FBI CONSTRUCTED SECRET TUNNEL FOR EAVESDROPPING UNDER SOVIET EMBASSY IN WASHINGTON








WASHINGTON, MARCH 5. /FROM RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENT NIKOLAI VLASOV/ -- Representatives of the US secret services hold the view that FBI staffer Robert Hanssen, recently arrested on the charge of spying in favour of the USSR and Russia for fifteen years, disclosed to Moscow the information on the construction of a secret tunnel for eavesdropping under the new complex of the then Soviet and now Russian Embassy in Washington, the C.N.N. TV company quoted informed sources as saying.


	According to the information which both former and current American officials confirm on the basis of anonymity, the tunnel was designed for eavesdropping the telecommunications and talks inside the Embassy building in the Wisconsin Avenue. It was built in the 1980s and was finally put into service only in the middle of the 1990s. It remains unknown when exactly the tunnel was dug, for how long it was used, and whether it exists now.


	Speaking in the C.N.N. programme on Sunday, US Vice-President Dick Cheney refused to comment on this information. If such an operation really was I would not be in a position to speak about it, he emphasized.


	According to the sources, the US secret services also presume that Robert Hanssen disclosed to Moscow also information on a supersecret operation of the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) of the USA aimed at installing eavesdropping devices at strategic points abroad.


	It was The New York Times that reported about the existence of the tunnel for the first time on Sunday. Citing unidentified sources in the US intelligence circles, it wrote, in particular, that the tunnel was used jointly by the FBI and the NSA which are in charge of radiotechnical intelligence, and was part of the wider US efforts to eavesdrop and track the Russian facilities and personnel working in the USA.


	According to the newspaper, the construction of the tunnel cost several hundreds of millions of dollars and was the most expensive intelligence operation in the history of the USA.


	The New York Times also noted that the tunnel was built at the time when the American leadership hypocritically accused the Soviet authorities of planting eavesdropping devices in the new building of the US Embassy in Moscow. The then FSB chief Bakatin, repeating Hanssen's deed to a certain extent, unilaterally disclosed to the Americans the places where the bugging devices were planted, without bearing any responsibility for this to his own state.