DENIED AREA OPERATIONS 173By the end of my two years in Belgrade, I felt an exhausted but relieved
sense of accomplishment. I had securely handled HITCH from start to
finish with no lapses in tradecraft. The pace of HITCH meetings increased
to one per week by the end of my assignment—his intelligence reporting
was in great demand during the rapidly unfolding civil war scenario. After
two years of running covert ops in Belgrade, I was confident I could deter-
mine almost immediately whether or not I was under SDB surveillance,
but I never let my guard down, since that would be an invitation to disaster.
Despite what seemed at times to be tradecraft overkill, I always ran com-
plete, multi-hour SDRs, by the book, until the day I left the Cold War in
Belgrade for the hot war in Croatia. I would not let HITCH or the CIA
down on my watch.
Before executing a cold turnover of HITCH to my young replace-
ment, I did my best to hammer home the point that his primary objective,
like mine before him, was to securely handle this valuable agent. The Cold
War had ended in the rest of Eastern Europe, and the operating environ-
ment in Belgrade was changing. My successor would be expected to assess
and develop new sources, just as CIA officers did in more benign environ-
ments like Latin America. But that kind of developmental activity would
draw the scrutiny of the increasingly nervous SDB, posing additional risks
to HITCH. Like a worried parent who repeats himself unnecessarily to his
children, I explained what was at stake in the starkest terms possible for my
young but highly trained and professional replacement. Regardless of my
lecturing, I knew I was leaving HITCH in very capable hands.
What was the point of all the methodical, high-security tradecraft,
agent meetings, and intelligence reporting? Why did HITCH risk his life
for the CIA? It was all for a simple but noble cause, to keep the White
House and American policy makers apprised of the rapidly unfolding situ-
ation, and to forecast events, as Yugoslavia careened out of Communism
and into civil war. In other words, to enhance US national security. The
CIA performed admirably in Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, the same cannot
be said for the White House or other US policy makers.