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

229The same month new articles appeared in the press. According to Daniel Plesch, the director ofthe British American Security Council, his organization had seen intercepts, which indicated priorAmerican knowledge of the VRS attack on Srebrenica. He also mentioned intercepted calls between theYugoslav Chief of Staff, Perisic, and Mladic. The contacts reportedly concerned the planned attack andlater executions of Muslims. This information, said Plesch, was not passed on by the US services to theUNPROFOR and NATO partners. 1216 A British researcher had also heard rumours about the existenceof Comint relating to the VRS attack. He had tried to track this down, but had never made anydiscoveries. According to the rumour, the NSA and the CIA did have intercepted messages, but thesewere probably never shared with the GCHQ or other western services. 1217Janvier is said to have been told about the VRS plans for an attack on the enclave at least twoweeks in advance by the French Military Intelligence Service, the Direction du Renseignement Militaire. TheFrench services, just like the British ones, are said to have managed this without US intelligence. ThisComint was reportedly passed to Janvier in his capacity as French commander, not as commander ofthe UN forces. 1218 In Chapter 8 it will be shown that the veracity of these reports must be doubted.Little is known about the British Comint successes against the VRS and the ABiH in theBalkans. In Bosnia the Army Intelligence Corps operated from Gornji Vakuf in close collaborationwith the French and Canadian troops within UNPROFOR. This mostly concerned operations aimed atgathering tactical military intelligence on the VRS and the ABiH, to be used in briefing commanders.This British Army base also later functioned as a conduit: intercepts from GCHQ were passed on to aspecial British Black Box intelligence cell in Sarajevo that was equipped with special communications1219equipment. Staff gave daily briefings to General Rose and later to General Smith. The GCHQ wasthe major supplier of Comint to the UK Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS): this mostly comprisedtactical Sigint on troop movements, with logistical information on matters such as fuel stocks andsummons to meetings obtained through Elint. In 1995 the priorities of the GCHQ lay almostexclusively with Bosnia, but UHF/VHF traffic was often very hard to intercept, even from Britishships in the Adriatic. The only possibility in this respect was the British monitoring station in GornjiVakuf.It has already been mentioned that British Sigint did not provide a clear picture because theVRS and the VJ used couriers and secure direct lines. There was only a limited exchange between theBritish and the ABiH, because the Bosnian Muslims actually interpreted everything in the sense that theUN should join them in the fight against the VRS. High-level intercepts, such as those of theconversations between Mladic and Perisic, were in any case not provided to the DIS, according toformer staff members. Such intercepted messages may have existed, but if so then they remained at thevery highest levels.According to members of the DIS, high-level intercepts may have been gathered by the NSA,but this agency kept much intelligence to itself. Moreover it sometimes lasted a very long time – one totwo weeks – before NSA analyses reached the desks of the DIS. The British could do little about this,however, because the GCHQ was dependent on the NSA when it came to Sigint in Bosnia. After all,this agency had greater capabilities due to its satellites and special aircraft. Besides this, the relationshipbetween the American and British services became increasingly difficult: the British had a much moredifferentiated view of the conflict than the Americans. This more differentiated British vision led theCIA and DIA to limit the supply of information to the DIS from early 1995 onwards. 1220 This alsomeant that the British were deprived of intelligence regarding the actions of the ABiH.1216 Ambrose Evand-Pritchard, ‘Americans bow to forces of realpolitik in Bosnia: US steps in only when the minefield isclear’, The Sunday Telegraph, 26/11/95.1217 Confidential interview (79). See also: Urban, UK Eyes, p. 217.1218 Andreas Zumach, ‘Grosser Lauschangriff auf Srebrenica’ (Major bugging operation for Srebrenica), in: Die Tageszeitung,30/10/95 and Ian Bruce, ‘Allies hamper inquiry’, The Glasgow Herald, 01/12/95.1219 Urban, UK Eyes, pp. 213-215.1220 Confidential interview (8).