CIA in Yugoslavia

Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Scientology are two political-intelligence organizations which succeeded in penetrating into the societies of Russia, Rumania and Yugoslavia.

By Marko Lopusina

Source : http://www.serbianna.com, May 1, 2006

Washington did not attribute much significance to the intelligence system of its country until the price was paid at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the course of the Second World War, the Americans began to create, first in the military, and later in the federal police structure, their own intelligence system, the OSS, based on the model of the English intelligence corps. The Office of Strategic Services, had as its objective, providing intelligence support to the army. The first chief of the OSS was a then 57 year old infantry colonel, William Donovan, and the budget for this endearing U.S. military corps in 1941 was only $210. Four years later, in 1945 the OSS welcomed the end of the war with 23 intelligence centers situated in and around Europe, from Moscow through London, Madrid, Algiers, Cairo and Istanbul, to Bari, the nearest center to what was then Yugoslavia. The system acquired its true and final shape after the war, with political relations with the USSR strained, creating the CIA, and when in accordance with the Truman Doctrine, the U.S., along with the Western nations, began to insist on their own protection from the “Communist danger”. That stirred a total reorganization of their intelligence corps in Western countries, which were the most effective instrument for shadowing and controlling the opposing Communist side.

A key role in creating the American intelligence corps, first of all the CIA, was played by Richard Gehlen, the German chief of secret police, who after the Second World War handed over complete documents to the U.S. pertaining to the network of the Hitler-era German intelligence corps with lists of intelligence centers and German agents throughout the world, complete with the agency network in the countries of Eastern Europe, and in Yugoslavia itself. Leaning on the organization, work methods, espionage network and experience of the German intelligence corps, the CIA very quickly progressed and developed its own intelligence corps worldwide. So it happened that the CIA built its first spy centers toward Yugoslavia in the cities which Germans, and later Italians, used as spy nests -- Vienna, Munich, Udine and Salonika.

The initiative to create a U.S. intelligence system came from president Roosevelt. In 1942 he established the Joint Intelligence Committee, as an organ of the new general staff. The implementation of the president’s plan took two years after the end of the war, when Harry Truman had become president. The working principles of American intelligence agents were personally set by President Truman, who in 1946 created a Central Intelligence Group under the sponsorship of the National Intelligence Management. A year later, with the termination of these organizations, the Central Intelligence Agency was formed. It at once became the head office and coordinator of all the remaining 12 intelligence and secret security corps of the U.S. Admiral Rayborn once declared that American intelligence demands are of world proportion. Defined in this way, the conditions and interests of the U.S. dictated the creation of the CIA and its mission, March 12, 1947, when the Law on National Security was promulgated.

The law also defined five basic functions for the Central Intelligence Agency. The first was to extend its opinions and assessments to the National Security Council, to the president and vice-president of the U.S., Secretaries of State and Defense and to the Director of the Office for Mobilization, for all needs of intelligence nature related to state security. Secondly, to provide recommendations for the National Security Council with regard to coordination of intelligence activities of government agencies and departments. Thirdly, to compare and analyze intelligence material and information within the government and its institutions. Fourth, on the demand of the National Security Council, to manage all intelligence affairs in a centralized way. Fifth, to cover remaining functions for the protection of U.S. security and beyond national boundaries. The list of states is which the U.S. has intervened through the CIA is rather extensive. The unsuccessful anti-Communist actions of the CIA’s 50 years in Albania, Poland, the Ukraine, and then in China, as well as in Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, Congo, Laos, Vietnam, Brazil, Peru, the Philippines, Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, Honduras, Costa Rico, Salvador, Argentina, and Burma are well known. In the 80s the CIA was active in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Thailand, Taiwan, and Ireland.  In the ‘90’s, by the estimate of John Joyce, former director of the CIA, U.S. intelligence agents performed “good work” in Poland, by aiding Lech Walesa and “Solidarnost”; padding the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia; in Colombia, in Sudan, and in the former Yugoslavia, where the civil war was put on hold. The above cases are all proof that interventionism for America has been neither unusual nor rare, and why even Yugoslavia could not have been an exception from the activities of the CIA.

Bill Clinton’s Disciples

The signs of Yugoslavia’s imminent breakup became apparent during the tenure of William Webster. He was not a “tiger of the Cold War,” as Casey had been called, but he was a man who saw the end of the USSR, followed the destruction of the Berlin wall, and broke the Russians in Afghanistan. His signature stands on a CIA report of 1990 about the disintegration of the SFRY and the outbreak of a civil war.  Webster denied news reports that the CIA conveyed the disintegration to the Yugoslav Ambassador in the U.S., Mujezinovic, but he did not deny that it would come to war. He was relieved of his post in 1991.

He was succeeded  by Robert Gates, who played a key role in the selection of tactics to destroy communism in the Balkans. Gates was chosen by George Bush, the new American president and former CIA director, who knew that Gates stood in for Casey, and later for Webster. Later he also served as a deputy advisor for Brent Scowcroft in the National Security Council. Robert Gates received his Master Degree in Russian History, and went to work for the CIA in 1965. Ten years later, he moved to the National Security Council. At 47, he became the youngest director of the largest secret service in the world. When he took over the CIA, he said that it is imperative for the CIA have capable people in the field who understand and follow how individual societies function and develop. In his view, Americans had been making mistakes in this area in the Middle East and the Balkans, and thought that they would pay a high price for such a short-sighed approach. Along with Colby, who formulated the idea that the communist system and the USSR itself should be left alone, to collapse from within, Gates is remembered in the CIA as the originator of the idea that communism and especially Eastern Orthodoxy be attacked with infiltration by pro-Western sects.  Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Scientology are two political-intelligence organizations which succeeded in penetrating into the societies of Russia, Rumania and Yugoslavia.

Since 1993 the CIA has had five new directors. James Woolsey, ran the CIA only for 22 months, taking over the director’s chair from Robert Gates in 1993, and handing over his resignation in December 1995 with the discovery of the Soviet “mole” Aldrich Ames. Woolsey was hand picked by Bill Clinton. A journalist and lawyer by trade, he had studied at Stanford and Yale. Born in 1941, he completed military service in the late ‘60’s. He began his diplomatic career in the late ‘70’s in the Department of Defense, as an advisor on arms issues, and later went to Vienna for nuclear arms negotiations with the Russians and Europeans. Clinton then tasked Woolsey to find a new general secretary for NATO. The CIA wanted Javier Solana in that capacity. On November 30, 1995, Javier Solana’s candidacy was officially submitted and chosen. He came to lead NATO in a moment when the organization found itself before one of the greatest and most difficult challenges in its history: to implement the Dayton Peace Plan and to send 60,000 troops into Bosnia-Herzegovina in support of that plan.

Woolsey was replaced when it was discovered that the CIA had in its Department for Soviet Analyses a head KGB spy.  Then Bill Clinton in March 1995 hurriedly named Air Force General Michael Kearns as new director. He had been coordinator of humanitarian shipments from the U.S. to Bosnia, and commanding officer who participated in the bombing of Iraqis during the Gulf War. However the FBI had obtained information that he had violated U.S. immigration law by employing an illegal alien as household help; consequently he turned in his irrevocable resignation. The president then, on May 10, 1995, simply ordered John Mark Deutch, deputy secretary of defense under William Perry, to take over the functions of the CIA director. Although Dr. Deutch had once refused this offer in February, this time he chose not to challenge Bill Clinton.

Dr. John Deutch, born in Brussels on July 27, 1938, became U.S. citizen after his emigration in 1945. Educated in private schools, having studied history and economics, and then chemistry at Lowell University and Northeastern University, he was first employed at the Pentagon, during Kennedy’s presidency when Robert McNamara ran the Department of Defense. When the army entered its Vietnam adventure in 1965, he left to teach chemistry at Princeton. He returned to politics in 1977 during Carter’s administration, when he got to lead the research sector of the Department of Energy. His specialty was the quest for alternative petroleum technologies and tracking the development of the nuclear programs. He remained at the Pentagon under Bush and Reagan, although he was at the same time a dean at MIT.

The new director replaced some thirty managers in the CIA, including the Director of Special Operations. It was Deutch’s task to find new work for the CIA, first of all through collaboration with the DIA and NSA. His other aims included combating narcotics producers and smugglers, nuclear sabotage, terrorism, local wars, the struggle for human rights, economic espionage and events in China, Russia and the Balkans. For Deutch, and especially for Clinton, intervention in Bosnia was an opportunity to pull the CIA out of a crisis.

Bill Clinton invited Dr. John Deutch to join the government for the first time in 1993, to be deputy secretary of defense under Les Aspen, and later under William Perry. He had confidence in Deutch, who had a reputation as a wise and excellent steady second. A Belgian Jew and member of the enigmatic Trilateral Commission, he found himself simultaneously at many important functions in Washington. John Deutch left the CIA director post in 1996, at the end of Clinton’s first term. The unofficial version, however, links his decision to the unsuccessful secret missions in Iraq and the discovery of American intelligence operatives in Germany and France. During his term, news emerged about the violations of human rights and CIA abuses in Latin American countries, and Deutch was forced to dismiss nearly a thousand of his agents in Guatemala, Chile, and Nicaragua. The crowning event in a series of unpleasant CIA happenings during 1996 was the unresolved suicide/murder of William Colby, former CIA director and originator of the doctrine on “internal collapse of the political system of the USSR and states of the Soviet camp,” which proved itself to be so successful in 1991.

The Trigger-happy Newcomer

On the threshold of 1997, the newly inaugurated president Bill Clinton nominated Anthony Lake, his secretary of national security who at one time had warned President Bill Clinton that the Bosnian Serbs were a two-sided danger in the world.  First, he argued, their defensive stance on matters of redesigning Yugoslavia’s internal borders by outside powers and adherence to the principles of national sovereignty could embolden other nations to oppose the advances of the New World Order. Secondly, he argued, because the outcome of the war in Bosnia would determine the essence of the American foreign policy for decades ahead. Such arguments seem to have paved the way to Lake’s and Clinton’s decision to bomb the Bosnian Serbs in 1995, cemented the non-compromising U.S. attitude toward Yugoslavia in general and crystallized the ultimate goal of bringing Serbia to her knees. Concurrently Lake warned Clinton against admitting publicly which NATO country sent the airplanes. It appears that the entire career of Anthony Lake represented a rehearsal for this important inner circle position. After three decades of trying to reconcile American power and principles, Lake came to responsibility in a moment that looked exceptionally appropriate, when the U.S. was about to embark on its new role of the policeman of the world. During 1995 and 1996, it seemed to Lake that the U.S. had only one problem: the Bosnian policy. Events in Bosnia revived the conflict that tormented him throughout his unusual career - the conflict between ideals and interests so relentlessly present in the U.S. foreign policy, in places from Chechnya to Yugoslavia to China. Next to the president and vice-president, Lake was, at the time of the decision to bomb the Bosnian Serbs, perhaps the most influential person in the U.S. foreign policy team.

Lake joined Kissinger’s staff in June 1969. He immediately achieved an exceptional trust, and attended the Paris peace talks when he was only 30. Lake approached Kissinger’s intellect with fascination, and was convinced that he would choose to end the war. Later Lake worked in the presidential campaign of Sen. Edmund Muskie in 1972, completed his doctorate, and worked as director of the International Friends Service. His political career was revived during the campaign of Jimmy Carter, for whom he managed the Policy Planning Office of the State Department. During Reagan’s and Bush’s tenure he taught international relations at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. One November afternoon in 1991 he drove to Boston, where his old colleague from the State Department, Samuel Berger volunteered to introduce him to Clinton. By mid-‘90s Lake would find himself in what was once the job of his mentor, Kissinger.

This meeting, which culminated in a brief conversation with a leader who was not particularly interested in foreign policy matters, could have resembled some kind of ominous foreboding. As a candidate, however, Clinton, made use of foreign policy very skillfully, in general thanks to Lake, who had nearly become his leading unpaid advisor. Clinton needed someone who was able to tell him “be concerned about this,” and Lake did just that, helping Clinton to position himself on questions like Haiti, Bosnia and China better than his Republican counterpart George Bush.  Demonstrating his ambition, Lake took over the role of a public diplomat, after which he immediately insisted that the security advisor must never usurp the function of the Secretary of State. In 1995 Anthony Lake led a delegation on a European tour, which was supposed to result in finding a solution for Bosnia, and which was accompanied by muttering to try to circumvent the State Department. The second and totally different example of Lake’s personal investment can be seen in his strong support of expanding NATO to the East, opposed to those who advised that it was necessary to show consideration for Russian sensitivity.

Anthony Lake urged the United Nations to respond to the Serbian position in Bosnia by undertaking air attacks, but he came upon strong opposition of the allies, who were concerned that peacekeepers may be taken hostage. “In our opinion, security is greater if the Serbs believe that we are serious,” he said. “However, the French and British think that that is easy for us to say, since we do not have our own soldiers on the ground there.” Lake opted out from undertaking air strikes, so that he could swiftly join the opponents of the idea, when the Bosnian Serbs took UN soldiers as hostages in 1995. Again the U.S. policy in Bosnia was weak and conflicted in its effect. Some American analysts hold that it was Anthony Lake who showed that Bosnia in fact provided a stimulus to the Clinton campaign. When in July 1992 reports of concentration camps began to come in, Clinton criticized Bush’s inactivity, and sought that air strikes be undertaken, in order to assist humanitarian efforts. That event, however, also pointed out the ambivalence of Lake himself. He insisted that Clinton’s statement must convey precision, writing that American efforts perhaps in this phase would not bear fruit, but that they must do at least what they reasonably could.

The Turning Point

With Clinton in the office the U.S. policy toward Yugoslavia, hitherto mumbled and confusing, took an aggressive course, coordinating the intelligence, military, and public relations components into one decisive Sturm und Drang against Yugoslavia. From 1993 on everything went according to the script, entailing direct air assaults, overexposure of Serbian “atrocities” in the U.S. media, with the aim of gaining domestic public support. It also included clandestine operations such as approving Iranian arms smuggling to the Bosnian Muslims in 1993-94, training and arming the Croatian army for retaking Krajina in 1995, and preparing the KLA for its Kosovo debut in 1998.

The arms smuggling was allegedly kept secret even from the CIA by Clinton’s inner circle. Anthony Lake in 1997 had to testify to the American Senate Intelligence Committee in the matter. He had for two full years been concealing from Congress that the White House had approved the import of Iranian arms into Bosnia for the Muslim army, with the US ambassador in Croatia, Peter Galbraith as an intermediary. Regardless of whether this questioning was a part of the political game of Republicans, who wanted to test the strength of Clinton as a Democratic president, the American public was visibly upset at the disclosure of yet another secret operation of the U.S. administration in Europe. Having assessed the issue as too dangerous to the integrity of the American president, and having been put through a strenuous interrogation before the Senate, Anthony Lake in early March 1997 declined Bill Clinton’s offer to nominate him as director of the CIA.

Finding himself cornered on the issue of naming a new CIA director, the president took Anthony Lake’s advice, and on March 20, 1997 nominated George John Tenet. Prior to that, while in the National Security Council, George Tenet worked on coordinating U.S. secret operations abroad, and on projecting Clinton’s presidential directives on intelligence priorities from the White House into the world, what made him a trusted man within the administration. For a period of time he was also Inspector General for the CIA. Officially, George J. Tenet joined the CIA on July 3, 1995. He assembled a team for Clinton’s personal security for his traveling throughout the world. The Republicans, who hold the majority in the Senate and House, accepted the candidacy of George Tenet as a political compromise on the issue of the U.S. violations of the UN arms embargo, and the endorsement by the Clinton Administration to secretly arm Muslims in Bosnia. The continuity of American secret intelligence activities abroad, and especially in the regions of the Balkans and Yugoslavia remained intact.

The Role of the State Department

Americans in the former Yugoslavia had two diplomatic missions: the embassy in Belgrade and general consulate in Zagreb. In Belgrade, of some 70 American officials, 35 had diplomatic status and immunity. There were also 220 Yugoslav civilians working on the embassy grounds, the majority of them permanently. In accordance with the existing political and diplomatic practice, America always sent people to Yugoslavia who were educated and well-versed in history and culture of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Yugoslavia. Before they would start their assignments in Belgrade, many American diplomats served in the Zagreb consulate, as did the last ambassador, Warren Zimmerman. The popular State Department wisdom held that for the U.S. diplomats Belgrade was often a window to Moscow.

The U.S. embassy was established in 1945, by when Americans already had an organized classic intelligence network coming into contact with the remnants of the defeated parties and collaborationists during World War II. The U.S. was not only openly developing its espionage, but also organizing concrete terrorist actions, assassinations, diversions, sabotage and infiltrating unfriendly groups from abroad. During 1946, several trials took place in which the espionage activity of individual U.S. diplomats was uncovered, and the role of the U.S. embassy was discredited.

These trials forced the Americans to change their intelligence work. At the beginning of 1947, the CIA transferred its center for “covering” Yugoslavia abroad, while the U.S. legalized gathering data on Yugoslavia. John Gabot summed up the previous U.S. espionage record in his confidential report to the State Department on June 7, 1947 that was intercepted by the Yugoslav State Security, as “Bandit methods, cloak and dagger methods a’ la Pridonof and Clause compromised the entire embassy. It is my impression that we can secure the same amount of information with decent behavior and winning the trust of the Yugoslav government.” Messrs. Pridonof and Clause were diplomat-spies who were expelled from Yugoslavia in 1946.

According to Gen. Vidan Markovic, an expert on counterintelligence at Federal Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Americans began to gather information by legal means in Yugoslavia from 1952 on, as they concluded that this way they could accomplish more than through an agency relying on a motley crue of hostile Yugoslav emigrants. Depending on the needs of the CIA, they never completely renounced undercover agent work in Yugoslavia. Among the embassy personnel there has always been a number of professional intelligence agents of the CIA and DIA. Covered by diplomatic status, they worked exclusively on espionage.  Before arriving to Yugoslavia, these agents would be trained at U.S. intelligence centers in Germany. The most well-known is Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps. Along with professionals, the rest of the embassy or consulate staff periodically engaged in intelligence gathering activities.  Their task was to find individual Yugoslavs willing to be connected with the embassy, agree to travel to the U.S., and who would ultimately agree to work for the CIA or DIA. These people were more frequently sought among intellectuals of the scientific, artistic world and the media. These official CIA collaborators were engaged in receiving and forwarding agents’ reports from Belgrade and Zagreb toward the U.S., in cases when regular communications channels were not secure. Individual officials were sent into the target areas to photograph certain structures and training areas, and with their presence, to create an alibi and conditions for the work of CIA and DIA professionals. Finally, there were a number of intelligence analysts at the U.S. embassy, who were covering research issues of priority interest to the CIA and the U.S. government.

The first American ambassador, Cavendish W. Cannon arrived in Belgrade in July 1947. He witnessed the Russian-Yugoslav communist rift and the political persecution of Cominform supporters. As the representative of the U.S. state and diplomacy, Cannon had the difficult task of igniting the Cold War on Yugoslav territories, and lead that effort until the end of January 1950, when he was replaced by ambassador George V. Allen. Ambassador Allen was also a patron and pioneer of the American military aid effort to Yugoslavia, which he later continued to oversee. There was also James W. Riddleberger, who took over as ambassador on November 16, 1953. He witnessed the Russian-Yugoslav reconciliation and the arrival of Nikita Khrushchev on an official visit to Josip Broz. At the end of February 1958, the U.S. delegated Karl L. Rankin as its ambassador to Belgrade; he was an observer at the First Conference of Unaligned Nations in 1961, after which Yugoslavia was perceived by the U.S. as a country moving away from America and becoming an “anti-American factor” in the third world. The ambassador for the historic period from 1961 to 1963 was the leading kremlinologist and theoretician of the Cold War George F. Kennan, one of the most renowned American diplomats.

He was followed in March of 1963 by Charles B. Elbrick, an ambassador with a full six years experience in Belgrade. He was a witness to the straining of relations between Belgrade and Moscow again, in 1968, after the Czech events, and the first larger internal unrest in Yugoslavia after the outbreak of student demonstrations. At that time, among the junior embassy staff was one Warren Zimmermann. In June 1969 Elbrick was replaced by Kempton K. Lonehart. He had only one priority - to prepare the first official visit of Richard Nixon to Yugoslavia in 1970. On his return home to Washington, Nixon took Ambassador Lonehart with him, and Malcolm Toon, took over in October 1971. While he was regarded as a relatively calm and serious diplomat, the same could not be said for his successor, Laurence Hirsch Silberman.

As soon as he assumed ambassadorial duties in 1975, Silberman began to publicly criticize the Yugoslav self-reliance and the alleged violation of human rights, as not honoring the Helsinki Convention. In official Yugoslav circles, that was interpreted as an effort to provoke Yugoslavia and to create instability. Josip Broz publicly accused the American ambassador of anti-Yugoslav activities, overstepping his diplomatic mandate. Silberman introduced considerable change in the style of work of the intelligence center for the U.S. embassy. He brought in Mr. Steiner as his special advisor, advocating the replacement of the military delegation in Belgrade, and demanding that someone should be brought in to put intelligence matters in order. His stay in Washington and insistence on changes lead to, after eight months, the removal of the military envoy Kalas, and later Mahr. The embassy from then on worked as an intelligence center in the same way Ambassador Silberman has envisioned.

Although ambassador Silberman earned credit for arranging the visit of the second American president, Gerald Ford to Yugoslavia in 1975, he was declared undesirable, and Washington officially withdrew him from Belgrade in the summer of 1977. The U.S. then dispatched Lawrence Eagleburger, whose task included smoothening out diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. The new ambassador made efforts to the extent of mediating in Yugoslav economic affairs in the U.S. Eagleburger allegedly was the patron of investment for the automobile “Yugo Florida” in the U.S.  He was an expert on political scene in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, informing Washington about the illness of Josip Broz Tito and his possible successor. After Tito’s death in September 1980, the new American ambassador was David Anderson who remained in Belgrade for a full five years, witnessed the first signs of disintegration of Yugoslavia. The ambassadorial experience from Yugoslavia helped him later, upon return to the U.S. to become the strongest expert of the Aspen Institute of Berlin for the Balkans. Anderson was replaced in July 1985 by John D. Scanlan, a former diplomat from the U.S. embassy in Belgrade. He spoke good Serbo-Croatian, and was open to collaboration with Yugoslav politicians and economists. While a second-in-command at the U.S. embassy at 50 Knez Milos Street, he was also responsible to run CIA affairs, states Col. Boza Spasic, former inspector of the State Security Corps of Yugoslavia.

The Last American Ambassador

Warren Zimmermann also spoke Serbo-Croatian, but it seems that he was less inclined to be friendly toward Belgrade and the Serbs than was his predecessor. He took the ambassadorial post in 1989 and left Belgrade of his own will in 1992, after which America sent to the Yugoslavia only a chargé d’affaires. The last accredited American ambassador in Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmermann previously represented the U.S. in Caracas, Moscow, Madrid, Paris, Geneva and Vienna, and served in Belgrade from 1965 to 1968. After leaving Yugoslavia in 1992, Zimmermann became the director of the World Program for refugees in the American government, but two years later he left diplomacy and returned to his professor’s calling and to journalism. He wrote his memoirs, Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers, in which he acknowledged that he did reports for the CIA:

“By the end of 1990, we didn’t have any more illusions. We knew that Yugoslavia, if it didn’t survive, would disappear in a sea of blood. So we made it a priority to try to find a democratic solution for the survival of Yugoslavia, and I stress, a democratic solution. The protection of territorial integrity and democratization we experienced as elements which complement each other, which do not have prospects for survival without each other. We knew that if we took togetherness without democracy -- for example, “unity” by Serbian understanding, or in the manner that the JNA would create it -- that there would be no place for democracy. In the long run, that would not protect the integrity of the country. On the other hand, we were convinced that the secession of Slovenia and Croatia in that moment was not a true solution for the promotion of democratic principles, since it would, regardless of good intentions, lead to war; and war and its consequences never favored democratic atmosphere. That is what in fact happened. In the name of democracy and self-determination, Yugoslavia was shattered, and it is very debatable that it contributed to the realization of true democracy, except partially in Slovenia, and to a lesser extent in Macedonia.”

As the U.S. ambassador in Belgrade Warren Zimmermann by official duty the coordinated and managed the total intelligence-reconnaissance activities carried out from the U.S. embassy, whether by means of the so-called lethal possibilities or other methods. According to Yugoslav State Security experts in charge of the surveillance of the intelligence activities at the U.S. embassy, matters were handled somewhat differently when they concerned intelligence-subversive activities. Three levels of intelligence-security corps worked simultaneously at the embassy, and their work was coordinated by the ambassador and the intelligence committee, so that the CIA and the State Department intelligence jointly comprised the civilian portion of the intelligence center. On the second level was the relatively independent military-intelligence center, lead by a military representative of the Department of Defense, as a rule a DIA officer. In that center various envoys were employed -- from the army, navy, air force -- as well as their assistants, in charge of the intelligence administration of the respective branches. On the third level FBI officials were responsible for the security of the embassy and personnel who worked there.

Zimmermann’s role in triggering the Bosnian war is yet to attract full scrutiny. It is a matter of record that Izetbegovic reneged on the already signed Lisbon Accord brokered in March 1992 by European Community negotiator Jose Cutileiro, following Zimmermann’s suggestion. There is general understanding that prior to Zimmermann’s alleged remark “Why sign it if you don’t like it?” the Bosnian issue could have been resolved peacefully. Zimmermann in his book plays down the importance of the signed Lisbon accord: it was not even included in the index of the book. The references to the agreement itself by Zimmermann are rather contradictory: “At our meeting on February 25 Karadzic was ecstatic over developments in Lisbon..” (p.189), while “..the Bosnian Serbs never accepted Cutileiro’s map..” (p.190-91). He refers to it as only “Cutileiro’s plan” or the “Lisbon approach.” To circumvent the already signed agreement, Zimmermann encouraged Izetbegovic to forge ahead with the referendum on independence while being fully aware that it will result in a violent response from the Bosnian Serbs. Thus, creating a new situation rendering the Lisbon agreement obsolete and void was clearly part of the damage control after Izetbegovic’s signature. Zimmermann believed “that early Western recognition, right after the expected referendum majority for independence, might present Milosevic and Karadzic with a fait accompli difficult for them to overturn,”, while being mindful “that there is some chance of violence if Bosnia wins recognition.”, yet he denies that Western recognition provoked “that aggressive strategy, nor would the lack of Western recognition have deterred it.”

The Diplomatic Cover of Military Envoys

Occasionally the CIA and DIA had conflicts over jurisdiction, but that would be resolved on the level of the intelligence committee of the embassy and the arbitration of the ambassador. It was rare for these relatively independent intelligence centers to differ in their assessments of the status of current affairs in the country, although it would happened. Some indicative information shows that, allegedly, the difference in positions has been related to the newest situation in Yugoslavia. A professional rivalry was present between the civil (CIA and State Department) and military intelligence centers of the embassy, while the FBI as a rule remained outside of these conflicts. As is known, U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann left Yugoslavia before sanctions from Resolution 757 of the UN Security Council went to effect.

The Spy Nest

The U.S. military mission at the American embassy was an important center of intelligence gathering work. At the end of 1975, for example, the mission had nine employed officers: three representatives of the branches of the American armed services, one sergeant, a secretary of the military mission, two code-clerks, one civilian and an administrative secretary. They were high-ranking and well-educated officers. Characterizing one of them, American Col. John Klingelhofer, the Yugoslav Counterintelligence Col. Bane Modusan, assigned to tracking the activities of the U.S. agent, wrote,

“Before coming to Belgrade, in 1968 Col. Klingelhofer was envoy of the military mission for communication with the Soviets in Potsdam, East Germany, systems analyst for data locating; in 1971, chief of staff of the 1st marine helicopter division in Vietnam; and DIA chief for the USSR in the Pentagon in 1972. He completed 14 military schools, from School for Military Personnel Management in 1948, to School for Maintenance of Parachute Units, through Defense Language Institute for Serbian in 1973, Intelligence School for Envoys and Military Institute for Eastern Europe to Command-staff Academy and War College. Of civilian schools, Col. Klingelhofer completed Advanced School of Military Sciences, Advanced School of International Relations, and American University in Washington. During Col. Klingelhofer’s assignment in Belgrade, the primary public method of gathering information was traveling through the country. During 1976, the DIA planned 48 intelligence trips in the course of 129 days, primarily through Croatia and Slovenia, then through Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro, and then Macedonia, Vojvodina, Kosovo, and Istria.”

The CIA and other intelligence corps were working against Yugoslavia from the inside and from the outside, especially from Austria, Italy, West Germany and Greece. On Yugoslav territory, special attention should be given to intelligence activity carried out through the diplomatic-consular offices -- claims Dusan Vilic. In 1986 the Yugoslav presidency and military high command began to move with the assessment that a special war was being waged in Slovenia, and that the CIA wanted to exploit the nationalist emotions of the Slovenian youth and break up Yugoslavia.

One of the top-ranking specialists on the CIA in Yugoslavia is Dr. Petar Knezevic, a military-political commentator and former head of the Analytical Department in General Staff of Yugoslav Army, and the Security Management Department of the Federal Ministry of National Defense. In all analyses, Dr. Knezevic encountered examples of CIA activities in the world while he followed its activities in the Balkans as an analyst at Counterintelligence Corps of the Yugoslav Army.

Due to its geopolitical and geostrategic position, the former SRFY was continuously in the sphere of interest of the intelligence corps of alliances, and especially of the leading states of NATO and the Warsaw agreement, as well as some neighboring countries who had and still have territorial claims to parts of the former Yugoslavia, such as Albania and Hungary. Emboldened by Western support they are now pursuing their goal of re-drawing the borders of Yugoslavia with renewed aggressiveness, in violation of existing international norms, as in case of Kosovo. The intelligence-subversive activity on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and especially Serbia is now in service of the current policy of the European Union, NATO, the U.S. and some neighboring states and their connections with secessionist parties and movements in country. The CIA intensified its intelligence-subversive activity during the ‘90’s and by the time of ending the NATO war over Kosovo in 1999, pursues its goals almost openly.

The CIA is a significant lever of American policy in attaining its goals abroad, and in fact, the only one authorized to carry out so-called secret actions. Of course, on the territory of the former Yugoslavia and Serbia the CIA collaborated most closely with the intelligence corps of other NATO countries, especially Great Britain, Germany and Italy. After the disintegration of the Warsaw pact and the changes that happened in the former USSR, we would not dare to claim that the CIA did not attain certain collaboration with the former KGB in relation to the newly formed intelligence institutions of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). Therefore, the increased intelligence-subversive activity on the territory of Yugoslavia is the reality we must count on in evaluating the political-security situation and the overcoming of the state of crisis in Yugoslavia.

Considering that the U.S. after the Gulf War and the disintegration of the USSR is de facto the only superpower in the world, it may seem natural that today only Americans have and pursue global policy. However, this puts any other state on the defensive by default. The CIA has grown into a powerful secret corps on the back of an economically, financially and politically strong America. It has succeeded in breaking communism and enforcing a New World Order. Its basic task today is how to protect the primary interests of the U.S. in the existing power relationships in the world, and to ensure that that New World Order continues its development. The CIA long ago outgrew the boundaries of America itself, but has never been a supranational intelligence organization. This agency has only had and held the leading place in the U.S. intelligence community and the Western states gathered under NATO. With this, its responsibility to protect the security of America and the Western military alliance has also grown, or in other words, its task to prevent all possible enemy political and militant surprises on all parts of the world.  That forces the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to further develop itself and to become the largest, strongest and most powerful intelligence corps in the history of human kind, which then hardly anyone will be able to control.