CIA LEAK 41reports. Aardwolfs contained fact along with informed analysis and fore-
casts, and they were a useful adjunct to normal station reporting.
I laid out in detail, based in large part on my agent debriefings in
Athens, how I believed events would unfold in Bosnia, as well as the rest
of Yugoslavia. Specifically, I predicted that the ethnically motivated blood-
shed in Bosnia would be horrific and would overshadow that in Croatia.
Mine was just one voice. CIA Balkan analysts generally made the same
case, providing the Bush administration with highly reliable intelligence on
what was happening and what to expect in Yugoslavia.
Unfortunately, Secretary Baker and the Bush administration refused
to heed CIA reporting. Baker’s declaration that the United States would
only recognize a unified Yugoslavia essentially gave the green light to the
Serbs to violently suppress the genuine and inevitable independence move-
ments in Croatia and Bosnia. In my view, had the United States accepted
the reality that these movements were irreversible regardless of our policy,
we could have helped Yugoslavia to break apart in a much less violent way.
Once the Bosnian War was underway, the United States did nothing to
intervene in the predictable Serb slaughter of Bosnian Muslims for three
long years. Simultaneously, the US government imposed an arms embargo
on the former Yugoslavia, which only disadvantaged the Bosnians. The
aggressor Bosnian Serbs were unaffected by the embargo, since they were
able to obtain as many locally manufactured weapons as they desired from
the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army.
Like the rest of the world watching the Bosnian nightmare on the nightly
news, the new Clinton administration was fully cognizant of the suffering of
the Bosnian people. Bosnia was in this desperate situation in part because of
US policy, and Bosnians were hoping and praying for a savior.
That savior turned out to be Iran, who recognized this unprecedented
opportunity to gain a foothold in Europe under the guise of assisting des-
perate, fellow Muslims.
Shi’ite Iran provided some humanitarian aid, but most of its support
to the Sunni Bosnian government was lethal in nature. Iran sent Bosnia
tons of arms, as well as mercenaries and military trainers. In the fall of
1992, during one of my TDYs to Zagreb, the Croatian government inter-
cepted an embargo-busting Iranian 747 “relief ” flight hauling weapons,
hired killers, and a few samovars to Bosnia.