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

216Another way of retaining some independence from the NSA and GCHQ is not to admit theseservices onto one’s sovereign territory. The Scandinavian countries, France, Belgium and theNetherlands have succeeded in this resolve to date. In the countries where US ground stations arelocated, this has been a constant source of diplomatic tension. Some Third Parties, such as Turkey,used the presence of these ground stations to make extra financial and material demands on theAmericans; the NSA responded to this by gradually closing its ground stations there.In fact, the history of the Cold War shows that when it comes to Sigint no intelligence service isreally the friend of another service; instead, there are only intelligence services of countries that arefriends with each other. In the world of Sigint all NATO and EU member states spy on each other.The forerunners of the NSA and GCHQ started this during World War II, and have never stoppeddoing it since 1945. These services and the Canadian CSE still read the coded telegrams of the largerand smaller NATO and EU members states, including those of the Netherlands. The Dutch diplomaticcode was broken back in 1943, and in the 1960s Dutch diplomatic coded cables were still being read bythe NSA. In the 1950s, as appears from an internal newsletter, Dutch was one of the languages taughtin the translation training; this was still the case in 2001. 1148 In 2000 the GCHQ openly advertised on itswebsite for analysts who spoke Dutch. The CSE in Ottawa is also able, thanks to the collaboration inthe UKUSA alliance, to read secret Dutch code telegrams. Inside the Netherlands intelligencecommunity, it is known that this country is high on the list of targets of the biggest NSA base in theUnited Kingdom, Menwith Hill. Every hour this station scans more than 2 million domestic andforeign telephone calls. 1149 The above account shows that the international exchange of Sigint has notalways been a smooth affair. In particular the exchange of high-level Comint has often proved to beproblematic, as such intelligence gives direct insights into the capabilities of the monitoring service inquestion.Exchange between monitoring services with regard to BosniaThe previous sections have indicated that political differences are sometimes an inhibiting factor in theexchange of Sigint. It can thus be assumed, for instance, that in view of the tense relations betweenGreece (pro-Serbia) and Turkey (pro-Bosnia) little intelligence was exchanged between these countries.It was less difficult to exchange military-tactical Sigint and Elint. Such intelligence was generallyreleased easily. During the conflict in Bosnia much Elint was exchanged between the NATO alliesbetween 1992 and 1995. This intelligence was channelled to the Linked Intelligence Operations CentreEurope (LOCE) network of the American Joint Analysis Center (JAC) in Molesworth (see Chapter 3).This joint system handled mostly Elint, as is indicated by the daily intelligence summaries of the JAC.This related chiefly to emissions from hostile radar stations and other air defence systems. Tacticalmilitary Comint was also contained in this LOCE system, with the main focus on lower-levelcommunications traffic. But there is no trace in LOCE of the ‘better’ high-level Comint, such asconversations between Milosevic and Mladic: assuming these were intercepted. 1150The question to be asked now is why the information in this LOCE network was so limited andcontained so little Comint. To begin with one should consider the highly limited distribution of thisintelligence product. High-level Comint was indeed available to the Americans, but it was not shared.There were further problems at the NSA, however. Between 1990 and 1998 almost 7000 employees leftthe organization, which strongly reduced the processing capacity. This personnel problem, togetherwith the strong growth in international communications traffic, better encryption, increased use offibre-optic cables and communications satellites such as Intelsat and Inmarsat, meant that the NSA wasgradually ‘going deaf’. Interception no longer seemed a problem, but processing certainly was. Thecapabilities of the NSA and its UKUSA partners are certainly impressive: around 1995 more than 901148 Bamford, Body of Secrets, pp. 134 and 616.1149 Udo Ulfkotte, ‘Die Nato ist im bilde, doch gibt sie nur wenig preis’, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, 10/04/99.1150 Confidential interviews (31) and (32).