The "Balkan Intelligence Chief"

The myth did not originate with the Reader's Digest in 1973. The identity of the "Balkan Intelligence Chief" can be traced back to the June 26, 1958 edition of a small California newspaper, the Palos Verdes News when John J. Knezevich, its Serbian-American publisher wrote:

During the last war, I was head of the Balkin (sic) section of the United States Army and Navy Joint Intelligence Collection Agency...I know whereof I am speaking."

Knezevich went on to accuse World War II Croatian cabinet minister Artukovic of no fewer than 740,000 deaths, including the deaths of "dozens of American pilots." This was not Knezevich's first article on the subject. He had made the charges in his newspaper as early as May 17, 1951. Whether Mr. Knezevich held any post with the intelligence community during World War II is not known. However, it seems implausible that a Chief of Balkan intelligence would have consistently misspelled the word "Balkin" in all of his writings. What is known about Knezevich is that he was active in several Serbian organizations in southern California and was active in a number of anti-Croatian and anti-Catholic movements of the 1950s. His newspaper column "Review of Events" was a regular front-page feature, often filled with anti- Tito, anti-communist, antiCroatian, and anti-Catholic propaganda.

Knezevich is first mentioned in the extradition case of Andrija Artukovic, a wartime Croatian cabinet minister wanted by communist Yugoslavia for crimes against the state. On May 8, 1951, Knezevich asked to appear in camera before the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Examiner. He presented "confidential" information that he had seen documents signed by Artukovic ordering the execution of dozens of pilots. Under examination however, Knezevich refused to state whether he had ever been anywhere in the Balkans during the War; what he had done, if anything, in the military; and generally refused to answer direct questions.

The INS Examiner discounted his testimony and none of it was ever presented. Nor was the charge concerning American pilots ever mentioned in any future proceedings in the United States or Yugoslavia from 1951 until 1986. Obviously, the American and Yugoslav governments would not have passed up such an important witness or such a charge had they found the slightest shred of evidence to support his story.

Knezevich penned the final chapter of the story on July 24, 1958, when he listed all of the charges that he had made against Artukovic, including the execution of American pilots. He wrote: "Inasmuch as neither the writer or publisher are in a position to prove independently the truth or falsity of these assertions, they are all and singularly retracted. (signed) Palos Verdes News John J. Knezevich." Knezevich died in 1965.

NEXT| INDEX| HOME