188 AMERICAN SPYheinous attack on the picturesque walled city of Dubrovnik, but Zagreb
was relatively secure, for the time being anyway.
Because of the recent Yugoslav Air Force attacks, the Croatian capital
was on a war footing, with frequent air-raid sirens driving people into shel-
ters. There was also a mandatory citywide blackout at night. Truckloads of
Croatian Army (HV) troops regularly passed through Zagreb en route to
the front lines. Late one night, I observed a Croatian troop transport vehicle
driven by a soldier who was apparently not familiar with Zagreb. He stopped
on the streetcar tracks. I tried to signal to him to keep driving, but he did not
and the vehicle was soon hit by a streetcar. There were no injuries. While in
Zagreb I also heard frequent small-arms firefights in the city, and I could hear
(and feel) heavy artillery exchanges taking place in the nearby countryside.
In Zagreb I handled an existing asset and also developed new ones,
including a cooperative Croatian Army colonel. I also worked with secret
military operatives to identify HV antiaircraft sites that were hidden in and
around Zagreb. Since I was operating solo with no commo support, I filed
my daily secret reports to headquarters via a cumbersome, “portable” mili-
tary secure satellite system called a TacSat. I had a ten-minute window of
opportunity to connect to the satellite each night. This was no easy task for
a low-tech guy like me.
At the conclusion of my first wartime TDY to Croatia, I returned to
Europe to pick up my priceless “baby tapes” before flying to the United
States for home leave with my family. Temperatures in Central Europe
were dropping as fall turned to winter, and I was looking forward to some
R and R in the warmer climate back home. After two years of denied area
ops in depressing Eastern Europe, and a month of baptism under fire as
Yugoslavia disintegrated into a horrific civil war, the tranquil Southwest
desert would be a welcome respite.
Over the next several years, I made many more short- and long-term TDYs
to the war-torn former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Bosnia. I became
more confident and comfortable operating in that stressful environment,
but it was always nerve-wracking. In October 1992, I returned to Zagreb
and declared myself as a CIA officer, establishing the CIA’s first official rela-