BBC News | EUROPE | Nato spy 'leaked bombing secrets'

BBC News Online: World: Europe

Thursday, 9 March, 2000, 12:10 GMT

Nato spy 'leaked bombing secrets'

Nato flew more than 3,000 bombing missions

A mole at Nato headquarters is alleged to have leaked secrets of the Kosovo campaign to the Yugoslav military command.

Information leaked during the first two weeks of the campaign included targets to be hit and precise flight paths, according to an internal classified report drawn up for senior US defence officials.

But Nato spokesman Jamie Shea said there was no evidence for the allegations, contained in a BBC television documentary called Moral Combat: Nato At War, to be broadcast on Sunday.

"How is it that we were able to conduct, over 78 days, 38,000 sorties involving 1,200 aircraft and not lose a single pilot? Surely if they had had this information they would have made more effective use of it," Mr Shea told BBC radio.

Mr Shea said the decision cut those receiving air task orders from 600 to 100 in the early days of the campaign was part of "standard operating procedures" and not because they suspected a leak.

Nato's hits
9 military airfields
55 bridges
93 tanks
153 armoured cars
389 artillery and mortar pieces
25% of Yugoslav air force
33% of air defence batteries
Source: Nato

Details of the deployment of Nato reconnaissance operations were allegedly given to Belgrade, enabling the Serbs to move troops and equipment out of the target zones.

The BBC programme says that General Wesley Clark, Nato's Supreme Allied Commander, was convinced that there was a spy inside the organisation.

The BBC's defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan, says the mole has not been caught, but heavy hints are being dropped that it was not a leak from Nato headquarters itself, but from one of the national delegations attached to it or from a national government.

Stealth bomber

In August last year it was reported that a spy may have leaked the flight plan of an American F-117A stealth fighter shot down by Yugoslav forces during the Kosovo conflict.

The Scotsman newspaper alleged that an unidentified Nato officer leaked top secret flight plans and mission targets to Russian military intelligence, who passed the information on to the Serbs.

In November 1998, a senior French military officer was arrested and detained in Paris on charges of spying for the Yugoslav Government.

The BBC programme also reveals that a Swedish financier was sent on a secret mission to Moscow and Belgrade during the war.

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Nato leadership splits revealed (09 Mar 00 | Europe)
The implications: Strains within Nato (09 Mar 00 | Europe)
Nato rejects mole allegations (09 Mar 00 | Europe)
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Swede's secret channel to Milosevic (09 Mar 00 | Europe)
Nato spy revelations 'staggering' (09 Mar 00 | UK Politics)
Spy 'betrayed' stealth fighter (27 Aug 99 | Europe)
French officer 'spied for Serbs' (02 Nov 98 | Europe)
Nato loses first plane (28 Mar 99 | Europe)