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

210According to press reports the BND operated from a monitoring station in the Austrian Alps.This station was originally manned by the Austrian Army, which used it to monitor signals in theformer Yugoslavia. The Bundesnachrichtendienst is said to have been involved in setting up a jointintelligence centre of the BND, the CIA and the NSA in Augsburg (Germany). At this centre Sigintdata from the NSA and BND was combined with Humint information gathered by both services in theformer Yugoslavia. When the Bosnian crisis reached its climax in the summer of 1995, the BND flewdaily Sigint missions with a Breguet Atlantique aircraft over the Adriatic. This aircraft had been activesince 1992 and was chiefly directed at Serb military activities in Bosnia. 1114 Interviews by the authorestablished that the BND was initially quite successful from 1993 onwards as regards Sigint operationsagainst the VRS and VJ. However, the Bosnian Serbs soon found out and began to use different cryptoand better equipment. The BND could not any longer eavesdrop on the Bosnian Serb traffic. For thisreason there was no Sigint available regarding the VRS attack on Srebrenica. 1115The war in Bosnia also brought the German Sigint services an alliance. In 1995 the NSAconcluded the first tripartite airborne tactical Sigint exchange programme between the American,German and French Air Forces. As part of this agreement, the German Luftwaffe flew Sigint missionsover the Adriatic in support of ground operations in Bosnia, while the French Air Force flew Sigintmissions with the same goal over the Mediterranean. In addition, the American, German and FrenchAir Forces agreed to share all the intelligence they gathered and to distribute it via the headquarters ofthe NSA/CSS Europe in Stuttgart.1116 Another source of information for the Germans was the closecooperation with the French in Austria, where a joint French-German unit was active on the border tothe former Yugoslavia. The German contribution was drawn from the 320th Fernmelde Regiment (SignalsRegiment) and a joint monitoring station was maintained in the Austrian Alps to the North of Slovenia.This station was formally under the command of the Austrian Military Intelligence Service, but theSigint was shared with the Bundesnachrichtendienst and probably with French services too. 1117The French Signals intelligence serviceIn recent years more has become known about the activities of the French services responsible forintercepting diplomatic and military traffic. 1118 The French foreign intelligence service, the Service dedocumentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage, was set up on 28 December 1945. This contained two unitsresponsible for Sigint: the Service des matériels techniques, better known as the Service 26, and the Service 28,responsible for intercepting and decoding foreign diplomatic coded cables sent by the foreignembassies in Paris. On 4 April 1982 this service was given a new name: the Direction générale de la securitéexterieure (DGSE). Following the arrival of a new director for this service, in January 1988, its budget forSigint was increased considerably. In the period 1970-1980 Sigint was mostly handled by this service. TheFrench Military Intelligence Service was much less involved in this area.The Foreign Intelligence Service and the Military Intelligence Service operated jointly in theMediterranean with a spy ship, the Berry. The Sigint infrastructure of the intelligence service abroad wasfurther expanded in the 1990s. In 1996 the number of employees totalled more than 2500, while newmonitoring stations were built on the Plateau d’Albion in the Haute-Provence and in Saint-Laurent-dela-Salanqueon the border with Spain. To begin with the main task of these stations was to interceptcommunications traffic from African countries, but they were later directed towards Bosnia as well.1114 Bruce, ‘Allies Hamper Inquiry’, The Glasgow Herald, 01/12/95; Ian Bruce, ‘Why These Men Remain Free’, The GlasgowHerald, 09/05/97; Dierhart Goos, ‘Marine-Officier soll Kfor-Abteilung im Kosovo führen’ (Navy officer to lead KFOR section inKosovo), Die Welt, 13/05/00 and ‘Report Details Luftwaffe Support for NATO’, in: FBIS-WEU-95-171, 03/09/95.1115 Confidential interviews (98) and (99).1116 Biography, Lt. Col. Garry E. Sitze, USAF, undated. See: http://jitc-emh.army.mil/iop_conf/bios/sitze.htm.1117 Confidential Interviews (21) and (45).1118 For the following brief history of French Sigint operations, see: Roger Faligot, ‘France, Sigint and the Cold War’, in: Aid& Wiebes (eds.), Secrets, pp. 177-208 as well as information from the Intelligence Resource Program of the FAS. See:www.fas.org.