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106TH CONGRESS
1ST SESSION
H. RES. 380
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives concerning the location
and removal of weapons caches placed in the United States by the
Russian or Soviet Government.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
NOVEMBER 16, 1999
Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania (for himself, Mr. OBERSTAR, Mr. GILMAN, Mr.
SAXTON, Mr. BURTON
of Indiana, Mr. HILL
of Montana, Mr.
KUYKENDALL, Mr. CAMPBELL, Mr. WALDEN of Oregon, Mr. SWEENEY,
Mr. TRAFICANT, Mr. PITTS, Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky, Mr. BARTLETT of
Maryland, Mr. WICKER, Mr. LOBIONDO, Mr. WELDON of Florida, Mr.
PACKARD, Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi, Mr. GOODE, Mr. CONDIT, Mr.
CRAMER, Mr. REYES, Mr. RODRIGUEZ, Mr. DICKS, Mr. ANDREWS, Mr.
BORSKI, Mr. HOLDEN, Mr. KLINK, and Mr. ABERCROMBIE) submitted
the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Inter-
national Relations, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services,
for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case
for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the
committee concerned
RESOLUTION
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives con-
cerning the location and removal of weapons caches
placed in the United States by the Russian or Soviet
Government.
Whereas General Alexander Lebed, Secretary of the Russian
Security Council, told a United States congressional dele-
gation in May 1997 that an audit of Russia’s nuclear
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stockpile found that dozens of atomic demolition units
(often referred to as ‘‘nuclear suitcases’’) were unac-
counted for and could be in terrorist hands;
Whereas the Russian Government has denied the existence of
any such nuclear suitcases and the United States admin-
istration has stated that there is no reason not to believe
the Russian Government;
Whereas Alexei Yablokov, a former Member of the Russian
Security Council, in testimony before the Military Re-
search and Development Subcommittee of the Committee
on Armed Services on October 2, 1997, supported Gen-
eral Lebed’s claims that Russia had in fact manufactured
nuclear suitcase weapons;
Whereas General Lebed, in testimony before that sub-
committee on March 19, 1998, publicly acknowledged the
existence of Russian nuclear suitcase weapons for sabo-
tage purposes;
Whereas Stanislav Lunev, the highest ranking GRU defector
in the United States, testified before that subcommittee
that while he was stationed at the Russian Embassy in
the United States, he was assigned the task of identifying
sites for the pre-positioning of man-portable nuclear
weapons in the United States and was specially trained
to disguise and camouflage such weapons;
Whereas in a December 1998 meeting between Defense Min-
ister Sergeyev of Russia and a delegation of Members of
the House of Representatives, the Russian administration
admitted to having built nuclear suitcase weapons;
Whereas Christopher Andrew (author of ‘‘The Sword and the
Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of
the KGB’’) and Oleg Gordievsky (author of ‘‘KGB: The
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Inside Story’’) testified before the Military Research and
Development Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed
Services on October 26, 1999, about KGB operations
during the Soviet era and contemporary Russia threat
perceptions;
Whereas Oleg Gordievsky was the KGB’s station chief in
London during the early 1980’s and is the highest rank-
ing KGB defector in the United States;
Whereas Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB defector and a former
KGB archivist who absconded from Russia with the most
comprehensive collection of classified notes on KGB oper-
ations ever to reach the West, revealed the KGB’s pre-
positioning on NATO and United States territory of
caches of arms and high explosives intended for sabotage
operations in the event of war;
Whereas the disclosure of the KGB’s weapons predeployment
plan has led to the unearthing of weapons caches and ex-
plosives in Switzerland and Belgium and has resulted in
searches for such caches in the United States by non-
Government entities;
Whereas the Mitrokhin files state that there are numerous
sites for such caches throughout the United States, in
places including Montana, Minnesota, California, Texas,
and New York, but do not give specific locations of those
caches;
Whereas the United States Government has made almost no
efforts to locate Russian weapons sites on United States
territory;
Whereas the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has con-
firmed that the United States has information as to the
general vicinity of predeployed Russian weapons caches in
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the United States, such as the one reported to be located
near Brainerd, Minnesota, but does not have specific lo-
cations;
Whereas both the FBI and Department of Defense have con-
firmed that the United States Government has not asked
the Russian Government about these sites, despite the
fact that the United States has known about these sites
since the Mitrokhin files were opened to the West in
1992;
Whereas the United States still lacks the critical information
necessary to remove the known dangers to its citizens
posed by those pre-positioned weapons caches;
Whereas the testimonies of Christopher Andrew and Oleg
Gordievsky corroborate Stanislav Lunev’s testimony con-
cerning GRU operations involving the predeployment of
nuclear suitcase weapons in the United States; and
Whereas the testimonies of Andrew, Gordievsky, and Lunev
leave open a window of opportunity that the caches that
have been located in NATO territory could include the
nuclear suitcase weapons that General Alexander Lebed
was unable to inventory: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Rep-
resentatives that the President should immediately trans-
mit to Congress a report containing—
(1) the President’s certification as to whether
or not the United States Government has ever re-
quested the Government of Russia to provide to the
United States information on the specific sites in the
United States at which either the Russian or Soviet