Is U.S. Allowing Genocide?

State Dept. official writes Bosnia’s reality should force intervention

By Jim Abrams
Published in: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 4 February 1994.

WASHINGTON — Senior State Department officials have been unwilling to level with the American
people about genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina for fear of increasing pressure for U.S. intervention, an
official says.

Richard Johnson, who headed the Yugoslavia desk at the State Department from 1990 to 1992, says in a
highly critical report that policy-makers “have repeatedly rejected efforts by the bureaus to have
them make less equivocal statements of genocide in Bosnia.”

Johnson wrote the paper for the National War College where he is studying while on a one-year leave
from the State Department.

The paper says, “Senior U.S. government officials know that Serb leaders are waging genocide in
Bosnia but will not say so in plain English because this would raise the pressures for U.S. action.”

Johnson said he interviewed 16 current and former State Department employees in December for the
paper. They included at least one of four State Department officials who have resigned to protest U.S.
policy on Bosnia.

The administration has said the “ethnic cleansing” campaign of Bosnian Serbs against Muslims
[Bosniaks] has been “tantamount to genocide.”

Johnson said policy-makers, concerned that recognition that the Serbs are violating the 1948 U.N.
Genocide Convention would compel U.S. action, have twice, in April and September last year, rejected
statements prepared by desk officers that made clear that genocide in being committed.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher “has opted out of the Bosnian genocide issue since May,” the
paper said.

It said that after months of debate over how to respond to queries from Rep. Frank McCloskey, D-Ind.,
on the genocide question, Christopher agreed in October to sign off on a strong statement. But it said
Christopher annulled his approval later that month after McCloskey, one of Capitol Hill’s most vocal
critics of administration inaction in Bosnia, called for Christopher’s resignation.

McCloskey said yesterday that the State Department appeared to be in turmoil over the Bosnia
question, with some staffers “very appalled and ashamed” by indecisive policies and “new priorities
where we can’t even get them to talk about the Balkans.”

State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said he was not aware of the report.
U.S. masked reality of Bosnian Genocide
Published in: The Bulletin, 4 February 1994.

WASHINGTON — State Department policy-makers kept from Americans the full truth of Serbian
genocide in Bosnia for fear of increasing pressure for U.S. military intervention, according to the
department’s former top specialist on the region.

“Senior U.S. government officials know that Serb leaders are waging genocide in Bosnia, but will
not say so in plain English because this would raise the pressures for U.S. action,” Richard
Johnson wrote in a highly critical paper for the National War College.

Johnson, head of the Yugoslav desk at the State Department from 1990 to 1992, is on a one year leave
of absence from the department to study at the war college. His paper was obtained by The Associated
Press.

Entitled “The Pinstripe Approach to Genocide,” the report describes how lower-ranking officials on
several occasions pushed for a more forceful position on genocidal acts committed against Bosnian
Muslims, but were rebuffed by more senior policy-makers.

Those policy-makers “have repeatedly rejected efforts by the bureaus to have them make less equivocal
statements of genocide in Bosnia,” it said.

Johnson said he interviewed 16 current and former State Department employees in December. They
included at least one of the four officials who have resigned to protest U.S. policy on Bosnia.

He recounted a discussion among Nobel Peace Price winner Elie Wiesel, Undersecretary for Political
Affairs Peter Tarnoff and State Department counselor Tim Wirth at a State Department lunch last April.

Wiesel argued that Serb concentration camps and mass murder constituted a “moral imperative” for
outside intervention. Tarnoff “took Wiesel’s point but noted that failure in Bosnia would destroy the
Clinton presidency,” while Wirth said “even higher moral stakes,” the survival of the fragile liberal
coalition represented by Clinton, was at play.

The administration has criticized the “ethnic cleansing” campaign of Bosnian Serbs against Muslims
and stated that the killings of Muslim civilians has been “tantamount to genocide.”

But Johnson said that twice, in April and September last year, senior officials rejected statements
prepared by desk officers that made clear that genocide was being committed.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher “has opted out of the Bosnian genocide issue since May,” the
paper said.