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

84commotion flaring up within the service every couple of ten years, which could lead to an explosion thatoften found its way into the press and - to a lesser extent - Parliament. Ultimately, the government ofPrime Minister Lubbers decided in 1992 to disband the IDB, and a start was made on scaling it down. Atthe end of 1994 the curtain finally fell for the IDB, and the service no longer played a significant role in theconflict in Bosnia. The final reports on Yugoslavia date from the early 1990s. 388 The disbanding of the IDBmade the Dutch government completely dependent on the BVD and MIS for the provision of intelligenceon developments in Yugoslavia and their possible impact on the Netherlands.3. The National Security Service (BVD)The National Security Service (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst, BVD) was created in 1949 and falls underthe responsibility of the Minister of the Interior. The BVD’s tasks are, briefly, as follows: gatheringdata, carrying out security investigations, and promoting security measures. At the time of the Yugoslavconflict, the BVD was not yet involved in tracking flows of money (from Yugoslavia to theNetherlands and vice versa); the financial-economic investigation unit of the BVD is only 3 years old. 389It was mainly the first task that was relevant to the situation in Yugoslavia. The BVD’s activitieswere geared towards limiting the risks for Dutch national security, democracy, economy and society.The service therefore followed the letter of the law by focusing on the gathering of data onorganizations and persons that, because of their objectives or their activities, might give reason forserious suspicion that they formed a danger to the survival of the democratic rule of law, or to nationalsecurity or other important interests of the state. 390The Staff Bureau Foreign Political Developments (SBP)The gathering of data not only had a domestic component but also a foreign one. The analysis offoreign political developments actually took place not only at the IDB, but also at the Staff BureauForeign Political Developments (SBP) of the BVD. This department was founded on 3 October 1963, andits duty was to gather knowledge on political developments in the communist countries, and moreoveron communist parties in non-communist countries at least to the extent that this was useful for theBVD’s performance. When it was founded, it was determined that the SBP could gather as much or aslittle data as it saw fit with respect to foreign countries and other parties abroad. At the time it alreadyappeared that the ground had been prepared for a competence conflict with the IDB’s predecessor, butthe authority of the SBP was mainly limited, as the official jargon put it, to warning of internationalphenomena and developments that could form a threat to the democratic rule of law, or the security orother important interests of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.391 The IDB had a much wider remit,namely the gathering of intelligence in other countries for the Dutch government. The analyses of theSBP served operations that were aimed at giving BVD agents in communist organizations as muchinformation as possible about developments or impending developments in the internationalcommunist movement, so that they could use this knowledge to penetrate the communist ranks in theNetherlands.The existence of a department such as the SBP within a domestic security service was unique inthe Western world. In the major powers, the foreign intelligence services managed to prevent thenational security service from occupying this territory. In most small states, the security services weretoo small to fulfil such a role. In the Netherlands, however, the BVD was large enough to permit itselfthis luxury, and the foreign intelligence service was too weak to obstruct its creation. Due to the388 NMFA, 911.31 Yugoslavia, CVIN contribution: Centrifugale tendenzen in Joegoslavië versterken zich, No. 5125/RC/90, 30/07/90; CVIN contribution: Joegoslavië drijft verder uiteen, No.8099/RC/90, 12/11/90 and CVIN contribution: Slovenië en Kroatië aan de vooravond van afscheiding, No. 4610/RC/91, 17/06/91.389 Confidential interview (15).390 Kluiters, De Nederlandse Inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten, pp. 31 - 32.391 De Graaff and Wiebes, Villa Maarheeze, pp. 219 - 225 and Kluiters, Inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten, p. 35.