Bosnia-Herzogovina
1997 - 1998

Rick and Emily were there at different times. Emily was on a fact-finding visit as a professional staff member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Rick was there as deputy chief of a joint CIA-DOD operations team to locate and arrest five Persons Indicted For War Crimes - more commonly called PIFWCs.


Sarajevo



As the sign says, welcome to Sarajevo


Apartment building damage in Sarajevo


Heightened Sarajevo walls


Market in old Sarajevo


Destruction in Sarajevo


High-rise apartment destruction in Sarajevo

 


Old Sarajevo


Kids in what was "sniper alley" in Sarajevo


Emily in market area of Sarajevo


Bazaar in Sarajevo


Emily with escorts at Sarajevo air base


Emily's business card


Sarajevo air base


Ethnic cleansing outside Sarajevo


Ethnic cleansing outside Sarajevo

 


Emily in bazaar in Sarajevo


Sarajevo air base
She got her own jet!!


Scenic Sarajevo

 


Ethnic cleansing outside Sarajevo


Ethnic cleansing outside Sarajevo

On the hunt for our assigned five PIFWCs - we eventually got them all (plus one other who gave himself up)


Tuzla air base - our own two helicopters

 


Serbian area


Outside Banja Luka - pretty shot up


Bridge over the Sava River at Brcko - Serbia on the other side.
A favorite PIFWC escape route


Serbian area

 


Tough way to grow up


Serb equipment


Serbian area


Bosanski Samac - home of four of our PIFWCs

  • Blagoje Simic - serving sentence in UK until 2016
  • Stefan Todorovic - served 7 of 10 years, committed suicide (no loss)
  • Miroslav Tadic - served 8 years, now out
  • Simo Zaric - served 6 years, now out, elected deputy mayor of Bosanski Samac in 2010
  • Milan Simic - (not one of our targets), served 5 years, now out


Brcko - home of the worst PIFWC Goran Jelisic

Goran Jelisic - taken down by my team in January 1998.

Acquitted on the count of genocide but sentenced to 40 years in prison for crimes against humanity and for serious breaches of the laws and customs of war.


Brcko


Tough way to grow up


Not an uncommon scene on the roads near the Line of Demarcation betweeen Bosnian and Serb areas


Central Tuzla


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla


After the fighting - back to basics


Operations room - Tuzla


My room - Tuzla


SFOR identification

 


Tuzla


Tuzla


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla

 


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla


Ethnic cleansing outside Tuzla

 


Operations room - Tuzla


US forces pass

UPDATE - July 21, 2008

To the left is a bottle of Dingac (DING-gatch), a pleasant Croation wine that we were partial to during our stints in Bosnia.  The joys of being assigned to the CIA station - no General Order Number One (the military prohibition on alcohol).

We brought a bottle home in 1998 with the hopes of toasting the imminent capture of Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian war criminal number one.  While Rick's team was successful in capturing the lower level functionaries, Karadzic and his military cohort, General Ratko Mladic, managed to escape to Serbia. 

Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade today. We opened the bottle and drank half.

Ratko Mladic is still at large.