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

354A senior BND official also confirmed that the BND had no foreknowledge regarding the attack onSrebrenica and was completely surprised by it. Like the US and British services, the Germans also hadrecruted sources close to Mladic but they apparently produced no timely warning. The BND knew allthe time that the VRS had the capabilities and intentions in the longer run but the attack and also thescale of the subsequent atrocities was a surprise. 1998 And the BND did also not reive much intelligencefrom its European partners like the French. According to German intelligence sources the French wereeven reluctant to share information with the BND. 1999On 29 October 1995 the New York Times responded to the European reports. In June the USintelligence community received indications that the VRS was going to concentrate on the enclaves. Atthat time it was unclear what the scale of the operation would be. 2000 On the same day the WashingtonPost also provided a reconstruction. At the end of June US intelligence services reportedly observed abuild-up around the enclave. Mladic was furious about the raids being conducted from the enclave andwanted to put an end to them. But analysts had concluded that the aim was to neutralize Srebrenica‘rather than take it over all together’. 2001In a new article a day later it was claimed that the French intelligence services were also awareof the situation. The French also intercepted the communications traffic between Perisic and Mladic. 2002Florence Hartmann received, more or less, a confirmation of this in a conversation with a high-rankingmember of the French military intelligence service. According to Hartmann’s anonymous source thebuses and trucks had been waiting for days on the border with Serbia. The French service knew that alarge-scale operation to deport the population was going to take place. However, these latter claims areboth completely untrue and totally unfounded. Hartmann’s source directly added that it was absolutelyimpossible to predict the mass murders. 2003 This last statement is directly at odds with that of a Britishofficial of the DIS. In an interview this person declared that the murders did not come as a surprise. Itwas only the scale that was surprising and that Mladic let them take place, which was ‘a very stupidthing to do’. 2004 Also a US intelligence official claimed the same. In the Force Commander’s briefing at1630 on 7 July when a question was asked about the aftermath of a collapse of the enclave to a VRSoffensive the US Deputy G-2 response was ‘there will be a bloodbath’. Anybody who had watched thewar in Bosnia and Croatia unfold could not rationally believe otherwise, according to this official. Onthe contrary, the only question in the minds of reasonably informed observers was not whetheratrocities would occur, but rather how bad they would be. After all, military logic demands that theworst case is assumed, which in this case was still that the VRS wanted to capture the enclave. But onthe other hand, according to a senior US intelligence official, even if the intelligence was available thatthe enclave was to be collapsed by the VRS that still provided no indication that a massacre was aboutto happen. Any knowledgeable observer of the war in Bosnia and Croatia would still have doubted thatthe VRS had the audacity to do it anyway. 2005After this things remained quiet for a while, but an article in The New York Review of Books inMay 1996 caused a new stir. According to the journal, US intelligence services had sufficient warning ofan attack. Research revealed that the intercepts as described did indeed exist. The VRS planned, it wassaid, ‘to shave the enclave’. Analysts expected that the VRS would not take the entire enclave for fearof major losses, air strikes and the problem of the thousands of refugees. It was true that US spyaircraft had observed large numbers of buses at Bijeljina but it was assumed that these would be used to1998 Confidential interviews (98) and (99).1999 Confidential interviews (98) and (99).2000 ‘srebrenica: the Days of Slaughter’, The New York Times, 29/10/95.2001 M. Dobbs & R. Jeffrey Smith, ‘New Proof Offered Of Serb Atrocities’, Washington Post, 29/10/95.2002 Andreas Zumach, ‘Grosser Lauschangriff auf Srebrenica’ (Major eavesdropping offensive against Srebrenica), Die Tageszeitung,30/10/95.2003 Hartmann, Milosevic, p. 338.2004 Confidential interview (57).2005 Confidential interview (46) and confidential information (80).