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

238were routed, such as the UN communications traffic. Furthermore, the Serbs and Bosnian Serbs madeconsiderable use of encryption equipment, land lines, beam transmitters and one-time pads (codes usedone time only) for their most important diplomatic and military traffic. This too made it almostimpossible for Dutch services to monitor their traffic or to break their codes. In view of the above,MIS staff admitted that while the events in the Balkans, with the presence of Dutch troops,necessitated a corresponding intelligence response, this response by the Dutch intelligence services infact came too late. 1262What did the Netherlands hear from other western services?The fact that the MIS had little to exchange is indicated by the following. On 5 October 1995 MinisterVoorhoeve had a meeting with his US colleague Perry. Voorhoeve asked him if it was true that the USintelligence community had intercepted a telephone call by Mladic in which the general had requestedbuses. Perry confirmed that such a request by Mladic was indeed known to the American sources, butleft open whether this information had been obtained through intercepts or other intelligence sources.Voorhoeve asked Perry to check the date on which this call had been made, and whether the recipientsof the call were the authorities in Pale or in Belgrade. If the request had been directed to Belgrade, itcould be concluded that the Serbian authorities were involved in the forced deportation, and couldpossibly even have been aware of the plans for mass executions. Perry promised that GeneralShalikashvili would investigate this. 1263On 18 October the Americans, via their embassy in The Hague, presented an InformationPaper in which they dealt with Voorhoeve’s question. The memorandum stated that the US serviceshad no information about a telephone call between Mladic and Milosevic regarding the use of buses forthe deportation of citizens from Srebrenica. This answer seems evasive, because Milosevic was, after all,not a bus operator. In such a matter Mladic would have been more likely to have consulted with theGeneral Staff in Belgrade. Voorhoeve had also not asked whether Mladic had spoken to Milosevic, butonly whether a telephone call had been intercepted in which the general asked for buses. 1264Did the MIS have access to calls between Janvier and Chirac?Nonetheless, reports about this matter reached the NIOD from MIS officers who wished to remainanonymous. These persons reported that calls between Janvier and the French president Chirac hadbeen intercepted during the attack on Srebrenica. The use of Close Air Support for Dutchbat isreported to have been discussed in these calls. In view of the weak information position of theNetherlands in the field of Sigint, it seems rather unlikely that the MIS should be aware of such highlevelintelligence. The NIOD has sought indications for this in the archive of the Sigint Department ofthe MIS. Research in the material of foreign partners was excluded in view of relevant internationalagreements.The archiving process in Eibergen is as follows. The intercept operators write down what theyintercept, and these handwritten notes are kept for two years. These handwritten notes regarded mostlygeographic locations, coordinates and frequencies. They are also kept in another form, in radiologbooks. Everything intercepted electronically is recorded on tape (intercepted conversations) or in thecomputer. In addition the physical intercepts are stored in the Comint archive. The Yugoslavia archivealso contains the messages from the NATO Sigint cell in Vicenza and Naples. This intelligence cellworks exclusively on the basis of Comint supplied by the alliance partners.This author conducted research in Eibergen with the help of a very extensive list of keywords.This was aimed at material from the unit’s own archive of Comint, the Yugoslavia archive, the raw1262 Confidential information (38).1263 NIOD, Coll. Van den Breemen. Report of a meeting between Voorhoeve and Perry, 05/10/95.1264 NIOD, Coll. Van den Breemen. US Information Paper, 18/10/95.