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

309tracking the civilian toll had value in a war where the political stakes are high.’ In a nutshell, Imint isbasically unsuitable for stopping war crimes, but it can detect them. 1703 One should add that they canalso be used to document war crimes, but not to prevent them. The Dutch photo-analyst Schourenconfirmed that it is extremely difficult to analyse photos taken by satellites and U-2s. 1704 In addition, itis undeniable that the Americans did not accord Srebrenica high priority in their Imint. To be perfectlyfrank: the Dutch intelligence community did neither. Obviously, Sarajevo was the main US target andnot the eastern enclaves, including Srebrenica. 1705Summarizing, it can safely be said that US spy satellites, U-2s and UAVs collected a lot of Imintshowing buses, trucks, tanks, male prisoners, corpses and disturbed ground where the executed mencould have been buried. The failure of this Imint to arrive on time (i.e. not until early August) on thedesks of the policy-makers was probably due to the priorities within at the US intelligence community.Other hard targets were more important than the eastern enclaves, where no US troops were stationedat that moment. A foreign intelligence evaluation therefore concluded that Imint was useful but, giventhe guerrilla character of the fighting, few regular units could be photographed from the air andspace. 1706In addition, the American analysts had no idea that the VRS was planning to seize the wholeenclave. The expectation was that the Bosnian Serbs would be deterred from such action because itwould bring heavy losses on their side, air attacks and floods of refugees which they could not copewith. These points will be discussed in the next chapter. Spy planes had spotted bus convoys at variouslocations at the end of June, but it was assumed that these were being used to transport VRS troops. 1707CIA Director Deutch referred to this when he categorically denied that the CIA had foreknowledge ofthe attack. He once again called attention to the laborious process that eventually led to the discoveryof the photos of the mass graves. 1708The general picture that emerges from the currently available information indicates that theeastern enclaves were not (high) priority for Imint analysis. Executions on such a large scale were totallyunexpected. Although it must be said that some analysts in Zagreb anticipated executions, but theeventual scale of thousands of dead was far beyond expectations. Though satellites and U-2s wereactive, other instruments such as UAVs were not fully operational above Bosnia until a later date.Moreover, the American services never analysed this Imint on time. However, it must be said that ifsome of the photos referred above to were TACRECCE photos, than the analysis was done by NATOanalysts at various bases near the Adriatic, not by American analysts. That being the case then NATOwas also very slow. Though the UK Defence Intelligence Staff had actually identified the concentrationof troops around the enclave on the basis of Imint, it had not paid too much attention because the VRShad always had enough troops on hand to take the enclave in any case. Most of the intelligence on thetroop concentrations came from Imint; whether from satellites or U-2s never became clear. There was,at all events, no Imint on the executions; but there was Imint on the ABiH prisoners and on the start ofthe journey to Tuzla. This is borne out by information from an American report which stated that‘there was no usable coverage between 13 and 27 July because of bad weather or poor image quality’.There can be no doubt that the US community had permanent (near-) real-time information on whatwas going on in and around Srebrenica via satellites and spy planes. The claim by a member of theDutch Cabinet to the effect that Washington had, at ‘his’ special request, taken satellite photos of thearea around Bratunac showing probable mass graves is, however, incorrect. 17091703 Alan Boyle, ‘spies in the watch for atrocities’, MSNBC Interactive, 26/03/99.1704 Interview with J. Schouren, 04/12/99.1705 Confidential interview (46).1706 Confidential interview (8) and confidential information (29).1707 Charles Lane and Thom Shanker, ‘Bosnia: What the CIA Didn’t Tell Us’, in The New York Review of Books, 09/05/96.1708 ‘The CIA and Bosnia: An Exchange’, New York Review of Books, 06/06/96.1709 Objectivized summary of the minutes of the Ministerial Council meeting of 18/08/95, prepared for the purposes of thepresent NIOD study.