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

293So, it would have been impossible for the CIA to have followed everything live. The claims of La Croixwere also technically implausible: the number of satellite orbits makes it scarcely credible that the CIAwatched live.But the La Croix article contained even more errors. The CIA does not have an ObservationRoom, though it does have a Watch Center. Any Imint that went to the CIA was delivered by theNational Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to a CIA department, the National PhotographicInterpretation Center (NPIC). It is indeed true that Imint went to the CIA Watch Center. But the CIAand pretty much everybody else in the US intelligence architecture does have access to imagery whichwas acquired using a near real time system. NPIC, more than anybody else except for a ground stationelement, has access to near real time imagery, arriving there about eight-ten minutes after the shutter ofthe satellite goes ‘click’. These are all still photos. ‘Live’ coverage requires satellite gymnastics that areimpractical, if not impossible. 1576Nowadays, all Imint goes direct to a unit of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)at Fort Belvoir. Established on 1 October 1996, this agency is an amalgamation of the DefenseMapping Agency, the Central Imagery Office, the Defense Dissemination Program Office andNPIC. 1577 It was created largely to meet the fast-growing need for Imint and to bundle the Imintproduction of the various organizations and intelligence services. It was also probably the result ofPPD 35, which decreed intelligence support for foreign armies and crisis operations. 1578A unit of this new institute is currently stationed at Fort Belvoir in the USA. It has access to allImint as soon as the satellite has relayed it to the ground. The only source of delay is the time that theImint needs to reach the various ground reception stations from the sophisticated KH-11 satellite viathe special satellite link. Fort Belvoir therefore has real-time Imint, but its analysts perform ‘a primaryanalysis, particularly to determine if the imagery indicates something that requires immediate attentionfrom policy-makers and analysts’. 1579It may therefore be safely assumed that as real-time intelligence only became available after1997, it could certainly not have been at the disposal of the CIA in 1995. It should also be rememberedthat, in 1995, the priorities of American intelligence did not lie with Srebrenica. In this light, it is hardlysurprising that the satellite photos produced by Albright were not found until very late in the day andafter a thorough search of archival Imint. In addition, before the establishment of the NIMA, a hugeproblem was who could issue orders to the satellites. There were more customers and orders than thesatellites could cope with, which led to an almost daily bureaucratic fight in Washington. 1580During the war in Kosovo, UAVs like the Hunters and the Predators were capable of sendingreal-time Imint to the ground with the aid of the Pentagon Global Broadcast System. Real-time Imintfrom UAVs arrived at the CAOC in Vicenza. But given the limited capacity, the tasking of the UAVsand the lack of a real-time downlink to the CAOC, there was no question of live Imint in the summerof 1995. 1581But there were more problems attached to the collection and processing of Imint. First, thebureaucratic obstacles: effective and fast dissemination of Imint has long been a problem at thePentagon. 1582 The success of Imint during the Gulf War increased the demand for Imint so much that itcould only be met with the greatest difficulty. This problem was exacerbated by chronic rivalry between1576 Confidential information (80).1577 See: http://www.nima.mil/1578 Jeffrey Richelson, ‘Examining US intelligence failures’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, September 2000, pp. 41 - 44. Theestablishment of the NIMA led to the departure of many Imint analysts who used to work for the CIA. A direct result of thiswas for example that the preparations for an Indian nuclear test in May 1998 was not discovered on time.1579 E-mails from Jeffrey Richelson and Matthew Aid to Cees Wiebes, 19/07/00 and 21/07/00.1580 The Permanent Select Committee of the US House of Representatives also pointed this out. Now the director of theCIA decides on the tasking. See: Joseph Fitchett, ‘spying From Space: U.S. to Sharpen the Focus’, International Herald Tribune,10/04/01.1581 Tim Ripley, ‘UAVs over Kosovo - did the Earth move?’, Defence Systems Daily, 01/12/99.1582 James Woolsey, ‘The American Intelligence Community’, in: Carmel (ed.), Intelligence, p. 175.