Allies and lies
(Excerpts from the tape)

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This is a story of espionage... bugging... covert military operations... political double-dealing.

In an investigation across six countries, Correspondent has uncovered a series of incidents which has tested the Western Alliance to breaking point.

This is a story about Americans behaving badly. About thousands of un-necessary deaths. About an alliance in crisis.

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The story begins when a multinational force was sent to Bosnia early in 1992. It was called the UN Protection Force - UNPROFOR...

That mission was difficult from the start...

In terms of "peace-keeping", there was no peace to keep.

Former neighbours were "ethnically cleansed" from any territory that changed hands. Lifelong friends became deadly enemies.

And a rift between NATO and the United Nations opened up too.

To stop any further escalation of the war, the UN ordered that all flying -- other than by Western Allies -- was to be banned in Bosnian air-space. NATO agreed to be the enforcer.

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NATO is a war-fighting machine dominated by the United States. But the UN was not in Bosnia to fight a war.

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Domestic US politics had ruled that a soldier from Britain, France or Pakistan could be left to serve and die in some corner of Bosnia. Such an outcome was preferable to the danger of CNN reporting the death of a soldier from Galveston, Texas.

[British General] ROSE: "They [Americans] find it very hard politically to put their young man and women in harm's way... And they don't circulate amongst the community in the way we are able to do in Britain. And that's a tremendous disadvantage - which they will acknowledge."

What US Governments fear most about overseas military operations is being accused of dragging America into "another Vietnam". That and public backlash from scenes on television news of flag-draped coffins being unloaded from military planes.

And so, not a single American soldier patrolled this hostile terrain.

Thorvald Stoltenberg was the UN's Chief Peace Negotiator for much of the conflict. We asked him when he'd first discovered that the Americans were intercepting his telephone calls.

STOLTENBERG: "That I... I guess it must have been in '93, but I cannot say that for sure... No! I believe it must have been in '93."

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But Stoltenberg wasn't the only intelligence target.

ROSE: "My own office I think probably was bugged by the Americans, I always suspected that and we were always very careful in what we said in that office. And if we did say something, it was with deliberate intent."

Some of the bugging was done by General Rose's neighbours.

The CIA's office in the American Embassy next door was perfectly placed for the use of a laser-beam. This picked up the vibrations made by human voices on Rose's windows.

The Americans even loaned him a military satellite phone which had a bug built into it.

ROSE: "We had an American team sweep my office and, as they left, they said 'Well there are no bugs in your office'. And I said to them 'Except for the ones of course that you left behind.' And they had the good nature to blush."

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SHEENA: "The story of one American intelligence agent is typical. The man, calling himself "Major Guy Sands" deserves a medal for a determination which outpaced his skills as a spy. In 1994, carrying UNPROFOR credentials, he would hang around General Michael Rose's headquarters here in Sarajevo. In the bar he would boast about his ten year tour of duty in Vietnam."

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Guy Sands became the highest profile - and longest-serving - spook operating in the Balkans.

But "Major" Sands was no soldier. His claim to be a member of America's Airborne elite was undermined when he was seen wearing his airborne wings on the wrong side of his uniform.

An American military source remembers confronting Sands in bar in Sarajevo. Sands told him he was a "contract employee of the CIA".

Guy Sands was expelled from General Rose's head-quarters - only to turn up six months later in Tuzla [North-East Bosnia, under Muslim control].

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From March 1995, Brigadier Haukeland was commander of UNPROFOR's Sector North- East.

HAUKELAND: "Everybody in Tuzla as well as... well, I think the whole of Bosnia knew about the person you are talking about.

"He was actually in my headquarters in Tuzla. He was responsible for the co- operation with the civilian relief organisations, especially with the UNHCR and so on. ...

"I was suspicious of him because he didn't mind his own business. That was the problem. And when you're in a headquarters and people stop minding their own business, you get trouble.

Haukeland complained to Sand's Contingent Commander about his behaviour.

HAUKELAND: "Because criss-crossing... and he's not following the chain of command, which will frustrate his colleagues as well as damaging the system."

When Sands was discovered snooping around Haukeland's intelligence unit it was time again for the Red Card.

HAUKELAND: "All of a sudden he was ordered by his contingent commander who was sitting in Zagreb to show up in Zagreb immediately... because it was too dangerous for the Americans being in Bosnia..."

STOLTENBERG: "I never criticised the Americans for saying that this was a European issue what we have in Yugoslavia and should be solved by the Europeans. I understood that.

"My criticism applies to the fact that they did not actually go outside the field and sit down and watch. No! They were standing on the sidelines shouting in to the players."

The scale of America's espionage operations cannot be understated. Hundreds of personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency were deployed in Bosnia during 1994 and 95.

The US contributed far more spies than infantry - but what UNPROFOR needed was infantry.

Washington wanted it both ways. It had no players on the pitch, but that wasn't going to stop it trying to dictate the outcome of the 'game'.

COVERT AIR DROPS

The United States had no faith in a negotiated settlement to the war. Senior officials in the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council believed that the only solution possible was what they called "lift and strike".

They wanted to re-arm and train the Croats and the Muslims and then encourage them to fight an all-out war against the Bosnian Serb Army. "Lift and strike" was totally contrary to the UN mandate and in breach of the Arms Embargo. It was Washington's secret agenda.

Correspondent can reveal that part of the American administration went so far as to manipulate NATO resources in order to re-arm the Bosnian Army -- BiH Army.

NATO's primary involvement in the Balkans was Operation Deny Flight - the total ban on all unauthorised flying over Bosnia.

[Note from S-M: Again: Operation Deny Flight was actualy to deny flight of the Serbian airplanes only. Moslems and Croats had no airplanes of their own.]

The North Atlantic Alliance was particularly well-equipped to perform this task. Operating from high altitude, its E-3 AWACS are able to scan the skies over a huge area.

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The AWACS - code-named "Magic" - always works with two fighters on "Combat Air Patrol". Magic will send them to intercept and check any suspect flights.

But this vital operation was manipulated by the Americans in order to do exactly what it was designed to stop - make covert, embargo-busting flights over Bosnia.

On the 10th of February 1995, Norwegian Air Force Captain Oivind Moldestad was visiting UNPROFOR in Tuzla. The local base was at a complex called "The Blue Factory".

MOLDESTAD: "I'm up in Tuzla - I tried once in a while to get up for a weekend with my colleagues and friends for some R&R.; It's Friday night and we'd been in the mess hall for dinner and I'm walking out with my CO. It's dark, it's a clear evening. And as we walked out, we faced directly towards Tuzla town.

"I asked him to confirm friendly over Tuzla... And he says 'Stand by' and he checks his papers and comes back and he says no, nothing flying. NATO is not operating tonight for some reason."

Of course, saying that NATO wasn't flying is not the same as saying the skies are empty.

As Moldestad and his colleagues watched the US Navy's improvised display, they were about to realise that it was no more than a side-show to the main event.

[Norwegian] MOLDESTAD: "One of our guards comes running over to me and he goes 'Sir, sir, did you see the other aircraft?' And I said I'm looking at them now. He says 'No, no - the one that came behind here - the big one!.' What do you mean? 'There was a big aircraft coming behind Blue Factory towards Tuzla Air Base. And I asked him if he could identify the aircraft. Anyway, was it a jet aircraft, a propeller aircraft? The only thing he could say was a Hercules-type aircraft. It was slow and flying towards Tuzla Air Base. [...] Tuzla Air Base is closed, it's been closed for years."

Word of the incident soon spread rapidly up the UNPROFOR chain of command - to Sarajevo and then on the Zagreb.

LEHMAN: "I remember one morning in an operation room where a message came in... it must have been in the beginning of February, I believe. But a British officer was on call and he reported a plane that had probably landed at Tuzla Air Base in the middle of the night. And it was very silent afterwards and those who usually spoke up said nothing.

"And the following morning when questions was asked about this there were no comments at all and they said it must have been a misunderstanding.

"But we had no doubt at all that an air drop had taken place in Tuzla. Of course we were not told who did it, but we had our suspicions."

When Moldestad got back to Sarajevo, UNPROFOR's new commander, British Army General Sir Rupert Smith called him to his office.

MOLDESTAD: "He got a bit upset... to say it that way. He ordered me not to talk to anybody about this. He said it's a very serious incident and, if anybody had any queries about it, they were to contact him personally."

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Later that month, Moldestad and a number of colleagues flew from Sarajevo to the air base at Vicenza in Northern Italy.

What was scheduled as a routine meeting between NATO and the UN turned out to be a lesson in the arrogance of power.

MOLDESTAD: "We go into the meeting room and... his name was Colonel Cooper. He starts the meeting with something like, you know... 'I wish UNPROFOR would stop seeing all these unidentified flying objects. And I would really like to meet the people that have initiated this bullshit. And it made me a bit angry, so I raised my hand and I told him that I am the one who reported this. And he... appears to be a bit surprised."

Moldestad was told to see the Chief UN Liaison Officer at Vicenza - a Dutch General.

"As I'm in there, Colonel Cooper comes into the office and he says to the general, 'Excuse me, sir, but we need to talk to this officer. And whereupon the Dutch General replies well, can't you see I'm talking to him now? And Cooper grabs my arm and he says, well, I think we are more important than you in this matter. And he leads me out of the office. [...]

Moldestad was then interrogated by a group of senior American officers.

"It's quite scary to find yourself in a situation like this. [...] What I remember is that I gave them very vague answers to their questions. And I referred them to General Rupert Smith. [...]

"As I walk down the corridor, I meet another UN officer, a Norwegian one, who, as I pass him, puts a piece of paper down inside my jacket, and he's looking a bit distressed about it. He said 'Read it on the aircraft on your way home.' And I tried to reach for it and he said 'Not now! [...] Don't take it out before you are on the aircraft."

"As we take off I take out this piece of paper and it is NATO's flying programme for the 10th of February, Friday the 10th of February. It's a classified document. Where he's got it from I have absolutely no idea. But I'm sure he was not meant to have it."

The document records that, at 5pm, "Magic" had been stood down.

This was not "Magic" - this was manipulation.

One hour later, two F-18s took off from the same American carrier.

These were the two, twin-engined fighters seen flying low over Tuzla by Moldestad and his colleagues.

"This indicates to me that, during this incident, this evening, not NATO, but the Americans were controlling the entire Bosnian air space, on their own."

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An intelligence report on the mysterious incident was written by this British Army officer based at UN Sector North-East HQ at Tuzla Air base.

Lt Col Christopher Le Hardy got to the heart of the matter when he wrote that:

ASTON: "...the mission was carried out with the consent and support..."

ASTON: "...of the authorities commanding the AWACS and other aircraft in the air at that time."

In other words - the Americans.

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An enquiry team was set up by NATO. It was staffed only by senior US Air Force officers.

Meanwhile, Cables passed between UN HQ in New York, NATO in Brussels and Vicenza Air Base.

Some of these classified documents have reached Correspondent. We asked Ken Connor to review the file. Connor, a 23-year veteran of the British SAS, is one of the world's leading experts on the planning and execution of covert operations.

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The secret drops near Tuzla Air Base were made at a highway airstrip known as "Tuzla West". The airstrip was little more than a very wide, straight stretch of public road.

Some years ago, that road was taken over by the US Army for helicopter flight operations and re-named "Comanche Base".

On the airstrip, Ken Connor told me how the drops had been carried out.

CONNOR: "About three kilometres down that way there is a lake which is the final navigational marker for the crew. Once they see that, they'll then be able to pick up the drop zone lights.

"They come in at about 400 feet. The stores on the aircraft are on pallets, they are on rollers. And once they hit the lake, they're going to do it, they take the final restraining straps off.

"As the aircraft comes, it's slightly nose-up, its flaps are down, it's making a lot of noise... flying at about 250 knots.

"The drogue 'chute goes, the pallets go, the aircraft picks up speed and disappears.

"But once the pallets hit, the 'chutes break away and drift off, the strobe lights are flickering, the orders are given, the work parties come out to pick up the load and, within a matter of a few short minutes, the area's clear and off they go."

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[American!] General George Joulwan was Supreme Allied Commander, Europe - the head of the military side of NATO - throughout 1994 and 95. How could it have been possible for Operation Deny Flight to have been stood down on the nights of the air drops without the approval of NATO at the highest level?

JOULWAN: "We had no information that that was taking place - personally. Just to make it clear, that what was coming to me as the Supreme Allied Commander, was that we had no confirmation that this was taking place. [...]

"What I was doing had nothing to do with what nothing to do with what the State Department and the CIA was doing."

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In spite of the evidence, America denied re-supplying the BiH Army in breach of the UN arms embargo.

Correspondent decided to approach senior Muslim officers and ask them about the drops.

[Bosnian Muslim] General Hasan Sadic was commander of 2nd Corps in the Tuzla region until late in 1994. He admitted he had planned the drop zone.

SHEENA: "So were the logistics men based right around the perimeter, or were they based in different parts?"

SADIC: "We had the task of preventing civilians from coming to this location in order to protect them from injury. Secondly, we had to attend these drops regularly at certain locations... and after collecting the cargo, take it to the warehouse."

Sadic could tell us no more about the drops. He was sent to Turkey as Military Attaché.

The UN Sector North-East Report written by Lt Col Le Hardy contained another intriguing piece of information.

ASTON: "At 2025 Alpha an armoured patrol reached the Tuzla Highway Strip..."

ASTON: "Cargo-handling activity was observed..."

ASTON: "Five heavy trucks, BiH personnel and some cargo on the ground was identified by the use of night vision goggles..."

ASTON: "On their way back to the air base, the armoured patrol was fired on by BiH [Bosnian Muslim] soldiers."

We asked contacts in Tuzla which unit of the BiH Army had attacked the patrol.

They told us to look for the man on the right in these photographs.

Brigadier Refik Brdjanovic, former commander of the Black Wolves Special Forces Unit [Alija Izetbegovic's Islamist shock troops], was in charge if security for the air drops. It was his soldiers who had shot at the UN patrol.

We finally caught up with him in Switzerland. Brdjanovic confirmed that the Americans organised the covert operation.

BRDJANOVIC: "I understood that Americans are leading these operations because before any air drops took place there were American planes flying over the region."

Help was at hand on the ground, too.

BRDJANOVIC: "When we were off-loading these aircraft there were civilians who were talking English. I do not know if they were Americans but they were speaking English."

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Some days after the drops, an aid worker was driving along a road close by Tuzla airstrip. He was taken by a call of nature.

PER KJELL: "I found a nice place to stop in front of... I would say it was a big garage with two... or maybe it was three doors at the front, and there was a good place to park outside.

"So I stopped the car there and got out and... around the corner to 'do my thing'. There was a small door and the door opened. Inside there I saw three guys sitting, and I knew them - I'd talked to them and I'd seen them and I knew they were American.

"They were looking into two boxes that were a little bit short of two metres... and since they were sitting on it, it was approximately the height of a chair - 40, 50, maybe 60 centimetres high, and maybe the same width of it. It was green, so it was not an ordinary box, it was some special kind of box.

"And one of them that was nearest me, jumped up and smashed the door in and locked it!"

"[...] I knew these guys. [...] I was very confused about why they did that to me."

Six years after the incident, this man still fears for his safety.

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BRDJANOVIC: "They were big packages and inside there were boxes on which it was written "US Army" and also unmarked boxes [...] Mainly grey, although there was some green."

The boxes contained valuable "Stinger" ground-to-air missiles and anti-tank guided weapons to be used against the superior armour of the Bosnian Serb Army.

Brdjanovic also told us that this man was involved in arranging the covert supply of weapons from Iran. He was the Bosnian Military Attache in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Gen Hasan Sadic, it seems, had not told us all he knew.

We then asked Brdjanovic to name the most senior American involved in what was called "Operation Rescue".

BRDJANOVIC: "I remember Jim Campbell. Before he came to Bosnia his people were scouting the region for this operation. The name of his assistant was Jack Collins."

Jim Campbell turned out to be Major General James L Campbell of the US Army.

We asked his commanding officer to comment.

JOULWAN: "I don't think he was with NATO. He may have been with the US Army in Europe. But not with NATO."

As well as being commander of NATO, General Joulwan was also commander of all US Forces in Europe. Either way, he was Campbell's boss.

JOULWAN: "I have no idea what his tasking was and... I don't know. You'll have to ask General Campbell."

It seems remarkable that General Joulwan was uninformed about the activities of one of his most senior staff officers.

JOULWAN: "I had no idea he was involved in these covert operations. If he was involved in it, I had no knowledge of it."

Far from ending the conflict, the American "lift and strike" plan poured fuel on the fire.

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LEHMAN: "There was one particular issue that impressed us much and that was the American participation in the build-up of the army, or the forces of the Croat...

"And when it came to the offensive in the Krajina in August, they participated actively in giving air support to those forces. So they were on both sides in a way. They were in the UN systems with the hospital and some staff officers and at the same time they were supporting one of the parties actively and militarily."

Military training was also banned by the UN arms embargo.

If so, that training proved ineffective.

LEHMAN: "On the 16th August 1995, the Sector South HRAT - which is a humanitarian officer - viewed four dead bodies in the village of Zagovic.

"All appeared to have been dead for at least one week. Two of the bodies, both men, by the side of the main highway, both men had bullet holes in their heads."

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Defence analyst Tim Ripley believes that the US plot to train and equip the Bosnian Muslims directly led to the terrible death-toll at Srebrenica later in 1995.

RIPLEY: "The Bosnian [Izetbegovic's Islam fundamentalist] Army [...] lurched from one disaster to the next. It went on the offensive in March, in two places in Central Bosnia, got defeated. It launched a major offensive around Sarajevo in May and got defeated with several thousand casualties. And come June and July [...] General Mladic, the commander of the BSA, decided that, if the Bosnians were going to keep on attacking, he was going to strike back and hit the Bosnians in the place they were weakest, the Srebrenica enclave.

"So you could say these air drops were, in military terms, an 'own-goal' in that they gave the Bosnians a false sense of their military power. [...] And it back-fired spectacularly on the Bosnians."

[S-M: Blunt lie about Srebrenica deleted here. Notice also that the term "Bosnians" in Western heads firmly applies to Alija Izetbegovic's loyalists. The Serbs who are born in Bosnia for more than THOUSAND years somehow are still not Bosnians. Orwellian indeed!]

SHEENA: And this was influenced by what was happening in Bosnia?

ULRIKSEN: "Probably... Of course! Definitely!"

The black-out even applied to countries with whom they had long-standing pacts for sharing such intelligence - Britain and Norway. Both governments were furious.

ULRIKSEN: "It threatened to break up NATO... it could have been the death of NATO.

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The first public sign of dissent within the Western Alliance was when the British and French agreed a plan for extensive military co-operation.

Senior political and diplomatic sources on both sides of the Atlantic told Correspondent off the record that they were "shocked" at the development.

The Anglo-French agreement was signed at St Malo in Brittany.

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RIPLEY: "St Malo is the first time the British and French governments at the highest level had contemplated a non-NATO military co-operation for serious military operations - as opposed to peacetime exercise co-operation. It was the genesis for what is now know as the Euro-Army.

"It showed that the British Government, who had been the stalwart American ally since the year dot, was finally looking for [...] European-based military options outside the NATO structure.

"It's a matter of public record that there is a distinct lineage from St Malo to the Euro Army."

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Once the French had won Prime Minister Tony Blair to their cause, the establishment of a European Rapid Reaction Force -- the "Euro-Army" - was inevitable.

There is a reluctance in Washington and Brussels to talk openly about a possible end to the Transatlantic Alliance.

Many defence analysts believe that the Balkans Conflict has tested the Western Alliance almost to destruction.

RIPLEY: "...for the first three years of the Bosnian War, the Americans were engaged rhetorically but disengaged militarily and diplomatically. For the Europeans that was an immensely frustrating and disillusioning event.

"[...] they were there with their troops on the ground, being shot at. You had General Rose doing his stuff in Sarajevo but the Americans were just not prepared to go that extra mile to back him up."

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STOLTENBERG: "We, the Europeans, and the United Nations have a lot to learn from Yugoslavia, but I think also, Washington should take notice of the fact that we might have had peace earlier if they had supported the agreements negotiated. [...] The main moral issue was to get people to stop killing each other.

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But it's hard to forget that unilateral actions by America - the "World Super- power" - encouraged the fighting in Bosnia to start again.

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