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

359(presumably they were referring to Elint and low-grade Comint) would be a much easier issue for themthan gathering political intelligence on what the Serbians and Bosnian Serbs were thinking. 2024If the CIA or the NSA were able to access Bosnian intercepts, then one must ask what reasonsthere might have been for not sharing these. One of the biggest problems seems to be thedissemination of Sigint among the US and foreign consumers. In the US intelligence community this isreferred to as the Green Door Syndrome, in which the vast majority of political and militarypolicymakers do not have access to Sigint. This prevented an effective integration of Sigint in otherintelligence products. It was only in the course of the 1980s that Sigint started to be spread a little morewidely, but this process still cannot be described as optimal. 2025But if Sigint on operation Krivaja ‘95 was possibly available to the CIA or the National SecurityAgency, why was it not passed on? A variety of possibilities present themselves. The Green DoorSyndrome may have played a role. The highly sensitive nature of Sigint may have led to the interceptsnot being fed into ‘the line’. Perhaps the US services wanted to conceal the original source and therelationship with the 2nd Corps. A third possibility is that the intercepts did enter the pipeline but thenremained ‘stuck’ due to a lack of analysis capability. Despite all the publications implying thatintelligence services have become ‘deaf’ due to the avalanche of information, 2026 it seems that gatheringintelligence is no problem. In reality the biggest problem is ‘the continuing decline of its Sigintprocessing, analysis and reporting infrastructure’. 2027But in Bosnia this was not the case. The Bosnian Sigint was not passed on to UNPROFOR.Was it perhaps passed on to the Americans, and was there a special liaison between the 2nd Corps andthe US services? Hagman establishes that ‘it was general knowledge that US advisers (without anyaffiliation to the UN) were deployed in Sarajevo and Tuzla throughout 1994 and 1995, working out of,for example, the HQ ABiH 2 Corps (Tuzla) and Bosnia Hercegovina Government buildings.’According to various reports this was a ‘two-way street’, as Americans are said to have passed onintelligence to the ABiH. 2028 It is likely that staff of the CIA and DIA were active in the region, but theyconcentrated mostly on Humint. The CIA did not open its first official station in Sarajevo untilSeptember 1995. There was also no official representation of the NSA and no formal or informalliaison with the Bosnian intelligence services. 2029However, as already stated in Chapter 6, the Americans never gained access to these intercepts.Following publication of the first press reports, a US intelligence analyst undertook a lengthy search butit was found that these Bosnian intercepts were not held in the relevant archives. The conclusion wasthat these was not shared. This analyst pointed out that his government would not have kept suchinformation to itself and would have immediately publicized it in order to save many lives. 2030 This wasalso indicated by interviews with other US policymakers. Like the head of the Balkan Task Force at thePentagon, James Pardew, who categorically denied that this Task Force ever received this intelligence in1995. One or more (video) conferences between the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA and the US EUCOMwere held almost daily in order to exchange intelligence, but these intercepts were never mentioned. 2031An intelligence analyst of the US State Department also denied ever having seen Bosnian intercepts anddeclared that this material would certainly have been used by the State Department. 2032 This is a further2024 James Risen, ‘Experts Warn U.S. Intelligence Help Has Limits’, Los Angeles Times, 07/06/95.2025 Matthew M. Aid, ‘Not so Anonymous: Parting the Veil of Secrecy About the National Security Agency’, Theoharis, ACulture of Secrecy, pp. 64-65 and confidential interviews (6) and (13).2026 . Seymour M. Hersh, ‘The Intelligence Gap: How the Digital Age Left Our Spies Out in the Cold’, The New Yorker,06/12/99, p. 58.2027 See: Matthew M. Aid, ‘The Time of Troubles: The US National Security Agency in the Twenty-First Century’, Intelligenceand National Security, Vol. 15 (2000) 3, pp. 1-32.2028 Hagman, UN-NATO, p. 92.2029 Confidential interview (13) and interviews with James Pardew, 30/11/00 and Matthew Aid, 02/12/00.2030 Confidential interview (54).2031 Interview with James Pardew, 30/11/00.2032 Confidential interview (13).