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

243communications traffic of UNPROFOR. In particular, much interception was conducted in the field ofElint, and Sigint was exchanged between the NATO partners. The Comint seems mostly to have beenlow level. This too was shared between some NATO member states.Was high-level intelligence also intercepted?Members of the American and Canadian intelligence community confirm that high-level diplomaticComint was also available, but this was not shared with the allies. Probably it was only the Canadianswho had access to this, thanks to their special relationship, while the British services – despite theUKUSA alliance – did not. This particular Comint is in fact of less importance to research into the fallof Srebrenica, because plans for the attack on Srebrenica were probably not discussed in thesechannels. Things are different with regard to high-level military Comint, such as conversations betweenthe Army commanders of the VRS with each other or with the leaders of the VJ. The overridingopinion among many intelligence experts, authors and journalists is that above all the US services, butalso German and French intelligence services withheld information regarding the VRS attack. Highlyimportant intercepts revealing prior knowledge of the attack were supposedly not passed on toUNPROFOR and not even to NATO allies, including the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. 1287This view is opposed by a senior US intelligence official who had access to archival Sigint. When thefirst articles appeared in the press, such as the one by the journalist Zumach, he went through all theold Sigint archives of the US intelligence services and found nothing that vaguely resembled theintercepts referred to by Zumach. This suggests that the intercepts in question do not exist after all, orthat this official had no access to these secret intercepts. However, a large number of those interviewedcontinue to have doubts, and believe that such intercepts do indeed exist.This immediately raises two questions. If these important messages were intercepted, why didthe intelligence services not pass them on to UNPROFOR? It would be the height of cynicism tosuggest that these services wanted Srebrenica to fall into the hands of the Bosnian Serbs. As a seniorintelligence official declared to Lane and Shanker: ‘We make mistakes but we don’t withhold1288information and let people get killed.’ In turn, one can note that at least in Australia peoplesometimes thought differently about this, in view of the fate of the five journalists executed in EastTimor (see Section 2).It seems more likely that in the case of Srebrenica it was a problem of information not beingmade available in time, of priorities and of insufficient analysis capacity. This in turn relates to the factthat there were no American, German or French ground troops active in the region. That raises thepenetrating question as to whether, if the information had been passed on, the killing of thousands ofsoldiers and civilians after the conquest of Srebrenica could have been prevented. This question will bereturned to in Chapter 8.One must conclude that high-level intercepts did exist. The evidence for this was provided bythe conversation between Gore and Bildt, when Gore read aloud from these intercepts. The NSA willhave concentrated chiefly on the international political developments; the question as to whether theintercepts also contained important intelligence about the attack and the later events in Srebrenica mustprobably be answered negatively. The eastern enclaves did not enjoy a high priority within the USintelligence community. The same went for the GCHQ, which concentrated on Gorazde. The FrenchMilitary Intelligence Service mostly concentrated on Sarajevo for the same reason. The Comintcoverage in Eastern Bosnia was poor, and the VRS is sure to have frequently applied strictcommunications security. The messages, which the NSA nonetheless intercepted will, due toinsufficient analysis and translation capacity, have landed in the ‘pending but not urgent pile’. What1287 Roy Gutman, ‘Federal Army Tied to Bosnia War Crimes/Serb Leaders ‘Death Camp’ Link’, Newsday, 01/11/95; RichardNorton-Taylor, ‘Inside Story: The Ghosts of Nuremberg’, The Guardian, 28/11/95 and Charles Lane & Thom Shanker,‘Bosnia: What the CIA Didn’t Tell Us’, New York Review of Books, 09/05/96, pp. 12-13.1288 Charles Lane & Thom Shanker, ‘Bosnia: What the CIA Didn’t Tell Us’, New York Review of Books, 09/05/96, p. 11.