[FPSPACE] Book Says Russians Sank Ferry to Stop Space Technology from Reaching West

[james oberg]

JimO: "This sounds pretty lunatic to me. Has anybody seen anything that might
cofirm or deny its conpiratorial imaginations?" 

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Book Says Russians Sank Ferry to Stop Technology from Reaching West

BERLIN-A recently published book points to covert U.S.-Russian joint
ventures in transferring Soviet space technology to the West as being
behind the sinking of the Estonia, the passenger ferry that went down
while crossing the Baltic Sea to Stockholm on Sept. 28, 1994.

The book, Die Estonia, by Jutta Rabe, contains the first
comprehensive reconstruction of the disaster bringing together
eyewitness testimony, video evidence and official documents.

Rabe, a German TV-journalist, has been investigating the Estonia
catastrophe since the day of the sinking when she flew to Finland to
interview survivors.

The evidence Rabe presents suggests that on its final crossing,
Estonia, a well-known joint venture operating between Sweden and
Estonia, carried extremely sensitive cargo quite unlike the usual
contraband of illicit drugs and smuggled humans. Deep in the ship's
hold, loaded on trucks headed for the West, was the fruit of decades
of Soviet scientific research and development in space technology.

Although Rabe does not speculate about what was being transported,
she points to a list of items found in a New York Times article by
William J. Broad from Nov. 4, 1991.

Broad described the technology Pentagon officials were interested in
buying from the Soviet space program. Russell Seitz from the Olin
Center for Strategic Studies at Harvard University called it "the
yard sale at the end of history."

An incident in early 1991 revealed how much the U.S. military
establishment coveted certain items of the Soviet space program. When
a model of the Topaz 2 reactor, a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite,
was displayed at a Washington symposium, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) stopped it from being returned, saying that would
constitute "the illegal export of nuclear technology from the United
States."

It took Richard Verga, from the Strategic Defense Initiative
Organization (SDIO) program at the Pentagon, the State Department and
the Commerce Department to persuade the NRC to let the exhibit go home.

International Scientific Products, Inc., (ISP) a San Jose, Calif.-
based group, announced plans to buy one of the Soviet reactors to
help the U.S. develop a similar system. At the time, ISP was engaged
in a joint-venture with Russian company International Energy
Technologies (INERTEK), based at the Kurchatov Research Center in
Moscow. The now defunct ISP reportedly worked with SDIO.

The Pentagon had announced its intention in 1991 to spend $12
million to buy an advanced Soviet nuclear reactor for generating
power in space. Leonard Caveny, deputy director of innovative science
and technology at the SDIO, traveled to the Soviet space labs near
Moscow, where a team of experts tested a tiny space engine that uses
magnetic fields instead of fuel to move a spacecraft.

This amazing device, necessary for space-based anti-missile programs
such as "Brilliant Pebbles," fit in the palm of a hand and was
available for less than $1 million.

"It's very moderately priced," Caveny told a reporter before his
visit to Russia. Verga said the price included all associated flight
hardware.

"This kind of engine has been kicking around on pa per in this
country for 30 years, but never in space," Verga said. "The Soviets
are actually flying these things."

The Soviets had plutonium-238 and heat-resistant alloys completely
unknown in the West, including one made of palladium and osmium able
to withstand temperatures to 3,600 degrees Celsius.

The Air Force was reportedly interested in the RD-170, reportedly
the best liquid-fuel rocket engine in the world.

"The shopping spree, begun by the military" soon attracted a number
of federal agencies who visited the Soviet Union in the early '90s
"to evaluate a host of high technologies," Broad wrote.

There was, however, considerable resistance to this "shopping spree"
by U.S. space technology companies who strongly opposed being
undersold at the Soviet "yard sale," according to NASA Administrator
Admiral Richard Truly.

There were also different opinions at different levels of
management: "It's schizophrenic," one industry expert said. "Middle
management will talk to the Soviets, who get all excited. But when it
goes to the next step, upper management is not interested, leaving
the Soviets up in the air. That's also the problem on the Soviet
side. Middle management tries to cut a deal."

Rabe says "middle-management" used joint ventures like ISP to
transfer technology and names the players.

In 1993, a U.S. Army colonel named Aleksander Einseln, who worked at
NATO headquarters in Brussels, left his home near San Jose to take
over the command of the former Soviet military forces in his native
Estonia, which became independent in 1991.

Einseln continued to report to NATO command from his position in the
former Soviet republic until early 1995.

While Einseln probably knew about the technology shipment on Estonia
and apparently provided troops to escort it to the harbor, Rabe told
AFP she does not think he was the author of the ill-fated transfer
operation.

A high-ranking military attaché from the German Bundesmarine told
Rabe that when he visited Einseln in his office in the Estonian
capital, Tallinn, for a meeting on the day of the disaster, he asked
about the sinking.

"That was an attack against us," said. Einseln.

Einseln, however, later denied being in Tallinn on Sept. 28 and told
reporters, including German Spiegel TV, that he had been in the
United States that day.

Hours after, the Estonian chief of Estline, the company that
operated Estonia, said the ferry had been attacked.

Estline's chief, Johannes Johanson, said, "Estonia was sunk by
assault."

Rabe explains how divers hired by the Swedish government spent hours
breaking into cabins frantically searching for a black attaché case
carried by a Russian space technology dealer, Aleksandr Voronin.

Voronin owned a company in Tallinn called "Kosmos Association" while
his brother, Valeri, had a similar company in Moscow that traded
weapons and space technology.

The official divers worked for Rockwater, a subsidiary of Brown &
Root Energy Services (BRES), and had signed lifetime contracts
obliging them to remain silent about what they did on the wreck
resting 250 feet below the surface.

BRES is a subsidiary of Halliburton, formerly directed by Vice
President Dick Cheney since 1995.

Rabe told AFP that Rockwater was not the low bidder but received the
job by Johan Franson, head of the Swedish Maritime Administration.

Secrecy, Rabe says, was of paramount importance.

According to Rabe, video footage from the official dive, done during
the first four days of December 1994, shows how divers frantically
searched the cabins breaking the locks to find a black leather case.

Finally, the case was found in Cabin No. 6130, a cabin usually used
by one of the ferry's missing captains, Avo Piht. The diver read from
the case: "It says Aleksandr Voronin. Does that ring any bells up
there?"

Rabe points to a group of Russian nationalists from the Soviet
intelligence agencies as being the culprits behind the actual sinking
of Estonia. According to Rabe's sources, the so-called Felix Group
included Vladimir Putin and Ivan Ivanov, respectively the current
president and foreign minister of Russia, who were strongly opposed
to the wholesale looting of the Soviet arsenal.

The window of easy access to Soviet military secrets slammed shut in
July 1998 when Putin was appointed director of Russia's Federal
Security Service. The Voronin company was liquidated and the American
firms that dealt with them went out of business.

According to Rabe, the sinking of Estonia is summed up in one of the
book's concluding sentences: "It was the perfect coup, which could
have only been carried out by secret services or groups which include
former members of the secret services as members, like the networks
of terrorists, regardless of their origin or motivation."

Source: American Free Press
http://www.americanfreepress.net/Censored/31_New_Book_Says_Russians_S
ank%20.htm
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