The Serbian X-Files

In May this year the Yugoslav authorities made a rather extraordinary appointment. Col. Svetozar Radisic, renowned xenophobe and expert in the paranormal, was promoted to the post of spokesman of the Yugoslav Army, the most powerful institution in Serbia.

With Radisic came his bizarre theories on what is amiss with Serbia - dark forces dating from the Middle Ages, supernatural events, magic and evil spirits which haunt the Serbian people at every turn.

Colonel Radisic, a self-proclaimed expert in "para-psychological warfare," is better known to Serbian public as Agent Mulder, after the character in the American science fiction drama The X-Files.

Radisic's specialty is, to use his own words, "multidimensional defence" - that is defence from the "brainwashing" campaign being orchestrated by the United States Pentagon.

"America conducts economic, technological, psychological, informational, religious, cultural, geophysical and neo-cortical war against the Serbs," Radisic claims. "The aim is to erase the Serbian peoples national consciousness and cultural inheritance. The Serbian human pattern is destroyed and the new social values of the West are implanted in its stead. In this way we are to be submerged into the new, sixth race of the New World Order."

Since his appointment and subsequent official pronouncements, Radisic has become an object of ridicule among those junior officers and Serbian citizens who have so far held onto their mental health.

No aspect of Serbian life, however banal, is free from America's satanic designs, Radisic claims. His most recent discovery homed in on the evil influence of McDonald's, the American fast food chain.

In his latest book, "Neo-Cortical War", Radisic expounds on the "satanic elements" contained in some of the toys, especially the plastic dinosaurs, distributed to Serbia's children in McDonald's "Happy Meals".

Radisic, a frequent visitor to the Serbian public stage since the 1980s, has a long association with the mysterious Group 69 - a small collection of astrologers, similarly inclined army officers and other personalities with rather esoteric profiles.

The famous astrologer Milja Vujanovic Regulus (who is married to the planet of the same name) and Col. Bogi Stojmenovic are also members of the group, according to Col. Ljubodrag Stojadinovic, former political commissar to the Yugoslav Army general staff.

In his unpublished memoirs Stojadinovic recounts some extraordinary conversations with members of Group 69. A favourite topic was the Kalemegdan Roman Well - source of the "evil forces" behind the 20th century's world wars. Only by plugging the well could the evil be contained, Group 69 member Corporal Simeon Savic explained on one occasion.

"In order for the Well to be pacified," Savic went on, "related personalities are needed. Those who have shown themselves to be the first-rate evil-doers to the Serbs."

To Stojadinovic's astonishment, Savic recommended capturing the then US President George Bush and three other Western politicians prominent in the Balkans theatre at the time and throwing them down the well.

"The [then] Italian [Foreign Minister] Gianni de Michaelis is also a possibility," Savic said, "but to destroy the Well we would need five such small fry."

The founding of Group 69 in the early 1990s coincided with increasingly prevalent propaganda from Belgrade, asserting that Serbs were facing an "international conspiracy." The pillars of the New World Order - Washington and the Vatican - are hell bent on destroying "small, but invincible Orthodox Serbia," or so the theory goes. This state propaganda campaign also coincided, of course, with Serbia's various wars against its neighbours.

The wars and propaganda fuelled an explosion in clairvoyants, parapsychologists, astrologers and healers. The Yugoslav press began running reports of mysterious and powerful weapons, which Belgrade could use in case of NATO attack.

Group 69 allegedly possessed a super-secret weapon, known as "Tesla's weapon" after its inventor Nikola Tesla, an American of Serbian origin. Several reports followed that Group 69 using the "power of their minds" could down enemy aircraft and rockets. The group also apparently created a "psychological shield" over Serbia to ward off the Pentagon's parapsychological attacks.

According to Stojadinovic, Colonel Bogi once accosted officers taking a break from a meeting, shouting, "All you do is theorise, you incompetent mother fuckers! You just sit in sessions, while we down American aircraft!"

A few minutes later, Stojadinovic said, Gen. Momcilo Perisic told the gathered officers a US F-16 fighter had indeed crashed on take-off from an aircraft carrier in the Adriatic. Another crashed 15 days later. Group 69 claimed both as trophies.

Radisic's long-running obsession, however, is with so-called "neo-cortical war." According to Radisic this warfare employs "various methods to influence the brain's cortex with the aim of deforming the related areas. This allows for the manipulation of groups of people or the whole nations, inducing them to accept certain ideas against their real interests."

Radisic argues the technologically superior countries plan to use such weapons to "rule the world."

In a recent interview with the Nedeljni Telegraf, Radisic complained the high command of Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) in the 1970s failed to take his "scientific work" seriously. Hence he failed to secure promotion.

"There was no understanding for it [mind-control] in the JNA. Ten years later and the Army has changed its stance on this phenomenon," Radisic said.

And in the nick of time for Radisic as went on to explain, his research has uncovered "one of the greatest secrets of the American army...an electromagnetic weapon which can scorch foreign armies."

Neo-cortical warfare is everywhere, Radisic claims. Children's video games are a prime example. Look no further than the very popular Heretic or Dark Forces, a by-product of the famous Star Wars films. Radisic's extensive analysis of these games revealed the presence of "Satanic messages and symbols."

Hence Radisic's profound opposition to computers, which he claims are "Satanising Serbia's children."

His most recent article, in the Belgrade magazine Revija 92, entitled "Negotiations Under the Influence of Electronic Magic" pinpointed the United States devious ploy of conducting international negotiations at their own military bases - Camp David, Maryland, and so forth.

By gathering the negotiators and heads of state at such locations, the US military could more easily manipulate the participants' cerebral cortices, Radisic explained. Even Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic could have been subjected to such electro-magnetic magic during the negotiations at the Wright Patterson military base ahead of signing the Dayton Peace Accords, Radisic said.

"Wright Patterson is, in fact, the most ideal choice because Military Intelligence command, the Centre for National Security and the Institute for Electromagnetic Weapons are all in vicinity," Radisic pointed out.

One retired Yugoslav Army officer said Radisic's theories would have been at total odds with service in a "normal army."

"This fantastically fits into the model of xenophobic Serbia, which is convinced that Milosevic defends the country from the 'dark forces of the West'," the officer said.

Other experts for the region have expressed similar views - that Radisic's ravings are part of a broad propaganda campaign, waged for over a decade, which aims to constantly consolidate Milosevic's position by engendering ever-greater xenophobia and paranoia among the Serbian people.

Istvan Molnar is a regular IWPR contributor.