See no evil, make no policy: a former State Department insider reveals how his bosses ignored atrocities in Yugoslavia and stayed a step behind the journalists

Washington Monthly, Nov, 1992 by George Kenney

The Bush administration pronouncements on the Yugoslav crisis between February and August exhibited the worst sort of hypocrisy. I know; I wrote them. For seven months, in addition to other duties, I was responsible for drafting most public statements on the crisis in Bosnia from the State Department's Yugoslavia desk in Washington. My job was to make it appear as though the U.S. was active and concerned about the situation and, at the same time, give no one the impression that the U.S. was actually going to do something significant about it.

The goal from the beginning was not good public policy, but good public relations, and from that perspective, the administration's approach was a smashing success. It managed to downplay the gravity of the crisis and obscure the real issues. Of course, it did so at the expense of civilian casualties in numbers that are not yet known. Unable to abide this policy, I resigned on August 25. Before I left, however, I got a first-hand, behind-the-curtain look at how the State Department bureaucracy, taking its cues from Bush and Baker, created policy that could not be squared with reality, let alone defended. The trick in this instance was to ignore any facts--whether they pertained to atrocities, rumors of concentration camps, or starvation--that would complicate the policy goal of not getting involved.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Bosnia was an instance in which good policy did not necessarily make for good politics, and Bush was committed to staying aloof for reasons that, as far as I could tell, had everything to do with cowardice, apparently fearing an election-year backlash in the polls for intervening abroad. (Democrats were already pounding Bush for caring more about foreign affairs than America's domestic woes.) Bush refused to take even the most timid of steps--like demanding a full accounting of the rumors of atrocities.

Making matters worse, officials at State made virtually no effort to spark Bush to action. Guided by the notion that higher-ups at the White House were concerned more with winning in November than righting any wrongs abroad, department brass simply lacked the guts to confront Bush's senior cabinet officers with arguments that American policy was off course. So timid were State bureaucrats--both senior foreign service officers and appointed officials--that they refused even to probe into reports of Serbian concentration camps. As a result, their policy recommendations, when they did turn them out, were illconceived. The only senior person who clearly stood against the administration policy was State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutwiler, but acting essentially alone, she had little impact.

Later, when the sordid details were exposed by the press, State officials refused to acknowledge either a policy failure, or more importantly, an institutional failure to persuade the White House to seek constructive alternatives. A defeatist mentality pervaded the State Department to the lowest ranks; the ethos was that because we can't get involved, we won't get involved.

State of disgrace

American policy was most difficult for me to accept in late July and early August, when Roy Gutman's Newsday stories provided the first detailed account of concentration camps. Even to the administration, Gutman's reports were a revelation. Because the situation in Bosnia was deemed too dangerous, U.S. officials were not allowed to travel in Bosnia as Gutman did. We had had some reports of concentration camps, but essentially we knew very little and far less than Gutman. We could not corroborate his details, but the reports seemed plausible.

I knew about the first story before it was in print because Gutman had talked with the U.S. embassy in Belgrade; I was told that Gutman had an important article coming out and to watch for it. When it was published, I made copies and circulated it widely within the department: to the State Department's European Bureau's "front office"--specifically to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Ralph Johnson--and to senior aides in Washington on the "seventh floor," where the State Department's top management sits. Around the building, I argued that we had to react. I suggested we set up teams to debrief refugees and collate accounts to get a better picture or events, and that we begin to lay the groundwork for possible war crimes trials. I also recommended that we request a strong, new UN Security Council resolution condemning the camps and demanding access and proper treatment of detainees.

What happened? Senior officers listened politely, told me I had some "good ideas," then did nothing; they neither demanded a fuller accounting, nor passed along any sense of urgency to officials at the White House. Two weeks or so later, when more Gutman stories began to appear and when ITN television broadcasted shocking footage of Serbian concentration camps filled with starving and physically abused men, the public reacted. Only then did State and White House officials wake from their slumber. But they took the most superficial of steps, seeking what were essentially unenforceable UN Security Council resolutions. This was to be the pattern throughout: Policy was media-driven, responding only when confronted by what the press had been able to find out, and then in ways that were entirely inadequate.