A SECRET O'GRADY POSTMORTEM

There will always be something mythic about the travails and rescue of Scott O'Grady in Bosnia, but the facts emerging concern the explanations for how he came to be shot down, and they tend to be less uplifting. As the accompanying story reports, Slobodan Milosevic claims to have tried to help make sure O'Grady was returned alive. Pentagon officials assert something quite different: that were it not for Milosevic, no missile would have destroyed O'Grady's F-16 in the first place.

U.S. intelligence officials tell TIME that the Bosnian Serbs' air defenses are supported by staff and equipment in Belgrade with Milosevic's approval. The officials also say this network is so sophisticated that the Bosnian Serbs probably knew which American pilots were flying when they shot down O'Grady on June 2. The Bosnian Serb antiaircraft batteries, whose communications U.S. intelligence has been monitoring, may have intentionally targeted O'Grady and his wingman, Captain Bob Wright, because the two had taken part in NATO air attacks on Bosnian Serb military targets. "They knew who Basher 51 and Basher 52 were," says a Pentagon official, referring to the call signs for O'Grady and Wright. "We think they specifically wanted to take these planes out."

Even so, the shootdown might have been stymied. A secret Pentagon investigative report on the O'Grady incident, which will be reviewed in Congress this week, will fault U.S. intelligence snafus -- and may also criticize the Marines for allowing glory-hungry senior officers to go along on the rescue. At least four hours before the downing, U.S. spy organizations had solid intelligence from signal intercepts that surface-to-air missile sites were in the area O'Grady was flying over, but that information never got to his squadron. Three minutes before the shootdown, the National Security Agency knew sam radars were tracking O'Grady's F-16, but an allied command plane lacking key U.S. communications gear was unable to send him the warning.

Radar-jamming planes now fly with NATO air patrols over Bosnia, and pilots take evasive maneuvers to avoid being fired upon. But to eliminate the threat, nato planes would have to attack the air-defense network, a step the alliance is not prepared to take. As long as the air defenses are allowed to operate, the nato allies should brace themselves for more pilots being shot down.