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Report: Soviets hid nukes in US

By PAMELA R. HESS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 -- A congressman charged on Tuesday that the Soviet Union may have hidden explosives, radio-transmitters and possibly suitcase-sized nuclear weapons in the United States during the Cold War. Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., said the secret installations were to be used in sabotage operations against U.S. power systems and other key infrastructures in the event of a war or other major crisis. Two such caches discovered last winter in Switzerland and Belgium were identified in KGB archives that also suggest hidden U.S. sites exist, possibly in Brainerd, Minn., around an oil pipeline in Texas, and in New York, California and Montana. Some of the contents of the KGB archive were secreted out by Vasili Mitrokhin, a former archivist for the secretive Soviet intelligence organization. Mitrokhin's notes -- which form the basis of 'The Sword and Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB,' written with Christopher Andrew and published last month -- identified 12 precise locations in Western Europe where explosives and other equipment were hidden in booby-trapped sites. Officials in Switzerland and Belgium used the notes last winter to find two dangerous caches, lending credibility to the archivist's evidence. The explosives would be used to simultaneously bring down power supplies in the United States and generally cause havoc prior to a military strike, according to the notes. Weldon met with the FBI last week, including Director Louis Freeh, who confirmed the possibility that similar explosives could be buried around the United States.

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It was unclear exactly what a Soviet cache in Brainerd, Minn. -- made famous by the movie 'Fargo' -- would be used to target, and the town leaders are relatively uninterested. 'Right now I don't know if we necessarily have reason to believe there are hidden weapons here,' City Administrator Daniel Vogt told United Press International. 'A month ago (when Andrew's book was published) was the first we'd heard of it. We haven't really discussed it from a city standpoint,' he said. Andrew said at a hearing of the House Armed Services research and development subcommittee on Tuesday that he believes the ABC news program 'Nightline' has identified the location of one of the sites in Minnesota. 'It's impossible to estimate the total number of arms and radio caches in the United States,' Andrew said, as Mitrokhin's notes only covered a small sample of what was stored in the archives. Andrew warned the sites could be in a perilous state of disrepair and if disturbed are likely to explode and kill anyone nearby. Weldon and Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., sent a letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Oct. 22 requesting Russia be asked to provide detailed information on the location of any such sites. 'I am outraged the (Clinton) administration has not even asked the question of the Russians about where the specific sites are in the United States,' Weldon said at the hearing. 'We believe it is absolutely essential that the United States aggressively pursue the Russian government to identify all pre-deployed weapons sites in the United States and that we eliminate such remnants of the Cold War,' Weldon wrote. 'We are concerned that the United States still lacks the critical information necessary to remove these known dangers to its citizens.' Weldon also suggests in the letter that suitcase-sized Soviet 'atomic demolition units' may also be hidden in the United States, offering a perfect weapon for terrorists bent on destruction. With the disclaimer that 'no one knows what a Russian suitcase bomb would look like,' Weldon presented a mock-up of just such a weapon in a brown leather attache case at the opening of the hearing. ---

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Copyright 1999 by United Press International. All rights reserved. ---

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