Gredlica Memorial - Balkan Affairs (Apr 12, 2002)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2002/4-2

Apr. 12, 2002Apr. 22, 2002

In Memoriam Grdelica Train Victims...

Clinton, Other U.S. Officials, Accused of War Crimes

The Legend of King Marco; Two Prominent Serb Officials Commit Suicide; A Mass Grave of 360 Serbs Found in Kosovo; "Blowback:" How U.S. Armed and Aided Radical Islamic Groups in Bosnia

Clark's Grdelica Train "Mistake"

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April 12, 1999

(for additional photos click here)

PHOENIX, Apr. 12 - The human and material carnage during the last two weeks of Israel’s latest occupation of West Bank has created a morbid banality of death. Numbed by daily reports of atrocities being committed by the Israeli army, and by a seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers among the Palestinians, the western public seems either tuned out or unable to absorb much more death and gore news.

No wonder two significant “if it bleed, it leads”-stories from the Balkans slipped by in the last two days virtually unnoticed by the Middle East-infatuated media. One news item was a remembrance; the third anniversary of one of the most tragic civilian “collateral damage” incidents during NATO’s bombing of Serbia.

The other was a public protest Serb-style - a suicide attempt right on the Serbian Parliament steps - by a former Minister of Internal Affairs during the Slobodan Milosevic regime. Vlajko Stojiljkovic shot himself in the head to protest the unconstitutional extradition of Serbs to the UN War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. He left behind a damning suicide note in which he blamed all current Serb leaders, whom he called American quislings, for his death.

In “normal” times, both these stories would have been front-page news with most major media. They still are, for those who mourn every loss of life… but it seems only at TiM, it seems. We start with the Grdelica report…

Three years ago to the day, we published the following wartime report from Serbia:

LESKOVAC, Apr. 12 (1999) - NATO's terror over civilians has reached a new high today when the international passenger train No. 393, travelling from Belgrade to Thessalonika, Greece, was bombed around 1PM (7AM EDT) in the vicinity of Leskovac. At least 10 people were killed and scores of others hospitalized, the Tanjug news agency has reported. The train carried both domestic and international passengers, but the identities of the dead and injured are now known at this time.

Six months later, we met the widow of one of the Grdelica victims in Nis, during our “Tour de Serbia” (Sep. 1999). Suddenly, an old wartime story took on a human face. Her name was Stela Jovanovic, mother of two teenage daughters. Suddenly, Grdelica became a very personal tragedy.

In January 2000, we published another report about the Grdelica bombing. The article showed that the NATO Supreme Commander at the time, Gen. Wesley Clark, misled the world in his contemporaneous remarks about what had really happened (see NATO's Gen. Clark Misled the World re. Grdelica Train - Jan. 8, 2000).

In the same TiM Bulletin, we also published a letter from the Nis widow, in response to our report and the general’s remarks. Here’s how it started…

NIS, Jan. 8 (2000) – We've just received a letter in reaction to this TiM GW Bulletin from Stela Jovanovic who was widowed by NATO's strike on the Grdelica train. We bring it to you in translation from Serbian. But first an introduction to Mrs. Jovanovic, and some background information about how she lost her husband. Here's an excerpt about it from the TiM editor's recent lecture (Toronto, Dec. 12, 1999):

"Stela Jovanovic is one of the most popular TV personalities in Nis, the third largest city in Serbia. She has won a number of international awards for her documentaries. You can see her here with yours truly on the set of a Nis TV studio, just before the airing of an hour-long live talk show about the Truth in Media activities.

After the program, as we walked through downtown Nis, Stela told me how it happened….

Her husband was called up as a reservist. He was on his way to join his army unit when the train was struck. His body was never found. Stela said she had searched frantically through every car on that train wreck. All in vain. So he is now officially listed as 'missing' by the Yugoslav Army.

Stela's 16-year old daughter refuses to accept her Dad's death. She got quite cross with her Mom that evening when she dressed in black for our TV show ('black' - color of mourning in Europe)."

Today, Apr. 12, 2002, Stela Jovanovic went back to the Grdelica bridge which the train 393 was crossing when it was struck by NATO missiles. It was her first trip back since three years ago. Her younger daughter Smiljka was with her… for the first time. So were many other people from Nis and the surrounding area who were touched by this tragedy. Here is a translation of the letter we’ve just received from Mrs. Jovanovic:

So this day is now also over… This is from me… my own thoughts. I am sending them to you and to the people with souls. Also, one more time to those without souls.

Whether THAT April 12 (1999) was sunny, or it rained like today… I do not remember. All April 12’s for the rest of my life will be rainy days. They will be the days when sorrow and terrible memories well up; when nothing is able to suppress them.

Today, cold rain was falling, almost like winter rains. They say that when it rains like this, sky is crying.

We were also crying… all of us assembled in the field next to the railroad track on which some other trains are traveling today. Only the train number 393 was stopped here forever.

In the years past, I did not have the strength to come to this horrible place. Today, I watched for the first time the eyes of those who were silently arriving, in groups, with candles and flowers. They stuck the candles between the stones of the embankment, and spread the flowers across the grass, covering the places where death lay on that 12^th of wartime 1999 year.

This is where the lives were snuffed out of passengers who thought they were boarding a civilian train to go from Station A to Staiton B, not to Station Death.

I remember how I scoured the burnt-out remains of the train, gathered scattered documents, personal IDs, school books… all inside scorched cars, lying on this grassy meadow. I was looking for a trace (of my husband) I never found…

I watched the river with huge trepidation, fearing perhaps she swallowed him. My Raca, whose grandfathers were born beside this Morava river, used to sing songs to the river.

God, I remember my thoughts back then… “He couldn’t be in there, in his Morava… maybe not here… maybe he is somewhere else where I don’t know to look.” I remember my desperate desire to hide and run away from the awful truth.

For the first time today, Smiljka, our now 19-year old daughter, is with me. Milica (22) still does not have the strength to come to this terrible place. Smiljka says… “Mom, for the first time, I am aware that this really happened.”

Whether such realizations make it easier or more difficult to go on, I do not know. Friends with whom we have spent our lives are all here with us. Everybody is carrying their own pains and memories.

What can I say to them? What can they say to me? What can I say to Smiljka? “Here’s (a shot of brandy as toast - TiM Ed.) for the souls of the deceased… all of them?”

All of us here are a very strange, very sad family. Everybody with his own, very unique, immeasurable sorrow. The names are different; the horror is the same.

From the direction of Skopje (from the south - TiM Ed.) a train is slowly approaching. Then it slows down even more. Finally, it stops. Right on the bridge.

A long, loud, powerful sound of the train’s whistle pierces the sky and our souls. The machinist walks out (to pay his last respects - TiM Ed.). A woman is crying in a train window. Our souls are being torn apart with the sound of that whistle which is penetrating every part of our bodies. A moment that lasts an eternity...

Slowly, almost soundlessly, the train begins to glide down the tracks. Just as the rest of us will also glide slowly into our little lives without those who are no longer with us.

I desperately hug Smiljka because I know I am hugging a part of her father. She feels it and hugs me back even harder. We stay together like that for a long time, as if to pass to each other the strength to go on these tracks. They were once - it seems like yesterday, it will always be yesterday - torn apart by a deadly, terrible missile that flew in from somewhere high up, “precision-guided” straight at our souls by the people who lost theirs at that very moment.

They tried to take our souls away. They broke away a piece, and left a permanent pain with which we will live for the rest of our little lives. But still have our souls. They were in every flower laid on that field today. As for those over there, somewhere (in America) in their beautiful homes, they will never get their souls back.

Now you’ve made my eyes water. The only thing I can tell you is that, as before, I will translate and publish your letter - as my “Grdelica Memorial.”

VANCOUVER, Canada, Apr. 12 - It is of no small consolation to families of other Grdelica victims that some people, relative strangers, do care about their losses. One of them is a Piotr Bein, a Vancouver-based writer of Polish extraction. Here’s what he wroteto Mrs. Jovanovic today (with copy to TiM):

“Bob Djurdjevic mentioned yesterday: "A close friend of mine lost her husband on that train." Now I recall I "know" you. "Stela, Milica i Smiljka" is the name of the chapter where I translated your letter to Bob Djurdjevic in a Polish book "NATO na Balkanach."

Mr. Bein also wrote a poem about it, which was published in the same book. Here it is in an English translation (the Serbian translation is also available, through a link at our web site). Here is the start of it:

Requiem for Train No. 393

Rhythmic clanking of sprockets
under rubber ribbon
sends a procession of shells
for stuffing of powder, circuits
and a camera
in the tip
of AGM-130.

Rut-tut of a wagon over concrete joints
carries two fat
brand-new AGM-130
in Aviano airbase;
a four-corner star
as per requisition
from Ramstein HQ.

Song of Whitney Houston in the walkman
of airwoman Arrendondo.
Sergeant Harris in Disneyland T-shirt
(same as on his wife and son in Utah)
whistles along, plugging-in
umbilical cords to the belly
of F-15E.

“Thousand victims of the Serbs”
hypnotize two robots in a cabin.
Helmets mask soul and face
from humanity,
protect imprint in brain
as seen in canteen on TV,
produced by CNN.

Engine of the world’s best fighter jet
roars at a flag
held by an airman wearing dark glasses
(from his optician in Kansas City),
and fatigues
of world’s best
US of A.

No sound, no sight of Eagle
in lofty skies.
Yugoslav radars
track the ominous bird over Niš
and ask launchers
with a silent gaze,
“Do we have a date?”

Air whistles
against plastic of cabin
of 2 best men in the Air Force –
“10-4” confirms “Eagle landed.”
Eyes fixed on cross-hair,
the hand on the joystick
won’t budge.

(in English) (click here at our web site to read a Serbian translation by Srba Mitrovic)

BELGRADE, Apr. 13 - Two prominent Serb officials committed suicide within a day of each other - one in Belgrade, another in Madrid (Spain).

We’ve already told you about “a public protest Serb-style” - a suicide attempt by a former Minister of Internal Affairs during the Slobodan Milosevic regime, Vlajko Stojiljkovic - right on the federal parliament steps. Early this morning (Apr. 13), the body of Miodrag Kovac, health minister in the current federal government, was found at the Eurobuilding Hotel in Madrid. Spanish police said he was found hanging in his bathroom, according to Reuters.

Stojiljkovic shot himself in the head to protest the unconstitutional extradition of Serbs to the UN War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. He died this evening (Apr. 13) at a Belgrade hospital. He left behind a damning suicide note in which he blamed all current Serb leaders, whom he called American quislings, for his death.

It is unclear why Kovac decided to take his life. An accomplished surgeon and a father of three, he left suicide notes for his family, the party he belonged to (Socialist Peoples Party of Montenegro-SNP), and to his native Montenegro. In his letter, Kovac reportedly lamented that he had “trusted some people too much.”

Belgrade ‘s Blic (a daily) reported today that Kovac had been under verbal and character assault by Milo Djukanovic’s (Montenegro president) ruling party. For more details, click here at our web site to go to the Belgrade Blic English language web site.

Stojiljkovic, 65, was in charge of Yugoslav police from 1997 until the fall of the Milosevic regime

in October 2000. His friends and associates said he had been planning this suicide since June of last year, when Milosevic was forcibly transferred to the Hague prison on orders of Serbia’s prime minister Zoran Djindjic.

Djindjic is a leading Serb quisling who was trying back then to secure some western financing in return his “services” to Washington, as he is doing now with the new extradition law (see “Milosevic at the Hague: A Mockery of Justice”, June 2001).

Stojiljkovic’s 15-page suicide note was read out in front of the parliament where he shot himself, by the Radical Party legislator Aleksandar Vucic.

"By this act I, as a deputy of the federal parliament, express my protest against all members of the puppet authorities," said the note. “For my death I consider responsible and directly accuse: Zoran Djindjic, Vojislav Kostunica, Dusan Mihajlovic, Vladan Batic, Miroljub Labus, Dragoljub Micunovic, Predrag Bulatovic, Srdja Bozovic and Dragisa Pesic.”

Stojiljkovic’s friends say he started writing the note in June 2001, and completed it just before his suicide attempt. He was indicted by the Hague at the height of NATO’s war against Serbia, along with Milosevic and two other Serb officials (see “Madam Kangaroo,” May 27, 1999).

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica described the suicide as a "tragic event," and said it was a "warning to the international community that constantly sets conditions, pressures us and dictates behavior," according to a BBC World News report.

Belgrade’s extradition and co-operation law was passed on Apr. 11 after the United States froze its aid to Yugoslavia because of delays in handing over war crimes suspects (also see “Serb Quislings Snubbed by Washington, Apr. 3, 2002). But State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Washington would wait for "urgent and effective action" before deciding whether to free up the billions of dollars of funds.

It figures. What does Washington care if one more Serb is dead or alive as long as they continue to run the show in Belgrade? They’d probably rather have all the indictees dead. Dead people cannot point the accusing finger at the prosecution (strike that, persecution!), and its Washington masters. Milosevic’s savvy defense so far at the Hague has shown that the West will have its hands full trying to make the war crimes charges stick, even in a kangaroo court such as the UN Tribunal.

Five years ago, another prominent Serb, Bosnian Serb vice president and Shakespearean scholar, Dr. Nikola Koljevic, also committed suicide by a gunshot wound to the head (see "Perfidious Albion" Strikes Again, Aided by "Uncle Sam" , Jan. 1997).

Alas, scarcely 200 people showed up to protest the new law, which some Belgrade legal experts have said was unconstitutional (see “Serb Quislings Snubbed by Washington, Apr. 3, 2002).

Banality of death seems to have set in in Serbia, too. Nobody seems to care much anymore. After 13 years of resisting the western sanctions and the bombs, and following more than five years of internal struggle with the Milosevic regime, not just with local ethnic foes, the Serb people seem to be just plain pooped. Worn out. Above all - emotionally.

But knowing the Serb history, this will be probably just another respite to heal the wounds before the next battle - maybe to try to regain Kosovo, the Serb holy land? But that will be up to another generation of Serb patriots. Perhaps when the New World Order empire starts to show signs of rot from within?

BELGRADE, Apr. 16 - With all eyes and ears focused on the Middle East and the alleged mass graves of Palestinian victims in Jenin, West Bank, an Apr. 16 story that we have just received from a TiM reader in Serbia has been all but ignored by the world media. A mass grave of 360 Serbs believed to have been killed by Albanians has been recently uncovered near Pristina, Kosovo (see the photo below)..

Not only is this war crime on an equal scale with that alleged to have been perpetrated by Israel in Jenin, but it was carried out by the folks the western media had depicted as innocent lambs - the “victims of the repressive Milosevic regime” - the mostly Muslim Kosovo Albanians, whom the U.S. has been backing.

What happened in Kosovo and what happened in West Bank are examples of reverse symmetries. With one constant… In both case, Washington was backing the “bad guys.” “Birds of a feather flock together?”

RUDARE, Kosovo, Serbia, Tuesday, April 16, 2002 5:23 PM: Unknown members of the families of people that were lost on the area of Kosovo during the war, identify the remains of the clothes of the dead Serbian people from Kosovo, with handkerchiefs on their faces in Rudare, 300 km south of Belgrade, Tuesday 16 April 2002. UN Police from Kosovo displayed the clothes and remains of 350 bodies (actually 360, according to the AP - TiM Ed.), believed to be Serbs, found in graves near Pristina. Tuesday Apr. 16 was the last of four days the remains could be identified. About 600 people visited the UN tents and about 50 remains were recognized.

And who is going to go to the Hague for this war crime? Why isn’t Madam Kangaroo (Carla Del Ponte) beating down the doors of NATO/KFOR or UNMIK in Kosovo, demanding an immediate extradition of the Kosovo Albanian leaders responsible for this atrocity? Why isn’t the “international community” expressing outrage over this war crime, and imposing sanctions of the Kosovo Albanian regime, lest they extradite the culprits? As for our American Poodles and our lamestream media, we know why they are silent about it, don’t we?

P.S. To view another (gruesome) photo published in the Washington Post online photo gallery on Apr. 16, click here. The WP did NOT run a story about it, however, even though it evidently had the AP Apr. 14 wire referenced above.

5. “Blowback:” How U.S. Armed and Aided Radical Islamic Groups in Bosnia Apr. 22, 2002

PHOENIX, Apr. 22 - The London Guardian published in its Monday (Apr. 22) edition a stunning confirmation of many of our Bosnia reports from the 1990s. Based on the evidence we gathered both in Bosnia and elsewhere, we alleged that a close, covert collaboration and collusion had existed between Washington and radical Islamic movements around the world (see “Ayatollah Klintonmeini,” April 1996, for example).

Both Washington and Islamic fundamentalists found a common interest in the early 1990s in helping the Bosnian Muslims fight and demonize the Serbs. And now, just as in Osama bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s cases - a “blowback!” The U.S. government is having to harvest what it had sowed - terrorism!

A Dutch inquiry into what happened in Srebrenica, released last week, is “the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published,” says the Guardian columnist, Richard J Aldrich, professor of politics at the University of Nottingham.

We’ll let you be the judge. Here’s an excerpt from today’s Guardian OpEd piece:

The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published. Officials have been staggered by its findings and the Dutch government has resigned. One of its many volumes is devoted to clandestine activities during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s.

For five years, Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University has had unrestricted access to Dutch intelligence files and has stalked the corridors of secret service headquarters in western capitals, as well as in Bosnia, asking questions.

His findings are set out in "Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995". It includes remarkable material on covert operations, signals interception, human agents and double-crossing by dozens of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world disorder.

Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims - some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in "the war against terrorism". Pentagon operations in Bosnia have delivered their own "blowback". (emphasis added - TiM Ed.)

In the 1980s, Washington's secret services had assisted Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Then, in 1990, the US fought him in the Gulf. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors.

By 1993, these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as credit worthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.

The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah. Wiebes reveals that the British intelligence services obtained documents early on in the Bosnian war proving that Iran was making direct deliveries.

Arms purchased by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia made their way by night from the Middle East. Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft. The report stresses that the US was "very closely involved" in the airlift. Mojahedin fighters were also flown in, but they were reserved as shock troops for especially hazardous operations. […]

Rather than the CIA, the Pentagon's own secret service was the hidden force behind these operations. The UN protection force, UNPROFOR, was dependent on its troop-contributing nations for intelligence, and above all on the sophisticated monitoring capabilities of the US to police the arms embargo. This gave the Pentagon the ability to manipulate the embargo at will: ensuring that American Awacs aircraft covered crucial areas and were able to turn a blind eye to the frequent nighttime comings and goings at Tuzla.

Weapons flown in during the spring of 1995 were to turn up only a fortnight later in the besieged and demilitarised enclave at Srebrenica. When these shipments were noticed, Americans pressured UNPROFOR to rewrite reports, and when Norwegian officials protested about the flights, they were reportedly threatened into silence. […]

TiM Ed.: All of which, plus secret flights and arms deliveries from Albania to Tuzla, we had extensively documented in our CONTEMPORANEOUS reports (TiM Bulletins), not 7-8 years later, such as in the Dutch report. And now, the Dutch government has fallen because the truth got out.

O tempora, o mores… What a world we live in. You’d think governments would be celebrating the truth, not resigning because of it.

To read an English summary of the original Dutch report by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), click here.

For earlier TiM reports about Srebrenica, run a Search at our web site using it as keyword. Here is a selection of some of our reports referencing Srebrenica…

"Special TiM GW Bulletins" (Mar. 31, 1999)
... -----. 5. Kosovo Srebrenica II? (From TiM's Bosnia Travel Diary, 1995). PHOENIX,
Mar. 31 - If true, this report makes Hitler's propaganda minister look ...
www.truthinmedia.org/Kosovo/War/day8up1.html - 20k - Cached - Similar pages

"All in a Day's Work (Karadzic)" - A Travel Vignette
... The Bosnian Serbs had just raised the stakes of this civil war by taking Srebrenica
two days earlier. And they were mounting an attack on Zepa, the adjacent UN ...
www.truthinmedia.org/Vignettes/All-in-a-day's-work.html - 8k - Cached - Similar pages

"Bosnia: What's the Full Truth?" (WSJ letter, 2/09/96)
... How do I know that? You see, I was in Bosnia when the alleged Srebrenica massacres
were supposed to have been committed. I spent most of the three critical ...
www.truthinmedia.org/Columns/wsj2-09-96.html - 6k - Cached - Similar pages

"Lift the Sanctions, Now!"- TiM GW Bulletin 93-10 (Oct/93)
... did the Pentagon collect for the cost of the airdrops of food, medicine (and yes,
weapons, too!) to the Muslims in Gorazde, Srebrenica or Tuzla last spring? ...
www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins/tim93-10.html - 34k - Cached - Similar pages

"A Balkan Affairs Potpourri" - TiM GW Bulletin (10/24/98)
... Furthermore, I happened to be in Bosnia in July 1995, near Srebrenica, and with
Dr. Radovan Karadzic and other Serb leaders. And I saw no massacres for which ...
www.truthinmedia.org/Bulletins/tim98-10-8.html - 37k - Cached - Similar pages

6. Clinton, Other U.S. Officials, Accused of War Crimes against SerbsApr. 22, 2002

PHOENIX, Apr. 22 - Bill Clinton and other top officials in his administration have been accused of war crimes against the Serbs, according to an article in today’s (Apr. 22) Washington Times. No, the charge does not relate to the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia. (God willing, that is yet to come). Nor was it leveled by a Serb or a Serbophile.

It’s another “blowback” - Washington’s past sins coming back to bite it. The accusation was made by a lawyer for a Croatian general who has been himself indicted for war crimes by the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. And the general isn’t taking it lying down.

Luka Misetic, the lawyer, said the U.S. support and approval for the 1995 military offensive dubbed “Oluja” (the “Storm”) means the indictment against Gen. Ante Gotovina “could lead to the prosecution by The Hague tribunal of Mr. Clinton and other high-ranking U.S. officials on charges of having command responsibility for war crimes that were committed during the operation.”

"The theory against Gotovina can now be brought against Clinton, [Assistant Secretary of State Richard] Holbrooke and all the way down the U.S. chain of command. On the prosecution's logic, they should be indicted as well. They knew the attack was coming and gave it the green light," Mr. Misetic told the Washington Times.

"The prosecutor's office is punting on an issue that is clearly there. They are claiming that ethnic cleansing took place during this operation. They are claiming that by virtue of his position, Gotovina had knowledge of war crimes. His knowledge was shared and given to him by the Pentagon," he said.

Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, said the Tribunal was not challenging the legitimacy of Croatia's military offensive, but individual atrocities carried out by Croatian soldiers whose actions fell under the responsibility of Gen. Gotovina.

If “picture is worth a thousand words,” than this picture - the August 1995 “ethnic cleansing” of over 150,000 Serbs from Croatia and Western Bosnia - is a picture-perfect example of the of New World Order at work. We have had it posted at our web site just about since our Internet debut, back in 1997. But only now that it seems to be hitting home - in America. Thanks to a Croat general who was used as a tail-end of the NWO anti-Serb whip.

Indeed, Gen. Gotovina was hardly a “lone star of ethnic cleansing.” Contemporaneously published TiM Bulletins had provided ample examples of American complicity in these war crimes, as well as in prior and subsequent illicit arming and training of Islamic radicals in Bosnia (see Item 5 above).

While Gotovina was doing his dirty work for Franjo Tudjman, Croatia’s late president, Peter Galbraith, the American ambassador in Zagreb at the time, was the U.S. “Johnny on the spot.” So enthusiastic was Galbraith about the success of the Croat ethnic cleansing mission, that he even reportedly rode atop a Croat tank in jubilation.

The Los Angeles Times, for example, also reported extensively about the dirty work that Galbraith carried out on behalf of the Clinton administration. Here are excerpts from a Dec. 23, 1996 LA Times article:

“Meanwhile, hundreds of pages of classified documents obtained recently by The Times shed new light on the murky venture and indicate that administration officials came closer than previously known to aiding the flow of Iranian arms into the region.

In particular, the secret cables and depositions of key figures raise questions about whether Lake and other top policymakers kept a tight leash on Galbraith, a U.S. point man in the sensitive operation, as he walked the line between diplomacy and illegal covert action and between the desperate Bosnian state and America's Iranian nemesis. […]

* Galbraith had details on how the arms pipeline would work before Clinton agreed to allow it to proceed unchallenged. Just before Clinton gave the nod, Galbraith relayed that the arms would arrive in "unmarked 747s" and that the Croatians would take a large cut.

* Lake and other senior administration officials took exceptional steps to keep the U.S. role secret. Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, then deputy national security advisor and now Clinton's choice to succeed Lake, upbraided NSC staffer Jenonne Walker for passing on a Galbraith request for written orders, according to her classified testimony. "Damn it, Jenonne! He is not going to get his instructions in writing, he has his instructions," Berger told Walker.

* Galbraith hid his knowledge of the Iranian arms pipeline from a team of U.N. inspectors who came to Zagreb to investigate reports of Iranian arms smuggling. […]

According to CIA cables, Galbraith approached the CIA's station chief in Zagreb in February or March 1994 to suggest that the United States could mount a covert action in which America would look the other way while Croatia allowed smuggled arms to cross through to neighboring Bosnia. Stunned at the suggestion, the CIA station chief reported the conversation to CIA headquarters. […]

The [CIA Zagreb] station chief cabled CIA headquarters on Sept. 14, 1995, to report that "Galbraith has told [me] that it is the [U.S.] policy to do and say nothing to inhibit the flow of arms. Further, he has told [me] that it is the intent of this policy to facilitate the delivery of same."

The arms shipments continued until January 1996, after U.S.-led peacekeeping troops arrived in Bosnia. […]

To read the full story, click here at our web site to go to the LA Times archives (but you have to be a subscriber and pay for it). Also see the TiM report, “Ayatollah Klintonmeini” (April 1996).

As for Florence Hartmann, Carla Del Ponte’s spokeswoman at the Hague, asked by reporters whether the prosecutor's office was planning to issue indictments against either Mr. Clinton or other administration officials, Mrs. Hartmann said: "We have no comment because there is no evidence to substantiate the charges of Gen. Gotovina's lawyers. They can make their case with evidence to the court."

Mr. Misetic, the lawyer, dismissed Mrs. Hartmann's comments as "blatant hypocrisy," according to the Washington Times.

Hartmann, a French citizen and a former Le Monde Belgrade correspondent, is a piece of work, according to our sources in Serbia. Many Serbs think she has been picked as the Hague prosecutor’s spokeswoman because of her proven Serbophobic reports as a journalist. Married to a Croat from Srem (a district in Serbia west of Belgrade that borders Croatia), Hartmann “distinguished” herself as one of very rare foreign reporters to whom the Yugoslav government refused to renew a visa.

Here’s an excerpt from a story about her from a Feb. 24, 2001 issue of “Ilustrovana Politika,” a Belgrade magazine, which also quoted a fellow-French journalist’s opinion of Hartmann:

“[…] Like an angry Smurf, at press conferences held every day, she [Hartmann] lifts her finger and points at the southeast of Europe:

"The Yugoslav government must not delay extradition of persons accused of war crimes. This preparation of a law on cooperation with the international tribunal seems like a bid to buy time. If cooperation doesn't begin within the foreseeable future, we will request the reinstatement of sanctions against Yugoslavia. Some of those sanctions were only temporarily suspended anyway until we see what the new government is going to do." […]

Dr. Marisa Marie Matei of the Paris "Teleobjektif" recently wrote an open letter of warning to the Serbian media:

"How is it possible that no one has bothered to investigate Florence Hartmann-Domankusic's methods of work during the time that she was "Le Monde's" correspondent in Belgrade? To what extent she is objective and neutral, and consequently, the Hague tribunal as well, can best be seen by her articles on Gospic and Vukovar (a city in Croatia whose residents were 67 percent Serb before it was taken over by Croat Tomislav Mercep) before the bombing, as well as on Marin Selo and Pakracka Poljana, Paulin Dvor... while at the same time she searched Vojvodina with a magnifying glass looking to find a Croatian victim somewhere; and when she would find one, she would show all her foreign reporter colleagues whom she personally met and "joined" regularly at Belgrade Airport after learning of their arrival from her husband, one of the airport's directors.

Isn't it strange that the file on the murder of Serbs in Gospic in 1991 disappeared from the tribunal archives at the same time that Mrs. Hartmann-Domankusic became Carla del Ponte's press assistant?"

Mrs. Matei has a point; in the West, one's previous work is a very important determinant to one's further career. […] But let's take a look whether it is indeed Florence Hartmann-Domankusic who is threatening us with sanctions…

This 37 year-old lady, who carries a French passport, received her first identity card for foreigners in Belgrade on June 2, 1989 as the wife of Engineer Emil Domankusic, employed at Belgrade Airport in Surcin. Emil is the son of General Stjepan Domankusic, a native of Slobodnica near Slavonski Brod /Croatia/, who served as deputy chief of the Security Department of the [COMMUNIST YUGOSLAVIA’S! - TiM Ed.] State Defense Council, who as a counter-intelligence officer was known in certain circles by the codename of Omega.

So it looks like it’s “all in the family,” doesn’t it? Spooks Galore, Inc. at work in the Balkans against the Serbs - the designated culprits.

So don’t expect any time soon the Washington flunkies, like Hartmann or her Madam Kangaroo boss whose salaries the U.S. is paying, to bite the hand that feeds them and file war crimes charges against Clinton et. al. But the latest Washington “blowback” does have a twist of irony. The Serb victims’ greatest defendant turns out to be their former Croat henchman.

OTTAWA, Apr. 22 - He arrived in Bosnia as a sergeant. He left it as a king. At least that’s what the Serbs of Livno Valley called Sgt. Marc Leger. Their “King Marco was a humble Canadian whose boundless empathy and dogged determination helped them start to rebuild their homes and lives in 2000.

The Livno Serbs’ world was shattered in the summer of 1995 by the U.S.-sponsored ethnic cleansing, carried out by the Croat army under the code name “Oluja” (“Storm” - see Item 6 of this TiM Bulletin).

Now Sgt. Leger is back home in his native Canada. He arrived this weekend - in a casket. He was one of the four Canadian soldiers whose lives were snuffed out Apr. 18 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, by “friendly fire” (an oxymoron - i.e., by the not-so-smart American missiles). The President, of course, apologized to the government and the people of Canada.

Sgt. Leger may be gone, but the legend of “King Marco” lives on. And no longer only through memories of his young widow in Edmonton, or of the Serbs in Livno. “The King Is Dead. Long Live the King!” - is how his commanding officer, Major Shane Schreiber, finished a moving tribute to this 37-year old, written in Kandahar the day after his death.

The letter, carried by the Canadian Press newswire on Apr. 20, has now been published by news media right across our northern neighbor’s vast land. Now the whole country knows what a great son Canada has had in Sgt. Leger. As Major Schreiber summed it up in his letter:

“What I find incredible is that Sgt. Leger was not all that different from every other trooper in my company. What I find even more surprising is how an institution as publicly maligned and neglected as the Canadian army can continue to consistently attract and retain guys like Marc Leger.

As historian Jack Granatstein has said of another Canadian army at another time, it is probably a better organization than the people of Canada know or deserve. Marc Leger, and his fellow soldiers are, as the Prime Minister has already said, "the best face of Canada."

He was a goddamned hero, and we should all take our lead from his spirit and his actions.”

And now, for those of you who wish to read Maj. Schreiber’s entire tribute as published by Canada's National Post, just click here.

Meanwhile, reading Maj. Schreiber’s tear-jerking letter brought back some of this writer’s own memories from one of his wartime trips to Bosnia.

It was July 1995; the lull just before the “Storm.” Srebrenica had just fallen into Serb hands as I arrived in Bosnia. On our way from Serbia to Han Pijesak, Pale and other points around Sarajevo, my driver and I saw many buses and trucks full of Muslim civilians being transported from Srebrenica to Tuzla (a city in the northern Muslim territory in Bosnia). We also saw some Muslim soldiers retreating through the woods in the direction of Tuzla.

Once in Pale, then the capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic, I spent most of the next two days in meetings with various Serb leaders, including President Radovan Karadzic. As you could have seen from two travel vignettes available at our web site [“All in a Day’s Work” (Karadzic, July 1995) and “On the Run…” (Bosnia, July 1995) - click on the titles at our web site to read them], President Karadzic and I spent much of the day talking in his office, and watching live CNN and SKY News reports from Tuzla and elsewhere.

One of the things I remember distinctly is Karadzic’s prediction (or premonition or good intel, take your pick) that the Croats would attack him from the south. And that they would then try to take Knin, the capital of the Serb Krajina, from the north (i.e., from Bosnia -actually technically the Hercegovina part - see the map).

Since I’ve always kept very careful notes of all of my wartime meetings and conversation, I went to look up today what, if anything, President Karadzic and I may have discussed about Livno back then. And voila! Take a look at this paragraph, being published now for the first time ever (RK = Radovan Karadzic):

RK said that the attacks on Srebrenica and Zepa were a part of what he called “My Order No. 7.” He said that their objective is “to raise the temperature to the boiling point.” RK also said that he expected the Croats to try to relieve the pressure on Bihac by attacking Knin through Bosnia (from Duvno and Livno) [emphasis added 8/18/95].

Which is exactly what happened in August 1995. The “Storm” started blowing from the south, in the Livno area.

Why Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, then the top commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, didn’t act on this evidently good intel to prevent the Croat assault from the south, is a mystery that I had not been able to figure out for a long time. But on my way back to Bosnia to meet with Gen. Mladic in May 1996, I got an answer from a Bosnian Serb officer who was there during the “Storm” and the subsequent NATO bombing.

So I also looked up today that conversation, as recorded in my travel diary almost six years ago. Here’s an excerpt, also being published now for the first time ever:

MSM said that the RS military had received a message from the British contacts that it would be okay for them to take Srebrenica. “That was the first part of the trap,” he said. This once again led to “the whole world’s condemnation of the Serb aggression,” a modest NATO bombing, the subsequent London conference in July 1995, after which new threats were issued to the Bosnian Serbs, should they attack Gorazde. Later in August, accusations of massacres of 5,000 to 10,000 of Srebrenica defenders followed.

“Attacking Srebrenica and later Zepa was a mistake,” MSM said. “These Muslim enclaves weren’t a threat to us. They would have fallen, sooner or later.” (“like ripe pears,” as another Serb general told me during a visit there in July 1994).

They (NATO) were hoping that we would also attack Gorazde,” he added. “But once we realized this was a trap, we stopped. So they had to stage the ‘Markale II’ massacre in Sarajevo (Aug. 28, 1995), which they blamed on us, to give themselves a pretext to bomb us.”

I asked him to explain why Grahovo and Glamoc fell so easily last summer, considering that this Croatian move was anticipated, and that until then victorious Gen. Manojlovic was the top commander, along with at least three other generals (Gvero, Djukic, Tolimir) who were from Glamoc.

MSM said that all three of the latter were there, fighting on the front lines, along with common soldiers (“maybe that was a mistake?” I thought. “Aren’t the generals supposed to plan and execute strategic and tactical moves, not shoot rifles?”).

The second mistake was that, after the Croatians took Grahovo and Glamoc, the Serb leadership ordered a counter-attack.

“It didn’t make any sense to me, from a military standpoint,” MSM said. “The terrain behind Grahovo and Glamoc was such that we didn’t need much manpower to defend it. Instead, we put ourselves back into the situation where the superior Croatian artillery and troops (U.S. supplied and trained - TiM Ed.) gave them a big advantage.

Once the counter-offensive failed, and given the organized surrender of the Serb Krajina (by Gen. Mrksic - on Slobodan Milosevic’s orders), there was general panic among our troops. By the time we were able to regroup and mount a credible defense again, the Muslims and the Croats had taken most of the Bosnian Krajina.”

For those of you interested in learning more about how the Canadian soldiers deployed in Livno helped the returning Serbs rebuild their homes and lives, check out the “SFOR Informer,” an online publication by clicking here at our web site. The information is pretty dated (as of October 2000), but is nonetheless very relevant to the Sgt. Leger story. As you saw, he and Maj. Schreiber served there in 2000, though neither is mentioned in this SFOR newsletter.

See TiM Readers' Forum some reactions and comments about these and other articles.