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

244remained were items of military Comint. Apart from this, the history of the exchange of Sigint is notexactly encouraging. Since 1945 this liaison has never been optimal, and the exchange of importantdiplomatic and military Sigint between the countries contributing troops to UNPROFOR and withinNATO never took substantial form in Bosnia either. Much Comint was not analysed on time or wasnot allowed to be distributed due to its high classification – not among NATO allies and sometimesnot even to a country’s own national commanders. The exchange of Elint did go well, due to thecommon threat of the (Bosnian) Serb air defence.Reasons for not sharing SigintThe reason for any high-level intercepts from VRS or ABiH communications not being shared mustthus be sought in the reasons cited in this chapter. Intercepts are always surrounded by the greatestsecrecy, meaning that the distribution of the Sigint product is always very limited. Only the highestpolitical and military policymakers have access to high-level Sigint. Only a few are privy to suchinformation, and even then only on a need-to-know basis. Many of the consulted members of thewestern intelligence community state that this presented a major barrier. During the war in Bosniabetween 1993 and 1995, and later during the war in Kosovo, the NSA was faced with problemsspecifically relating to the exchange of Sigint with its NATO allies. This was mainly caused by the factthat most of the allies were not part of the UKUSA alliance – while not even the United Kingdom wasgiven everything.An initial summing up of the interception operations in the Balkans was made at a conferenceof the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association in Washington in June 2000. BillBlack, the former head of the European Center of the NSA and later deputy director of the NSA,declared that operations in the region had suffered strongly under the difficulties relating to an effectivesharing relationship with allies. Black stated that in the past the NSA had only exchanged informationon a bilateral basis, and that the American legislation regarding compartmentalization made it difficultto do the same in a coalition of allies. Bill Nolte, the Former Head of the NSA’s Legislative AffairsOffice, declared that the ‘compartmentalization of intelligence doesn’t really work anymore in moderncoalition operations’. He also complained about ‘the current problems of getting the NSA to modernizeboth its practices and mentality’. A British speaker said that there was a well-coordinated sharingarrangement between the English-speaking countries, but this was not the case between Washingtonand other foreign services. 1289 Staff of the Bundesnachrichtendienst are also reported to have complainedrepeatedly in this context about the American refusal to share really high-level Sigint. 1290In short, the exchange between the allies in Bosnia (but also Kosovo) was not optimal. Thisextreme secrecy brought major disadvantages. Sigint often failed to reach the right commanders on theground because it was decided that this Sigint had a need-to-know classification. As a result theintelligence product was not distributed any further. In fact this had already been the case in theKorean War, but the situation continued in the 1990s. A former intelligence official of the US AirForce, Richard Boyd, stated for instance that the ‘intelligence connectivity between Air Force units andthe NSA was “not good” in Kosovo’. 1291 According to Cooke another problem was that the flow ofSigint and Humint to the Balkan Current Intelligence Group in Whitehall was often sufficient to givegood briefings to ministers. The most important limitation of Sigint is the enormous flow ofinformation in relation to an insufficient analysis capability. Many customers of the NSA productcomplained in mid-1995 that the NSA was not able to meet the needs of the intelligence consumer.1289 ‘How Co-operation in Balkans Works’, Intelligence Newsletter, 29/06/00.1290 Udo Ulfkotte, ‘Die Nato ist im bilde, doch gibt sie nur wenig preis’, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, 10/04/99 andconfidential interviews (99) and (100).1291 ‘How Co-operation in Balkans Works’, Intelligence Newsletter, 29/06/00.