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

202communications traffic via walkie-talkies, radio telephones or VHF traffic, for instance, is hard to pickup. Turning to the Bosnian conflict, the question is which organizations monitored, or ‘targeted’, thevarious warring factions (especially the VRS and the ABiH). First of all we will look at the AmericanNational Security Agency (NSA).The National Security AgencySince its creation in November 1952, the NSA has been responsible for the management and control ofall activities relating to the gathering and processing of Sigint for the American federal government.With regard to the history of the NSA, an expert states: ‘It is extremely difficult for an outsider toaccurately evaluate the current importance of this agency to the US foreign intelligence effort. Noagency of the US intelligence community has been able to better insulate itself from public scrutiny.’ 1070In the year 2002 the NSA is the biggest intelligence service in the world. It is the primarygatherer and processor of Comint and Foreign Instrumentation Sigint (Fisint), and since 1958 has beenthe central coordinator for all Elint. The NSA produces only Sigint, and not finished intelligencereports based on analysis. This responsibility lies with the consumers of the NSA product within theAmerican intelligence community. Furthermore the NSA is responsible for monitoring the security ofthe signals, the communications traffic and the data traffic of the American federal government. Withinthe NSA this is known as Information Security (Infosec). Since the mid-1980s the NSA has also beenresponsible for the Operations Security (Opsec) programme of the American government.The most important customers of the NSA are the White House, the Pentagon, theDepartments of State, Energy, Trade, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the CIA, DIA, theJoint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the leadership of the US Armed Forces, the three Military IntelligenceServices and several foreign intelligence services with which the NSA cooperates. At the end of the1960s more than 100,000 people worked for the NSA. At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989,some 75,000 American military personnel, civilians and temporary staff were engaged in Sigintoperations in the United States and at bases overseas. Of these 75,000, more than 25,000 peopleworked at the headquarters in Fort Meade (Maryland). 1071The NSA is not the only agency engaged in Sigint, but it is at the top of a pyramid formed bythree other Military intelligence services: the US Army Intelligence and Security Command, the NavalSecurity Group and the Air Intelligence Agency. The NSA also closely collaborates with the Sigintdivision of the CIA, the Office of Technical Collection, 1072 and the National Reconnaissance Office(NRO), which manages the US spy satellites. 1073 Since 1962 the United States has had special Sigintsatellites such as Magnum, Orion and Jumpseat operating in space, as well as special Comint satellitessuch as Vortex and Intruder which have the job of ‘hoovering up’ Comint. 1074Right from the start the NSA took a strong interest in the conflict in Bosnia. The activities wereincreased further after Clinton had been sworn in as president in January 1993. In the same year thelack of translators and analysts who spoke Serbo-Croat proved to be a problem. The NSA thought itwould encounter problems if Clinton decided to make a military contribution to UNPROFOR, and theNSA decided to place an advertisement in daily newspapers in order to recruit translators. On April1993 this ad appeared in the Commerce Business Daily, announcing the need for ‘a group of approximately1070 Matthew M. Aid, ‘The Time of Troubles: The US NSA in the Twenty-First Century’, in: Intelligence and National Security,Vol. 15 (2000) 3, p. 2.1071 Matthew Aid, ‘The National Security Agency and the Cold War’, in: Aid & Wiebes (eds.), Secrets, pp. 27-66 and CIA, AConsumer’s Guide to Intelligence, September 1993, p. 17.1072 Richelson, Wizards, pp. 254-265.1073 Matthew M. Aid, ‘The Time of Troubles: The US National Security Agency in the Twenty-First Century’, in: Intelligenceand National Security, Vol. 15 (2000) 3, pp. 2-3.1074 Richelson, Intelligence Community, pp. 176-180.