THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 10, 1995 TAG: 9506100312
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 36 lines
As the Clinton administration celebrated the flawless rescue of an American pilot in Bosnia, NATO and administration officials acknowledged Friday that intelligence and planning failures contributed to the downing of the F-16C fighter in the first place.
Gen. John Shalikashvili, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior military officials have said in testimony before Congress this week that NATO did not expect the attack because there was no evidence that the Serbs had deployed sophisticated surface-to-air missiles in the area.
Since late last fall, however, NATO officials have reported mounting evidence that the Bosnian Serbs have improved their air defenses on the ground by dispersing their mobile surface-to-air missiles to new sites around the country, by upgrading the missiles' capabilities and by installing some dummy sites to distract NATO air crews.
And in retrospect, NATO and American officials said Friday, NATO should have been warned that the Bosnian Serbs might change their pattern of attack by their increased military capability, their known intentions and their threats of retaliation.
In testimony Thursday before the House International Relations Committee, Lt. Gen. Wesley Clark, director of the Strategic Planning and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: ``The problem was an intelligence failure that led to a planning failure.'' by CNB