Obavještajno-sigurnosne službe Republike Hrvatske

The first and for a long time the only publicly available book on the emergence and operation of Croatian intelligence and counterintelligence services in the period 1990–1999. Published at a time of great political change (after the death of Franjo Tuđman and the arrival of the Račan government), it became a true literary and documentary event.

Publicist reviews (Novi list, Feral Tribune, Globus, Vjesnik) mostly described it as “the first serious declassification of Croatian secret services from the inside”. The authors – Ozren Žunec (senior HIS official) and Darko Domišljanović (chief inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) – publicly reveal for the first time:

• how SIS emerged from HDZ party cells as early as 1990.
• the Manolić–Tus–Šušak conflict and the division into “civilian” and “military” intelligence streams
• the real role of intelligence officers in Flash and Storm (“the operations were planned months before the public learned about them” – Feral)
• the Zec, Đureković scandals, wiretapping of journalists, Croatian secret operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo
• lists of managers, organizational charts and parts of secret documents

Feral Tribune (D. Pavić): “A book that was supposed to be a history textbook became a political bomb – after it, no one could claim not to know how the services functioned.” Novi list (V. Marijanović): “We are not only reading the history of the services, but also the history of political showdowns within the top brass.” Globus emphasized that the book was “published at the worst possible moment for the old structures – immediately after Tuđman’s death.”

That is why it was withdrawn from sale after only a few months (allegedly due to the intervention of a section of security circles). Today, the book is considered a “forbidden classic” of Croatian journalism and a must-read for understanding the real mechanisms of power in the 1990s.