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

195In addition Comint can be important even if the code is not broken, because an analysis of thetraffic in combination with Elint can enable intelligence services to establish the location, movementsand even the strength of the Armed Forces. 1036 Increasing transmission activity from a militaryheadquarters can, for instance, be an indication of an imminent military operation. Before this chaptermoves on to a closer examination of the claims made in publications regarding interceptedcommunications traffic and the possible successes and failures in this Sigint war between the warringparties, Section 2 will first outline the advantages and disadvantages of Sigint. This is important becausethese are also reflected in the war in Bosnia during the period 1992 to 1995.Subsequently, section 3 devotes brief attention to the history of the most important SigintServices that focused on the war in Bosnia. A description is given of the largest (in budget and staff)service in the world, the American National Security Agency (NSA). Attention is also devoted toseveral other western bodies, such as the Canadian Communications Security Establishment (CSE), theBritish Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the German Bundesnachrichtendienst(BND) and the French Direction du Renseignement Militaire (DRM). This section also describes theresources that these services employed in Bosnia.Section 4 then turns to the difficult issue of exchanging Comint (especially of a strategic nature)between friendly Western Services. The results of Comint are generally subject to strict secrecy and arenot automatically shared by Western services with sister services. Even within NATO Sigint is notexchanged with full freedom; this is partly because the Intelligence-gathering Service does not wish toreveal its own capacities. A variety of accounts have been published regarding the results achieved inthe field of Comint.In Section 5 these are compared and supplemented by the author’s own research. On the basisof the goals of Comint and Elint a distinction is made between the following categories: firstly thediplomatic and military communications traffic of the warring factions (the military targets), such as theVJ in Serbia; secondly the VRS in the Republika Srpska and the ABiH in Bosnia; thirdly the Elinttargets in and around Bosnia; and finally UNPROFOR as a target. What can be said about thesuccesses and the reliability of the published accounts? This section also considers the capacities andactivities of the Afdeling Verbindingsinlichtingen (Sigint Department) of the Netherlands MilitaryIntelligence Service (MIS). Finally, the conclusion in Section 6 looks back at the Sigint war between1992 and 1995 and examines the role and the importance of Comint during the war in Bosnia.2. The advantages and disadvantages of Signals IntelligenceLittle is known about Sigint during the Cold War and following the fall of the Berlin Wall. 1037 A blanketof secrecy has always lain over this subject. Sigint is rather technical in nature and it is thus oftendifficult to explain its importance. This is one reason why scientists and journalists have generallyavoided the subject. The little attention that has been devoted to Sigint in print mostly relates to WorldWar II. 1038 Nonetheless, thanks to the specific information that it provided Sigint has been of enormousimportance in military conflicts during and after the Cold War. Since time immemorial, governmentshave always wanted to know what their enemies (but also their friends) are up to. The easiest way tofind this out is simply to listen to their communications traffic. By way of illustration, the former headof the US Navy Comint organization wrote: ‘The ambition of every nation has been to developunbreakable ciphers for its own use and to solve every cipher in use by its actual or potentialenemies.’ 10391036 Polmar & Allen, Spybook, 1998, p. 131 and Richelson, The US Intelligence Community, pp. 24-27.1037 This section makes extensive use of: Matthew Aid & Cees Wiebes, ‘Introduction on the importance of SIGINT in theCold War’, Aid & Wiebes (eds.), Secrets, pp. 1-24.1038 For a detailed discussion of this see: Matthew M. Aid, ‘Not So Anonymous: Parting the Veil of Secrecy About the NSA’,in: Theoharis (ed.), Culture, pp. 65-67.1039 NA, RG-457, CP, SRH-264, A Lecture on Communications Intelligence by Captain J.N. Wenger, USN, 14/08/46, p. 8.