Magic World of Espionage

If your answers to these questions are positive, no doubt you are a spy. Thanks to this kind of logic, a group of fourteen citizens of Croatia (the fifteenth has run away), who have been arrested by the Service for the Protection of Constitutional Order (SZUP) of Croatia and the Office for National Security (UNS), have entered the magic world of espionage.

During operation "Storm" special measures were taken to make sure the evidence on subversive actions in Krajina is preserved, said Croatian Deputy Foreign Minister Smiljan Reljic. All the people from Croatia who, via Hungary, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina visited someone in Krajina, were called by the authorities for informative interviews. The questions usually referred to the political situation in Croatia, the well-known people and acquaintances ("Is Pero still driving the lorry?" - "I don't know, his sister-in-law is in Austria.") on the mood among the Serbs, on what the neighbors are saying, etc. During the talks, official notes were taken. However, the officers were a little too ambitious. They cared little about people's day-to-day complaints about how expensive everything was. One does not get promoted for that kind of thing. So the reports contained boastful paragraphs on "consent to cooperate" of the interviewed and the ones whose names were mentioned. Depending on the rank of the officer and his chief, the reports were further expanded. "Intelligence networks" were thus made with code names, "legendary operators", information was gathered.

And then the "Storm" came. Gossips say that in the chaos Krajina was in, the greater part of written archives were taken away or burned, and that the information in computers was destroyed by breaking the computers, but that no one had paid attention to what was most important - memory discs. The Croatian operators, once the discs were in their hands, read without difficulty what was on them.

It is said that some of the citizens of Croatia (12 Serbs and two Croats) arrested by SZUP had travelled to Krajina. Among those arrested, there were some active or retired police and army officers who are well known to their colleagues from Krajina since the time when they worked all together in the Socialist Republic of Croatia: why not describe them in the reports as "honest Serbs and sworn Yugoslavs" carrying out operational tasks on the other side of the front line. All of them have, in the meantime, travelled abroad, at least for minor smuggling, have written to their relatives and friends and kept personal diaries in which they wrote negatively about Croatia's current government.

The greatest problem the fourteen arrested citizens may have to face is the ambition of the Croatian counter-intelligence service. Would the breaking of a spy network which, according to Reljic, had tried to cover all the structures in Croatia - from the Parliament to private companies, not have a positive effect on their careers?

The whole thing has another dimension. Can any of the Serbs who fled Croatia and now wish to return be sure that they have been spared of the officers' careerism? Can any of the Croats who have maintained relations with their relatives and friends be sure that they have not been registered as "sworn and checked Yugoslavs?"