Imagine how liberating it must be to go panning for state secrets from a nation that no longer exists. No blowback, zero repercussions, no security oaths to fudge and to fear. That’s exactly the work environment Giuliano Marinkovich has been navigating for nearly two decades, not only in the capitol of his native Croatia, but also in the six other independent states Yugoslavia once comprised. And it looks like he might be onto some hellacious leads, one of which involves former Yugoslav President Josip Tito, a UFO over Belgrade, crashed MiGs, and dead pilots.

How much UFO data languishes in the forgotten archives of Tito’s vanished Yugoslavia?/CREDIT: croatian-voice.com

That teaser sounds almost too perfect, and lots of eyes will be on Marinkovich when he publishes his research in the West. For now, he’s airing it out in the Balkans. Last month, Marinkovic took the “Pan Adria Incident” onto Croatian State Radio 2 with testimony from a retired civilian pilot, a flight engineer, and a former air traffic control chief. He also has a television followup, “Yugoslav Air Force vs. UFOs,” scheduled for September.

His motivation: During Croatia’s war for independence in 1991-95, Marinkovic was a shift commander for the Croatian army’s signals intelligence division. His duties included monitoring communications among the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), the international peacekeepers enforcing a buffer zone between warring parties. His unit tracked UNPROFOR reports on UFO activity over zones-of-separation airspace. “We simply collected the reports and sent them to headquarters in our daily reports,” Marinkovic states in an email. “Nobody did any follow ups.”

Nobody, maybe, except for Marinkovic, whose curiosity began steering him down trails he never knew existed. One of them led to an Aug. 16, 1977, incident involving a Pan Adria airliner. That evening, the crew of a Fokker-227 reported being paced by “an intensive red light” shortly before its approach to Belgrade. Detected on radar, the UFO parked above the airport and lingered for so long, the chief controller was rousted from slumber and summoned to duty. President Tito was scheduled to leave the airport for Moscow later that day.

The Fokker pilot decided to continue on to Titograd, and as soon as the plane got airborne, the UFO followed. A traffic controller instructed another Fokker to approach the UFO. The object promptly accelerated toward the second aircraft, which turned to avoid a collision. The object stopped, then headed back to Belgrade. At that point, according to Marinkovic, a military base nearby intervened and dispatched MiGs with orders to open fire.

“For now,” writes Marinkovic, “we have confirmation from multiple witnesses that MiGs crashed and that pilots died.”

No doubt, he adds, many eyewitnesses “are still reluctant to talk about it in the public arena” because UFOs “still could be a poison pill for credibility.” On the other hand, “it is much easier for people to share their knowledge after so many years. That means there could be no consequences for their statements today … as [the] country where they served no longer exists.”

Marinkovic is persistent. The old gatekeepers are history. Could be a gold mine.