcomittee in 1992... Philip Corso, a former aide to President Eisenhower, testified that approximately 900 to 1200 American POWs were sent by rail to the Soviet Union during the Korean War. In addition, another 500 POWs who were ill were supposedly not returned during POW exchanges. According to Corso, many of the POWs were experimented upon and later executed. Possibly even worse, several KGB agents assumed the identities of some of the American POWs and were returned to American units for sabotage and other intelligence purposes.

Jan Senja, a Czechoslovakian General who defected in 1968... claimed that he saw American POWs in Prague, and saw orders saying that they were to be taken to Moscow for drug and radiation experiments. The KGB was interested, Senja testified, in finding ways to worsen the drug problem in the United States.

This is not as far-fetched as many Americans would like to believe. I have heard KGB officers supporting these claims. Moreover, the KGB claims to have trained the Columbia drug cartels about money laundering, drug production, drug smuggling, and drug distribution, and also provided equipment and intelligence information.

Through my KGB and GRU contacts, I heard many stories of how Stalin and other leaders initiated many long-term efforts to undermine American society. Their main effort was to increase violence inside the United States, and their effort included paying selected Hollywood producers to produce violent and offensive films. The Soviet Union also provided financial support to the most aggressive and violent minority leaders. The Soviet Union always supported "agents of influence" who could either sway people to the Soviet point of view or cause general turmoil in the United States.

The Vietnam war was considered a major GRU success. In fact, the GRU believes it won the war. The GRU funded every major anti- war group (somebody should tell Jane Fonda that: Rixon). Of course the support often came through third parties or was otherwise disguised, but the Soviet Union pumped more than twice as much money into the antiwar campaign as it did to North Vietnamese military and economic support. The success for the GRU was that not only did their influence help win the Vietnam War, but they tore apart the entire social fabric of the USA and made military service a mark of shame.

Now I want to tell the public what I have also told to Senate investigators about the MIA/POW issues... based on what I had been told by other well-informed sources.

The Soviet Military presence in North Vietnam included dozens of GRU officers, perhaps a few dozen KGB officers, Spetznatz troops, Soviet Military Units maintaining anti-aircraft batteries, and representatives from the Ministry of Defense and General Staff.

GRU officers served as Military advisors to the Vietnamese intelligence services, providing battlefield intelligence assistance and helping to identify American POWs who might cooperate with Vietnam or the Soviet Union. If they found an American who agreed to cooperate they could train him how to spy in Vietnam, and might send him to Russia for advanced training. Then the GRU would arrange his escape from a POW camp or have him released during a POW exchange.

However, trainees who could not complete their training or were though to be faking their cooperation, would be given to the KGB. If the KGB was unsuccessful in reforming them, the prisoners would be sent to secured prison camps in the Soviet Union and most likely to their death.

At these camps, people could be killed for no reason. Some prisoners were given the choice of working in Soviet uranium and plutonium mines for five years, which is as good as a death sentence. It is also rumoured that the KGB transferred some failed agents to mental asylums. The POWs were kept in solitary confinement until they died.

Soviet involvement was highly sensitive. The GRU assigned agents with Asian features to Vietnam. They were often given Vietnamese uniforms and integrated directly into Vietnamese units....

As far as the torture of American prisoners goes, the GRU would not have been involved in this. The Vietnamese had everything they needed to get tactical information out of people. All it required was attaching electrodes to the genitals of American prisoners and giving a few cranks on the generator of a field radio. The Vietnamese also had truth serum provided to them by the GRU... So to sum up, the GRU's primary purpose in Vietnam was to recruit possible agents. If they had a possible agent, they would attempt to train him and possible send him to Russia for advanced training. Then his "escape" or POW transfer was secured....

Perhaps the most tell-tale sign of GRU involvement is the fact that any officers who were stationed in Vietnam have never been allowed outside of the Soviet Union..."

_____

The above are large quotes from pages 167-172 of Colonel Lunev's book.

I found the above most interesting reading and I couldn't help wondering about people in the USA, maybe some of them even in the government now, who used to be POWS. I wondered how many of those people had used their positions to continue to work as agents for Russia? Makes you think doesn't it?