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Now criminals use intelligence agencies

No need for @USAmbSerbia to justify himself. Vulin’s designation was the right thing to do.

If he’s in any way serious about ‘bringing Serbia into Western institutions’, he’ll still have a long list of sanctioned individuals to communicate in this country.pic.twitter.com/PQPjtiEOZ1

— Jakub Bielamowicz (@KubaBielamowicz) July 13, 2023

Vreme, a Belgrade weekly, has given permission for me to republish this recent interview with Saša Janković. The interviewer was Nedim Sejdimovic. Included at the end are two questions and answers not published in Vreme.

Saša Janković was the first Ombudsman of Serbia, a man who, along with his team, established and developed the institution of the Protector of Citizens from 2007 to 2017. Soon after its establishment, it became the most important state control mechanism, representing citizens’ interests and enjoying their unequivocal trust. Following a call from a part of the public (100 public figures) to run as a candidate in the 2017 presidential elections, Saša Janković resigned from his position as Ombudsman and went head-to-head against Aleksandar Vučić. In the elections, he garnered nearly 600,000 votes in a perfectly unfair battle. After the elections, he founded the Free Citizens’ Movement and became its first president. However, in December of the following year, he resigned and announced that he would no longer pursue a political career.

Janković is a lawyer by profession, with a post-graduate specialization in national and global security from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade. He currently works as an international consultant for human rights and oversight in the security sector.

“VREME”: Aleksandar Vulin, head of BIA (the Serbian civilian Security-Intelligence Agency), has found himself on the U.S. government’s blacklist, among other things, due to “involvement in transnational organized crime, illegal operations related to narcotics, and abuse of public office.” How did this man end up at the helm of the secret service?

SAŠA JANKOVIĆ: Vulin was appointed to all positions, including the head of BIA, due to his loyalty to Aleksandar Vučić, without whom he would have remained a minor political figure. Not to be misunderstood, loyalty is an important trait in politics. Without it, at the first crisis, everything falls apart and everyone goes home “the smartest,” but as losers. I know how I fared in politics because I did not pay attention to the loyalty of my associates, taking it for granted. However, loyalty alone is not a sufficient qualification for leading a ministry or a secret service. It does not justify steering Serbia towards an increasingly dangerous foreign policy course, nor pursuing a violent domestic policy. Both are causing this country, its institutions, and its citizens to burst at the seams, although, Vučić and Vulin would disagree. Anyways, the responsibility for appointing Vulin to that position lies with Vučić, not with Vulin himself.

Q: Apart from loyalty, what else can be said about Vulin’s role in Vučić’s government?

A: Despite all the mockery directed towards Vučić from the opposition, his government is well-organized. Vulin’s role in it is to be a prominent pro-Russian and anti-Western figure, and he plays his part in a flamboyant but wholehearted manner. He won’t betray when things get tough. There are also members of the government whose task is to maintain good relations with the West. Vucic strategically presents either group to the audience that matters to him at the moment. Having these different groups allows him to politically maneuver, choose, and shift focus to conduct some sort of policy. What kind of policy that is, is another matter. In my opinion, it is wrong and harmful in so many ways.

Q: You said that the decision of the US government was not random and was not made hastily. Does that mean that the US has strong and unambiguous evidence against Vulin? And could our government request to see that evidence for potential actions? If not Vučić’s government, could the next government request to see that evidence? And should we expect that some other official from our country might end up on that blacklist?

A: If Vulin remains in his position, which I doubt will be for long, the list of individuals under US sanctions may continue to grow. I don’t believe the US has anything major about Vulin that is not already known in Serbian institutions. The explanation provided by the US did not surprise anyone, and I don’t think any formal proof will, or should be sent to Serbia. However, it is possible that some information may be leaked to the media, similar to the leak of the “Sky” phone conversations. The current government is more concerned about this type of pressure than with any formal evidence and how it would (not) be used by the domestic justice system. It is unfortunate that foreign powers hold the key to this pressure and can choose when and how to apply it in their own interest. What makes it worse is that there is material available for such pressure.

Q: What does the decision of the US government mean for Serbia in political and security terms? And how do you comment on Vučić’s reaction to the news about Vulin being sanctioned?

A: With this decision, the USA is sending a message to Serbia that Belgrade has not taken its previous warnings about the consequences of abandoning the European path and turning towards Russia seriously. I believe that Ambassador Christopher Hill wants Vučić to understand that the number of people in Washington with zero tolerance for Serbia on these issues is increasing. Politics, security, and economy are intertwined, especially given the situation in Ukraine, and the US administration’s decision has implications for Serbia in all three spheres. It portrays Serbia as a country plagued by crime, corruption, and Russian influence, and could lead to further deterioration of relations with Western countries on all levels and in all issues.

Vučić’s initial public reaction was expected – he responded sharply to America in front of his followers. However, it remains to be seen what will happen in the coming months – I believe that Vulin will be “promoted” to a next position. It is noteworthy that there are no reciprocal measures against American agencies and their leaders, only a sharp retort from Vučić. But this is not about how he handles this situation publicly, this is about the situation should never have happened in the first place: Vulin should never have been appointed to that position, and if he was, he should have been removed before public sanctions were imposed. Because, these sanctions have been unofficially in effect for some time.

Q: Why is security cooperation with America exactly important for Serbia?

A: The lack of security cooperation with America would not only affect relations with the US, but also with the majority of Western countries. This would hinder access to intelligence information, resources, and support in the fight against terrorism, organized crime, and other threats. Ironically, some members of our security community may welcome this, as cooperation with the West directly harms their interests. However, no country, including Serbia, is strong enough to navigate the world in isolation in terms of security, economy, and politics. We would have to turn completely towards the East, which in the world as it is today, means a conflict with the West. We have already experienced such a conflict in our recent history and know the outcome of that wartime adventure.

The truth is also that aligning with America and the West today still means conflict, but with the opposite side or sides. So which option is better for Serbia if we have to choose between the two? Where can we better pursue our interests, especially given that our neighboring countries have already made their decisions towards NATO and the EU? I would prefer if we were a militarily neutral country, as we were at some point in the past. However, then we should not have asked for, nor accepted financial and political support from the West for decades, nor, to that matter, deified Putin in the pro-governmental media.

Not to mention that we now don’t fulfil most of the international criteria for military neutrality. For that, we should have been leading a moderate foreign policy, in everything. But let me ask: from a historical and human perspective, what do we really want? Do we want to align ourselves with how Russia’s responded to NATO’s expansion – by occupying and destroying a sovereign country? Are we prepared that some overwhelming military power does the same to us if we decide to join an adversary (to them) military-political complex – be it Russian or some other towards the East? It is easy to die bravely; living with a wrong choice is what is difficult.

However, I am not a pessimist. I don’t believe that by imposing sanctions against Vulin, the USA and the West truly intend to sever security cooperation with Serbia. On the contrary, they want to draw certain red lines to enable our cooperation to continue and develop. Our security/intelligence agencies have reduced international cooperation to its lowest level in recent history, except with Russian and maybe Hungarian counterparts. But I don’t believe this is sustainable.

Q: How accurate are the claims we hear – that U.S. and Western agencies have numerous pieces of evidence about the ties between the Serbian government’s top officials and organized crime, and that they use it as a certain means of blackmail? Is there any truth to this, or are these just “gossip from the neighborhood”?

A: As previously mentioned, it is publicly known that the decrypted conversations from the “Sky” phones originate from abroad. This means that someone, possibly in Paris or another location, is choosing what to officially disclose and what to retain and use according to their needs and interests.

Q: So, Western agencies influence internal political processes through the media?

A: Let’s not be hypocritical; of course, foreign agencies will use their resources and material to further their national interests. There are numerous cases linking crime, such as corruption and arms smuggling, to people in power, and any of these could become the next big headline. Media and journalists cannot be blamed for doing their job; their role is to publish news, and they should continue to do so as long as it is truthful. The way to reduce external influence is not by concealing crime, but by rooting it out, especially among high-ranking state officials. Furthermore, the distinction between good and bad cannot be based on the principle of “if we do it, it’s good, and if they do it, it’s bad.”

Q: As the Protector of Citizens, you performed oversight of the work of security services. What were your experiences during that period? And what processes occurred after the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) came to power?

A: At the beginning, on behalf of the international community, I participated in the organizational reform of our intelligence agencies. Then, as the Protector of Citizens I oversaw their activities, ensuring they respected human rights and adhered to democratic standards. I worked with heads of the agencies, including Stojanović, Kovač, Cvetković, Anočić, Miličević and Živaljević, Vukadinović, Bulatović, Rodić, Aleksandar Đorđević, Milić, Nikolić, Tomčić, and others. I recall working also with some lesser-known but very important professionals, such as Jandrić, Dragičević, Teodorović, Banković, Delić, Panić, and Stojić.

During this time, journalists like the late Dejan Anastasijević were well-informed about intelligence and security matters. In 2006, he wrote an article titled “Is BIA going to outlive Serbia?” in which he predicted the Agency’s recruitment slogan, “countries change, the Service remains,” and the perverted philosophy behind it. I recall debating with director Rodić about his plan to open an Academy within the BIA for high-school graduates. I expressed my concern that molding such young individuals might be suitable for military or police profiles, but not for intelligence or counterintelligence officers, especially civilian ones.

At the time, my advice was not heeded, but I was at least not considered an enemy of the state because of it. In 2007, I insisted that the Service for Research and Documentation and the Security Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must be deprived of their legal status as national security/intelligence services. Many did not understand my reasoning, but when the change was made, none of those services called me a traitor.

Things gradually changed with the rise of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) to power. The first law that the SNS amended immediately after assuming the power in 2012 was the Law on the Fundamental Organization of Security Services. The amendment enabled Aleksandar Vučić to become the operational coordinator of secret services. That’s when he and I had our first conversation – I argued that this was the beginning of the systematic politicization of services that were required by the Constitution and laws to be politically neutral.

To be fair, even before SNS took power, the same provision on selection criteria for the secret services operational coordinator was tampered with politically. The working group that drafted this landmark law in 2007 required that the coordinator be a non-political person. However, this was changed before the adoption of the law in the cabinets of then-President Boris Tadić and then-Prime Minister Koštunica.

An additional curiosity – the composition of the National Security Council was also changed at that time, and Serbia got its first NSC in modern history without a Minister of Foreign Affairs as a member. Due to personal and party disputes, the architecture of the security sector has been distorted. Today, this distortion has reached extremes, with a disregard for all rules and an establishment of subservience and sycophancy as the only criteria.

Q: To what extent is Predrag Petrović from the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy right when he says that the secret services in Serbia have returned to the 1990s?

A: I see the situation differently, although there are some similarities to the 1990s. Back then, secret services used criminals for their operations, whereas today, I see criminals using the services for their dirty work. The boundary between them has been erased. In the 1990s, the services were not pursuing their own agendas, but those defined by the state. Many things were wrongly defined, but it was done within state institutions. During that time, the services engaged in “business” on state orders, circumventing international sanctions and securing essential goods. To fund such operations, they were also involved in smuggling high-profit goods like cigarettes. However, when sanctions ended, the channels remained, and some individuals from the services gradually transitioned into “private business.”

Today, I fail to see how activities facilitated by the services, like the “Jovanjica” affair, have any connection to the so-called “state reasons.” I see no justification for them or their link to national interests, even if misunderstood. They lack legal basis and decisions from state organs, even formally. There is no documentation, not even “on-the-white” notes (in the services’ jargon, these are documents without letterheads and signatures); things simply happen in silence. Some individuals enrich themselves by using the services as their private resource, sharing a portion of the spoils with the party, and that’s it.

In the 1990s, the hierarchy was clear: at the top was the state, followed by the services, then business, and finally, crime. Even when destructive and insane acts were committed, like the assassination of Stambolić or the attempted assassination of Drašković, it was clear who was in charge and where each entity stood.

Today, it is impossible to distinguish them. If someone is literally mincing humans in a house under surveillance by a service, is there any difference between the monster and the operative? Who is really in charge? The boundary between politics, services, business (money), media and crime has been eliminated, creating today’s vulgar and violent reality. To explain the difference compared to the 1990s more vividly: no, I do not believe that Jovica Stanišić and Aleksandar Vulin, just like Aleksandar Tijanić and Željko Mitrović, are the same, even though all of them are harmful to Serbia.

Q: Were you surprised by the “Jovanjica” affair and the fact that top intelligence agency officials were directly involved in it?

A: Honestly, I didn’t think they would be so audacious. Now, one of the members of the services, a colonel in the Military Intelligence Agency, fled through Slovenia to the US, where he was granted asylum, and it’s not difficult to figure out how. At that time, Vulin was the Minister of Defense and politically responsible for the work of both military intelligence agencies. I believe he knew everything about the hooligans, Jovanjica, the Belivuk clan, the transmission of raw intelligence to Russia, and many other things.

Q: In your opinion, are there professionals within the agencies who could resist or attempt to resist party abuse? How much have they been “tamed” in the meantime?

A: We have reached a point where we are delighted when someone does something normal. In the past decade, people with integrity were thoroughly purged from the services. Those who now make decisions have no doubt – they are there precisely to safeguard the party’s power and ensure that certain tasks are accomplished while others are not. There are, of course, some who would like to work differently, but they do not have the authority to decide. Some are passive because they don’t see a clear alternative or they don’t want to suffer for the sake of an internet “like”. However, let’s not deceive ourselves; the majority now do as they are told, waiting for privileged apartments and pay raises.

Q: Regarding the narrative of all-powerful secret services in Serbia, which supposedly have enormous, decisive influence on the political, social, and even cultural life – to what extent is it a myth, and how much truth is there in it?

A: Although some in the services believe they are more important and long-lasting than the state, even boasting about it on TV, I don’t believe they really make crucial political decisions. However, they are among the strongest tools for implementing these decisions, even when they are unlawful and unethical, especially in such cases. It is true that they manipulate this confused society by discrediting or favoring individuals, and anyone who thinks they can always avoid their machinations is mistaken.

But they are not all-powerful. It is a sad and deplorable job for a secret service agent to engage in discrediting, intimidating, and plotting within the country, especially when they shy away from strategic intelligence work and real security challenges. Just look at the topics that security agencies worldwide deal with, while ours attend the founding event of an infantile youth nationalist NGO!

Q: Let’s recall the time when you were Vučić’s opponent in the presidential elections. There was a fierce, unprecedented campaign against you. Pro-regime media, among other things, published that you were a collaborator with the BIA. To what extent and in what ways are secret services involved in the campaign against you and against Vučić’s opponents in general?

A: The practice of working against so-called “internal enemies,” though under different names, has been reintroduced on a large scale within all three major secret services. Any influential political dissenter of the current government qualifies for an “enemy.” The novelty is that the military services, which previously maintained some distance from civilians, are now competing shoulder to shoulder with their civilian colleagues to prove loyalty by “covering” political leaders and activists.

I won’t be a hypocrite and deny that even in the most democratic countries, services responsible for national security keep an eye on politicians who make critical decisions for the state or might soon find themselves in such situations. However, the aim of such monitoring must be solely to uncover any illegal influence, dictated by foreign or criminal factors, on their decisions and activities. Or a risk for it. If this is not the case, even if their political views and actions are diametrically opposed to the state policy, whatever the operatives discover about politicians must not be circulated around, but destroyed.

To guarantee this, the services must be under strict institutional control by parliament (for political neutrality), the judiciary (to ensure respect for the law), the Ombudsman, and other independent state oversight bodies (to uphold human rights and democratic principles). In the past, I engaged in lengthy and serious discussions with the leadership of the services on the modalities of this system of checks and balances. And there was serious oversight of their work, making Serbia an example of progress in good practices in this regard.

The problem now is not that I am no longer involved; the problem is that nobody is – there is no longer any institutional control over the work of secret services! Public oversight by media or similar means can never replace institutional control in terms of depth of knowledge, scope, and effects.

Now, you didn’t want it, but you brought me back to those difficult times, and reintroduced something from their dirty kitchen into the legitimate public discourse. So, you just confirmed my words that it is impossible to altogether avoid the consequences of their intrigues. I know exactly who devised that discredit, we met and talked several times in my life.

Actually their “kompromat” speaks volumes about the state of secret services: firstly – to discredit someone, you have to connect the target with something very bad; however, for them the “bad” is neither drugs nor arms trafficking (those are apparently recommendations to become the service’s director!). No, for them, the “bad” is – the secret service itself! So, these people know how much their own service, which should be elite and respected, is in fact shameful, and they cast that shame to disgrace someone else with it!

Secondly – they know that nobody will think that the alleged work with the service was about uncovering the intentions of foreign states and services, identifying networks of foreign agents and the traitors they recruited, producing intelligence to facilitate national interests and protect national security, or intercepting terrorist activities, although all of these are tasks of the service. Instead, they expect the public to associate it exclusively with snitching on friends, political plotting, and other morally and legally prohibited actions. What does this actually say about this Service?

Thirdly – anyone with even a bit of brains, who has ever genuinely worked or considered secretly working for BIA, if they believed what was propagated about me, would believe that they too can be betrayed tomorrow. Such a recruitment strategy is scandalous, not to mention that disclosure of identities of covert operatives and assets would constitute a severe criminal offense, as their identities are highly classified. However, the person who devised this discrediting action knew that they would never go to court for it because they did not truly reveal a collaborator’s identity – as I was never one. But someday, that person could, and should, appear before the lustration commission.

Lastly, an ambassador of a Western country told me at that time: “In my country, we secretly honor people who do what they claimed you did. In your country, they seem to warn them not to try to help their nation under any circumstances. Strange.” Not just “strange,” but I must wonder if accidental!

In the end, all of this reminds me of another situation: when in 2016, I underwent and passed the security vetting for the second time to access the top-secret information, including details of ongoing operations, and, ironically, the names of secret assets, the then director of BIA, Đorđević, said something like, “My people say they can’t catch you, identify for which foreign service are you working for, but they’re sure you do because otherwise you wouldn’t know so much or have advanced so far.” I told him to dismiss them all, because they obviously view me from the perspective of their own ambitions. He signed that there were no obstacles to issuing my security certificate, but he didn’t dismiss them. Now, those people reign supreme in BIA.

Two questions and answers were not published in Vreme:

Q: Although I deliberately avoided conventional political questions, I cannot help but ask you in the end: do current events indicate that the ruling party SNS is really falling apart?

A: I am not concerned about the state of SNS, but about the state of my country. If something is falling apart, it’s the institutions of my state. If something is at risk, it’s its citizens whom the leaders of SNS treat as enemies of the state. If something is declining, it’s our self-respect. The greatest internal risk to the national security of Serbia is the conflict of the ruling party, that is the state leadership, with the citizens; it is the division of Serbia into members of SNS and others, and it is the fusion of security services, criminal elements, and politics.

Q: Is there a possibility of more serious internal turmoil, what is your assessment?

A: I wish for my country to be stable, for political life to proceed freely, for the government to change through free elections (if they are not free – then they are not really elections), and for citizens and their state not to be in conflict. It is up to those in power to ensure that, but they are not doing so. I am concerned that some new tragedy or incident might spark further protests, leading to even more protesters venting their legitimate revolt on the streets, throwing the government out, creating a power vacuum that could be filled by anyone, regardless of their legitimacy, as long as they have support from one side or the other.

PS: They wouldn’t be needing to do things like this if they were really turning West:

I agree: Serbia’s future is in the west. pic.twitter.com/CVjT11zSoe

— Ambassador Christopher R. Hill (@usambserbia) August 1, 2023