C. Wiebes - Intelligence en de oorlog in Bosnië 1992-1995. De rol van de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten - Engels

116assessment of the local security situation was drawn up in July 1994 for the CDS and the seniorMinistry of Defence officials. This was in support of the Dutch presidency of the WEU. 541 Informationfiles on Yugoslavia were also drafted to provide general information on the conflict. These documentswere destined for observers who were dispatched by the UN or within the framework of the ECMM,and for staff officers of the Dutch units, of BHC and UNPROFOR staff. 542The question of the extent to which the MIS/CO or MIS/Army were in a position to provide atimely and accurate prediction of the attack on Srebrenica, or received relevant timely warnings, will becovered comprehensively in Chapter 8, ‘Was Srebrenica an intelligence failure?’7. The output of the MIS/Air ForceAnother important producer of intelligence was the MIS/Air Force’s Intelligence Department. Afterall, the involvement of the Royal Netherlands Air Force in the war, within the framework of the DenyFlight operation, meant that the MIS/Air Force took an active part. Every day, the Air ForceOperation Centre published the Deny Flight Intelligence Summary (DFIS). One of the analysts at theMIS/Air Force had considerable experience of the war in Bosnia. In 1993, he was present in Italy as anintelligence officer in Villafranca. There he discovered that there were many ‘holes’ in the intelligenceon Yugoslavia. For instance, AFSOUTH, the southern NATO command, maintained that a certainanti-aircraft missile installation (a SAM site) was operational in Serbia, while AFCENT (the NATOcommand in Central Europe) asserted that it was not operational.This sort of intelligence was ‘nice’ for the pilots, because it raised the question of what wasactually right. Analysts were of the opinion that the DFIS could be better. The intelligence provision tothe unit in Italy was not deemed to be optimal. In this respect, the MIS/Air Force did engage in forceprotection, in contrast to the MIS/Army. It was for this reason that the MIS/Air Force Balkansanalysts started to give more intelligence to Villafranca, the Commander-in-Chief of the NetherlandsAir Force and the Air Force Board. The DFIS filled approximately 4 pages each day and always startedwith a political section, followed by a military section, and ended by detailing the violations of the flightban. The DFIS was issued every evening at 18.00 hours, and always went to SHAPE, the NATOorganization in Mons. The analysts worked about 60 hours a week and taking leave was out of thequestion. 543The Balkans section of the MIS/Air Force received intelligence support from Villafranca, wherean MIS/Air Force analyst operated. He had a direct line to The Hague. At Villafranca he receivedAmerican Imint, but it could never be established whether this came from a U-2 or a satellite. Inaddition, the photos were, according to a Dutch intelligence official, made a little ‘fuzzier’ to hide theactual resolution. The latter remark is probably incorrect. The photos were U-2 imagery, and were veryoften better than available satellite imagery due to high resolution from the film-based technology, aswell as the much lower altitude. According to a senior US intelligence analyst ‘no one had time to“fuzzy” pictures for specific consumers’. The U2 imagery was, according to this official, ideal fordissemination to other agencies, for it was completely releasable, coverage was so broad and revisittimes in most areas were nearly weekly; sometimes twice weekly. 544The MIS/Air Force analyst supplied as much material as possible for the Deny FlightIntelligence Summary. Among the resources at his disposal was the NATO Linked OperationalIntelligence Center Europe (LOCE) system. He also received the reports of the UNMOs and theCombined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Vicenza but also a daily NATO releasable air intelligencesummary from the purely US Joint Analysis Center (JAC) in Molesworth, disseminated via LOCE for541 MoD , Archive CDS, Head of Intelligence Department to CDS, No. DIS/94/095/1620, 22/07/94.542 The following serves as an example: MoD , Archive MIS/Army, Infomap Yugoslavia, 26/10/94.543 Confidential interview s (31 ) and ( 32).544 Confidential information (80).