24 AMERICAN SPYshake the haunting notion that this time I might not be as lucky as I’d been
during previous assignments. This time I might not return to my daughters
at all.
Still, something about the Balkans kept drawing me back, even though
every time I traveled there I was repulsed by what I witnessed and couldn’t
wait to get back out again. This war—like others before and since—was
wicked, both literally and, perhaps less understandably, in the Boston
“cool” sense as well. But as one of the agency’s few experienced Serbo-
Croatian-speaking “Yugoslav hands,” I also considered it my duty to return
when called. At least that was how I rationalized the decision when my
daughters asked me why I’d agreed to take the assignment.
I’d already served in Belgrade, witness to the breakup of Yugoslavia
as it slid out of the Cold War and into civil war. The CIA tapped me to
go into Croatia during the height of the war there in late 1991, to report
on the first armed conflict in the heart of Europe since World War II.
The agency dispatched me to the region again in 1992, to do some poking
around the front lines in a then little-known place called Bosnia and Her-
zegovina. I’d also covered Kosovo, where events unfolded much as we fore-
cast in the early 1990s.
What I didn’t know when I accepted this latest mission was that the
Bosnian Serb shelling and sniper fire would end up taking a back seat to
an equally deadly but much more personalized threat to my security in
Sarajevo.
Prior to my temporary duty (TDY) assignment to Sarajevo, I was required to
stop off at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to plan the operation’s spe-
cifics and update my lapsed medical clearances. This “highest-priority” TDY
to Sarajevo ended up being put on hold for several days until I’d jumped
through all of the requisite medical, legal, and administrative hoops.
First, there was the mandatory physical exam. I’d managed to avoid
mine for years, but this time there would be no exceptions. Apparently, the
agency didn’t want any unhealthy CIA officers getting themselves killed in
Bosnia.
Then, I had to sign a waiver of responsibility, agreeing that I was going