Posted on 03/04/2004 5:09:41 AM PST by joan
In the vernacular of espionage, he was a "spook," a World War II shadow soldier whose field of operations knew neither front lines nor rear.
Art Jibilian was attending Navy radio operators school in 1943, when he was first approached by a recruiter for the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.
The man told Jibilian of his likely assignments, "Sometimes we will drop you by parachute. Sometimes you will go by submarine. You will have a 50-50 chance of making it back."
"He didn't pull any punches," Jibilian recalls today. "He told me the OSS needed radio operators desperately."
Dispatched to the Balkans after jump school, Jibilian was dropped into German-occupied Yugoslavia in spring 1944. He ran headlong into a German offensive to wipe out resistance fighters and Allied intelligence operatives.
Jibilian and partisan soldiers, retreating before the enemy advance, fought an 11-day gun battle while seeking cover in mountain forests with a small group of downed U.S. fliers.
After two months of hiding, he and his companions made it to the safety of friendly forces. Jibilian was awarded the Silver Star for his role in the jump and rescue.
Eight weeks later, he jumped again into Yugoslavia, this time with a mission to bring 50 downed fliers to safety.
The objective was complicated not only by the presence of German troops in the target area but also high tension between two factions of partisan fighters.
One Yugoslav rebel group was led by Marshal Tito, another by Serbian Gen. Draja Mihailovic.
British intelligence favored Tito, branding Mihailovic a German collaborator. The British strenuously objected to the planned OSS mission to save U.S. flight crews.
"We were told that (head of OSS) Gen. Bill Donovan and President Roosevelt were discussing the situation. The president mentioned that the British were unhappy with the proposed mission. Gen. Donovan is alleged to have replied, 'Screw the British. Let's get our boys out,' " the now 80-year-old Jibilian, living in Fremont, Ohio, said.
Jibilian jumped shortly thereafter, only to find a glaring error in the estimated number of U.S. fliers awaiting them.
"We found 250 instead of 50," he said. "Mihailovic's men had been feeding them even when the didn't have any food to feed themselves."
Rebel fighters helped Jibilian grade a makeshift runway to land C-47s. While U.S. fighter planes strafed the nearby German garrison to buy time, the 250 men were lifted out.
As the last plane departed, Mihailovic told Jibilian that his partisans were hiding scores more U.S. crew members throughout the area.
Jibilian asked to stay until the last man was out.
"We took out 513 men in six months, he said of the mission, recently chronicled in Patrick O'Donnell's 'Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs' (Simon & Schuster, $27)," he said.
At war's end, when communist leader Tito catured Mihailovic and was preparing to try him as a Nazi collaborator, Jibilian and a delegation of rescued pilots appealed to the U.S. State Department to intercede.
Their pleas went for naught.
Mihailovic was killed by a firing squad.
"The truth is for everyone," he is reported to have said as he faced his executioners.
Jibilian, now the last man standing from the OSS mission crew, knows that though the U.S. was aware of the truth of Mihailovic's allegiance, the truth without action _ like faith without deeds is merely _ chaff flung to the winds.
(Mike Harden is a columnist at the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. E-mail mharden(at)dispatch.com.)
Those evil Serbs! While they were busy rescuing downed American airmen, the Muslims were busy forming two Waffen SS Divisions...
Hmmm. Things are a lot more complicated than that. Generally any agency that has been working a denied area doesn't like it when a new agency starts working that AO. It turns up the heat and increases the risk for all concerned. The Germans, one has to recall, were not gentle occupiers and were particularly ruthless with suspected spies and underground members (most of whom faced summary execution, or transportation to a concentration camp and execution there, if captured). All SOE and OSS members working in denied Yugoslavia were subject to the Commando Order on capture.
The British tried working with Mihailovic and concluded that he was not engaging the Germans but keeping his powder dry for fighting the Communists, including by acts of collaboration at times. To suggest that SOE (British equivalent of OSS) was beholden to the Communists is wrong. In most other nations, France, Italy, Greece to name a few, the British favoured nationalist or royalist forces over communist ones (for France they set up separate sections completely to deal with the Gaullists and "all others," which in practical terms meant the FTP communists). If you look at the whole world, the British were much more likely than the Americans to look beyond V-E or V-J in determining who to support. That doesn't mean that both sides didn't make mistakes.
There were ethnic, class, and regional differences between the Chetniks and the Partisans, as well as the well-known capitalist/communist division, which was IMHO a lot less important.
And the US State department is always on the side of peace, stability, and international comity, which often means it's not often on the side of justice. Nature of the beast; being a diplomat in today's world means drinking tea with monsters.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Sheesh... my last post was brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I agree wholeheartedly with this part of your claim, but beg to differ about the rest.
First of all, there is signifficant number of allied WWII documents regarding Yugoslavia that are still classified, 60 years after the war. I may only guess the game is not over yet.
Brittish Support to Tito has nothing to do with the Communist agents and sympatisers in the firm (Klugman and other scum), probably the other way around. Communist sympathisers were needed because they would not be disgusted with the plan. Brits were running the show in Yugoslavia and Tito was part of it since 1937.Recently released British documents shed a little light and show that Tito's forces were part of the scheme to dupe Germans in thinking Allies will invade Fortress Europe in the Balkans.
Tito, Croat Communist, reaped the benefits of cooperation for his own enterprise and established the reign of terror with the British and American support . Serbs as a people paid the price and continue to pay to the present day.
If you read recently published Dulles OSS dispatches from Zurich it is evident that OSS did little or nothing in the Balkans, the nearest activities were in Hungary. It is interesting to note that that the identities of OSS agents in Yugoslavia are still classified, while other agent's identities are not. It is still relevant to present day affairs. Elementary, Dr. Watson.
You forgot to mention Croats who were also busy forming Waffen SS division and in the spare time were shoting down American airplanes. (Nazi Croatia declared war on U.S.A. immediately after Pearl Harbour attack).
Facts:
Serbia was an american and British ally in WWI, Yugoslavia was an american and British ally in WWI. Croatia was an American and British enemy in WWI AND WWII.
In WWII, Serbs saved 513 American flyboys.
In WWII, Croats downed 262 American airplanes
In WWII, Americans and Brits bombed Serbia April-September 1944 and murdered thousands of Serb civilians in Belgrade, Nish, Pirot and other towns. Only in one bombing, Easter Sunday bombing of Belgrade, USAAF and RAF murdered more than 2000 Serb civilians.It is more than number of civilians murdered by Luftwaffe in Coventry and Rotterdam COMBINED. German ocupying garrison was unscathed.
In WWII, Zagreb, the capital of Nazi Croatia (Country declared war against U.S.) was never bombed. Belgrade, the capital of allied power, was bombed repeatedly.
55 years later, USAF and RAF bombed Belgrade on Easter Sunday again.
Serbs would be better of if being Hitler's ally than American one.
ALL THESE HITLER'S ALLIES IN THE BALKANS (CROATS, BOSNIAN MUSLIMS, ALBANIANS) WERE REWARDED BY THE UNITED STATES, AND AMERICAN ALLY WAS BRUTALLY PUNISHED.
In the Balkans, Hitler has won WWII.
British-Chetnik relations took a turn for the worse in July of 1942 when Radio Free Yugoslavia, a pro-Communist station transmitting from the Soviet Union, began broadcasting anti-Chetnik reports. At the same time, British SOE Operative Capt. Bill Hudson began reporting from inside Yugoslavia. His reports did not echo the favorable BBC reporting, which had placed Mihailovic on an unnaturally positive pedestal. “His [Mihailovic] movement was built up to such a ludicrous extent that it raised hopes that could not possibly be justified, and incidentally caused the Germans to intensify their brutal reprisals.” Instead of confirming numerous amounts of sabotage and heavy resistance fighting, Hudson reported on fighting between Chetniks and Partisans, the Chetnik’s failure to confront the Germans, and instances of collaboration between Italians and Chetniks. In the tense atmosphere of mid 1942 these two factors spurred a counter-propaganda campaign aimed against Mihailovic. The BBC began to give the Partisans credit for Chetnik sabotage efforts, while circulating blatant and inaccurate accounts of Chetnik collaboration with the Germans. “Even before the new [British] policy had been approved, the BBC had on its own initiative started to compliment his [Mihailovic’s] opponents.” The successful Chetnik attack on German supplies and bridge at Visegrad in September 1943 was instead credited to the Partisan effort. This disinformation continued into 1943 and only exacerbated the worsening situation between the British and Mihailovic....Regrettably, the British reneged on their promise to supply Mihailovic and his Chetniks, delivering less than thirty tons of supplies between late 1941 and mid 1943...
Conversely, the Partisans received unprecedented quantities of arms, ammunition, clothes, and medical supplies. The reason for this was threefold. First, by 1943 the Allies found themselves in a better position on the North African and Italian front. They possessed more aircraft and maintained better lines of communication. Secondly, the Partisans retained control of the Adriatic coastline allowing supplies to arrive by ship to augment those arriving by air. The final blow was the Tehran Conference of December 1943, which established equal Allied support to both the Partisans and Chetniks. The British, who had become more and more inclined towards the Partisans over the previous two years, actually began to compensate the Partisans much more than Mihailovic had ever received. According to a British report on 20 December 1943, the Chetniks had received only 653 rifles, 14.6 tons of explosives, 625 Bren guns, and 3,346 grenades totaling nearly 30 tons in all over the previous 18 months. In contrast, the Partisans received 5,000 plane loads totaling 6,900 tons by air plus 22,000 tons by sea from British sources alone in merely nine months, between April and December 1943. The Americans also played an important role in supplying the Partisan forces. Following the Italian surrender, the OSS scouted the eastern Italian coast for an advance base. Major Louis Huot of OSS Bari, implemented Operation AUDREY, which from 15 October 1943 to early January 1944 sent over 6,500 tons of supplies to Partisan-controlled areas of the Dalmatian coast. In addition to supplies, AUDREY ferried new recruits rescued from Italian jails over to the Partisans while evacuating wounded soldiers for improved medical treatment. Most importantly, Partisan troops and workers arrived at OSS Bari to assist in the operation of beginning a permanent Partisan presence with the OSS. During the same time period, Mihailovic only received 107 tons of supplies, all by aircraft drop.
The Partisans, however, were not innocent of collaboration by any means. Following the conclusion of the German Fourth Offensive in January 1943, Tito remained more focused on pursuing their original objective of ousting from Montenegro the Chetniks. He issued several orders to subordinate commanders not to fight the Germans for his representatives and the Germans were conducting sensitive talks in Zagreb. These talks were designed to create a German-Partisan non-aggression pact to allow Tito to concentrate completely on fighting the Chetniks, whom they regarded as their principal enemy. Although the Germans and Partisans failed to reach a formal agreement, Tito used the resulting lull in military activity to relieve some of the pressure placed on him. Unlike Mihailovic, Tito hid these talks from the Allies to maintain the illusion that the Partisans would never collaborate with the enemy. The rapid introduction and sheer volume of Allied supplies that flowed into Yugoslavia in late 1943, ended any possibility of the German-Partisan collaboration. British support had already begun to shift towards Tito and had taken an increasingly anti-Mihailovic stance. With Italy out of the war by this time, the Partisans held all the cards in their hands.
Kim Philby...............
We usually know what we are being told and we usually hear what we like to hear. One way to do it is keeping all info under wraps, then spread rumors and finally release some of the official documents along the line of previously circulated rumor. Few will bother to dig deeper. Sometimes, the complete insight of past operations may give insight into the processes and mechanisms involved in ongoing operations. For example, Soviet kept Tzarist archives off limits, although they were more than a century old. Vatican archives are off limits for centuries.
Let's go back to this story. In March 1941, Brits staged coup in Yugoslavia. This fact was gradually released and present a public knowledge today. The fact that U.S. had an important role in the coup is little known, or remained unkkown, although snippets of data are available for those willling to dig. That could be one explanation why some documents are still classified.
thanks for raising the level of discourse
Ah, yeah. H.A.R. Philby was associated with SIS (aka MI6), not SOE. After the war he was SIS's liaison officer to the fledgling CIA. I'm sure if we dug around we could find SOE officers that were dirty, but they weren't in policy making positions. The guys at the top were military officers (OK, Hugh Dalton was a civilian and a socialist of aristocratic birth, but he didn't last long, and was replaced by Col. Colin Gubbins).
Philby was never in a policy making position (unlike such Soviet agents as Alger Hiss and Harry Hopkins in the USA).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
In the 1930s, many American university students were inspired (as sick as that sounds) by Stalin's Russsia. This was aided by such things as Walter Duranty's false and glowing reporting in the New York Times. So it's not too astonishing that in the 1940s and 1950s a lot of these guys kept cropping up in State Department jobs. (The UK had the selfsame problem, perhaps a bit more severely because of British disinclination to mistrust a member of the Establishment).
Not excusing these traitors by any means, just suggesting one mechanism by which they came into place.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I am unaware of any American documents from then and there that remain classified, except for those that may identify living persons who collaborated with the USA. Most of those documents have been declassified w/exception of the names of such persons (or other identifying information, "Engineering professor at U. of Zagreb" or "lives at 139 Rakouska Ulitsa No. 3" for instance). Those documents can be declassified with a written application signed by the indiviidual in question. It is simply a matter of keeping faith with former agents.
Many people who worked for us clandestinely in the war, then went on to important positions in their nations. A few of them continued their clandestine work. Most didn't (our interest was over on V-E day and took some reawakeniing). These people might have their loyalty to their own states called in question (think of an example of a Croat who opposed both Tito and the Ustashe regime, and how he might be received by Fanjo Tudjman's successors...) if this information was released.
British documents are a different matter. The US releases more declassified material, in ways more useful to the public and to historians, than any other nation of which I am aware. The British still maintain secrets that are centuries old. The oldest document remaining classified in the US National Archives is a single document from 1917. It is periodically reviewed for possible release. The British, on the other hand, do not necessarily archive classified material that has become outdated. A large quantity of the SOE files were lost in a storage fire shortly after the war, for instance, and SIS is fairly disdainful of its own history.
Communist sympathisers were needed because they would not be disgusted with the plan.
In reading memoirs and in other contacts, I get the impression that while there were some Communist sympathizers, the real division was between those who took a Churchillian view that the war was but one scrum in the ongoing Great Game, and those who took a pragmatic but shorter-sighted view that the game was over when the swastika flag was hauled down. By 1944 Britain was very weary of war and many who had initially taken the longer view were swinging around to the shortsighted one. It didn't help that the USA was pushing the shortsighted view.
Recently released British documents shed a little light and show that Tito's forces were part of the scheme to dupe Germans in thinking Allies will invade Fortress Europe in the Balkans.
Victory of the short-view pragmatists.
Tito, Croat Communist, reaped the benefits of cooperation for his own enterprise and established the reign of terror with the British and American support . Serbs as a people paid the price and continue to pay to the present day.
Many of Tito's principal lieutenants were Serbs; individual Croats were more likely to join the Ustashe. The Serbs are their own worst enemy in the world; from their viewpoint they are constantly set-upon and aggrieved, but when in power they have been cruel masters. Without Tito's reign of terror Yugoslavia would never hold together: it is a patchwork of ethnic groups, all of whom hate, fear, and would oppress, if they could, their neighbours.
If you read recently published Dulles OSS dispatches from Zurich it is evident that OSS did little or nothing in the Balkans, the nearest activities were in Hungary.
Which certainly makes the claims of this individual "US Operative"... at least, deserving of investigation. True, there was a degree of geograpic division between OSS and SOE. For instance, OSS had no significant operations in Norway, while SOE (and SIS) had many. SOE did not operate in Germany, while OSS did so extensively.
It is interesting to note that that the identities of OSS agents in Yugoslavia are still classified, while other agent's identities are not.
Please see my comments above in re agent identies. In fact, today, even greater precautions are taken with agent identies, with the result that true names may never be recorded in a paper or computer file which will ever be subject to FOIA release. If you mean OSS Officers/Operators, I believe that their names in Yugoslavia or anywhere are not withheld -- only the names of local nationals whose lives and reputations may be at risk. As above.
I have not read the Dulles releases to which you refer. Were they in Studies in Intelligence or otherwise published recently?
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.