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The Russian government had sources inside the American military command as the U.S. mounted the invasion of Iraq, and the Russians passed information to Saddam Hussein on troop movements and plans, according to Iraqi documents released as part of a Pentagon report.

The Russians relayed information to Saddam during the opening days of the 2003 war, including a crucial moment before the assault on Baghdad, according to the documents in the report Friday.

The unclassified report does not assess the value of the information or provide details beyond citing two captured Iraqi documents that say the Russians collected information from sources "inside the American Central Command" and that battlefield intelligence was provided to Saddam through the Russian ambassador in Baghdad.

A classified version of the Pentagon report, titled "Iraqi Perspectives Project," is not being made public.

In Moscow, a duty officer with Russia's Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report late Friday evening. No one answered the phones at the Defense Ministry.

At Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli declined to comment.

The Pentagon report cited two captured Iraqi documents on the matter of Russian intelligence, and the report also directly asserted that the intelligence link existed.

"Significantly, the regime was also receiving intelligence from the Russians that fed suspicions that the attack out of Kuwait was merely a diversion," the report's authors wrote. They cited as an example a document that was sent to Saddam on March 24, 2003, and captured by the U.S. military after Baghdad fell.

The document said: "The information that the Russians have collected from their sources inside the American Central Command in Doha is that the United States is convinced that occupying Iraqi cities are impossible," and that as a result the U.S. military would avoid urban combat.

Central Command's war-fighting headquarters is at an encampment in the desert just outside Doha, Qatar.

And from the Russian paper...................
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Russian Ambassador Probably Passed US War Plan to Iraq — Report

Created: 24.03.2006 13:12 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:12 MSK, 18 hours 12 minutes ago

MosNews

According to documents from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi leadership released by the U.S. government, the Russian ambassador disclosed the U.S. war plan to Iraq.

Two documents dated March 2003, on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion, and summarized by the ABC News Investigative Unit, described details of the U.S. military plan. The first document is a handwritten account of a meeting with the Russian ambassador Vladimir Teterenko and details his description of the composition, size, location and type of U.S. military forces arrayed in the Gulf and Jordan. The document includes the exact numbers of tanks, armored vehicles, different types of aircraft, missiles, helicopters, aircraft carriers, and other forces and also their exact locations. The ambassador also described the positions of two Special Forces units, ABC reported.

The second document is a typed account, signed by Deputy Foreign Minister Hammam Abdel Khaleq, which states that Teterenko told the Iraqis that the United States was planning to deploy its force into Iraq from Basra in the South and up the Euphrates, and would avoid entering major cities on the way to Baghdad, which is, in fact what happened. The documents also state “Americans are also planning on taking control of the oil fields in Kirkuk.” The information was obtained by the Russians from “sources at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar,” according to the document.

This document also includes an account of an incident in which several Iraqi Army officers (presumably seeking further elaboration of the U.S. war plans) contacted the Russian Embassy in Baghdad and stated that the ambassador was their source. This caused great embarrassment to Teterenko, and the officers were instructed “not to mention the ambassador again in that context.”

Teterenko is mentioned in documents released by the Volker Commission, which investigated the Oil for Food scandal, as receiving allocations of 3 million barrels of oil — worth roughly $1.5 million.

Russian Ambassador Probably Passed US War Plan to Iraq (http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/03/24/rusiraqplan.shtml)