and appreciated the quality of Czechoslovak intelligence reports that were important for sustaining the Cuban revolution in its early years. Cubans wanted to rely on the StB in building DI and the Ministry of Interior. However the Soviets soon stopped such initiatives. Czechoslovak intelligence cooperated with DI on top secret Operation Manuel which lasted from 1962 to 1969, moving 1179 Latin American revolutionaries via Prague back to Latin America. Czechoslovak intelligence helped DI to falsify the passports of Latin Americans who trained in Cuba to become guerrillas. Shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Moscow invited 1,500 DI agents, including Che Guevara, to the KGB's Moscow Center for intensive training in intelligence operations. Dismayed by Cuban debâcles in Zaire (1977 and 1978) and in Bolivia (1966–67) as well as by a perceived growing independence from Moscow, the Soviets sought a more active role in shaping the DI. In 1970 a team of KGB advisers led by Gen. Viktor Semyonov was sent to the DI to purge it of officers and agents considered anti-Soviet by the KGB. Manuel Piñeiro, becoming increasingly upset at the co-option of the DI by the Soviets, was removed during the 1970 purge and replaced with the pro-Soviet José Méndez Cominches as head of the DI. Semyonov also took this opportunity to oversee a rapid expansion of the DI's "western" operations. By 1971, 70 percent of the Cuban diplomats in London were actually DI agents and proved invaluable to Moscow after the British government's mass expulsion of Soviet intelligence officers. In 1962 the Soviet Union opened its largest foreign SIGINT site in Lourdes, Cuba, approximately from Havana. The Lourdes facility is reported to cover a 28 square-mile (73 km2) area, with 1,000 to 1,500 Soviet and later solely Russian engineers, technicians, and military personnel working at the base. Those familiar with the Lourdes facility have confirmed that the base has multiple groups of tracking dishes and its own satellite system, with some groups used to intercept telephone calls, faxes, and computer communications in general, and with other groups used to cover targeted telephones and devices. The Soviets also collaborated with the DI to assist Central Intelligence Agency defector Philip Agee in the publication of the Covert Action Information Bulletin. Operations abroad Throughout its 40-year history the DI has been actively involved in aiding leftist movements, primarily in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. There have