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

219Zagreb, Morgan, – Svensson was on holiday in Sweden – arranged a briefing for Akashi. Morgan toldhim that the Croatian attack in the Krajina was imminent. Reliable intelligence had been received onthis, partly on the basis of Comint. Morgan reported nothing about Srebrenica; he had access to almostall US Sigint, and would certainly have mentioned that attack if he had seen any cause to do so. TheBritish intelligence unit in Sarajevo did not have any knowledge of the true intentions of the VRSeither. The regular consultations between the intelligence sections in Zagreb and Sarajevo reveals thatBHC was also unaware that the VRS intended to take over more than the southern tip of theenclave. 1165A former US intelligence officer who could follow the flow of intelligence to the intelligencesection in Zagreb stated that Comint is one of the most difficult forms of intelligence. An analyst needsto weigh up, translate and analyse all intercepts and compare them with other forms of intelligence suchas Humint. Nonetheless, Sigint was the best way of determining where the parties were located, orwanted people to think they were located. This officer also pointed out that unfortunately there wereno monitoring stations in Eastern Bosnia. In his opinion this could have provided valuable Comint,since the links between Belgrade, Pale and the VRS headquarters in Han Pijesak traversed this area.This US official was flooded with Sigint on a daily basis, but according to him this was mostlytactical military data and policy information; none of it had any reference to Srebrenica. He didhowever confirm that Morgan, the intelligence officer in Zagreb, shared this information as much aspossible with the generals Janvier and Ashton. This was indeed the aim of the American presence in theZagreb intelligence section. He was sure that there was no Sigint available with regard to the attack onSrebrenica. 1166 A foreign intelligence evaluation also concluded that at the tactical level Sigint providedlittle information about the activities of the warring factions below the corps level. 1167Exchange of Signals Intelligence elsewhere in BosniaComint was also supplied to the intelligence staff of the UNPROFOR Commander Smith in Sarajevo.As a British officer he received mostly intercepts from GCHQ, but this consisted mostly of tacticalmilitary messages from the warring factions. Smith’s staff in Sarajevo is not reported to have receivedany high-level Comint (such as conversations between Mladic and the Chief of Staff of the Yugoslavarmy, Perisic), but instead only tactical military traffic. According to British sources the GCHQ hadmajor problems intercepting this communications traffic because the VRS and the ABiH almost alwaysused secure land lines or Motorola walkie-talkies. The GCHQ sometimes managed to intercept thecommunications traffic between Mladic’s headquarters in Han Pijesak and the various communicationstowers. The intercept site at Gornji Vakuf was the primary station to achieve this. 1168On one other occasion valuable intercepts were managed. It was probably this same monitoringstation that was responsible for intercepting a conversation between an ABiH and a VRS commanderat the end of 1993. At this time heavy fighting was taking place around Mostar between Bosnian Croatsand Muslims. The ABiH, it seems, wanted to buy artillery shells from the VRS and to pay for these inGerman marks. After an agreement had been reached on the quantity and the means of transport – bytruck – the ABiH commander decided on another approach: he asked whether the VRS would bewilling to shell the Croat positions themselves. The VRS commander agreed to do this for an extracharge. When Lord Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg told Milosevic about this, he was furious.Karadzic, who was also present, confirmed that this had happened and promised that it would nothappen again. 11691165 Confidential interview (45).1166 Confidential interview (54).1167 Confidential interview (8).1168 Confidential interview (43).1169 Owen, Balkan Odyssey, pp. 384-385.