Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 7 Num. 18

("Quid coniuratio est?")


BOSNIA: HOW THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND MEDIA HAVE FAILED AND MISLED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE


Special thanks to my "Chicago connection" for sending a videotape of a public access program, "Broadsides", which was taped on June 6, 1995. Host is Mr. Sherman Skolnick of the Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts; co-host is Mr. Robert E. Cleveland, an attorney and associate of Mr. Skolnick. Guests are James Nagle, an attorney with the law firm of Querry & Harrow, Andrew B. Spiegel, also an attorney, and Mike Pavlovic, a Serbian-American.

Pardon spelling errors. If you know the correct spellings, please let me know.

Contact info: Andrew B. Spiegel, PO Box 396, Wheaton, IL 60187

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[...continued...]

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What about this theory that, at a time of recession in America, there may be armaments business and the Balkans is as good of a place to get rid of armaments as any: they're busy killing each other. From a cynical standpoint, they use up a lot of guns, bullets, bombs. And so American big business does not really want peace there. Is that too cynical?

ANDREW SPIEGEL:
Well since there's an arms embargo currently [June 1995] in effect, technically there's no arms supplied by the United States.

But just to go back to other people we've had contact with: I faxed to [U.N.] Secretary-General Boutros Ghali(sp?) the letter we sent to President Clinton -- the letter from President Karadzic -- and the memo we sent to Dave Merrick of ABC Nightline. That was done May 30th. No phone call, no fax, no even acknowledgement [in response].

On June 1st there was a news report that Clinton was going to introduce U.S. ground troops into Bosnia. At that point in time, at least the thought was to either re-deploy the U.S. positions or to help them evacuate. [Senator] Jesse Helms... Some of you may recall that Jesse Helms said, "No U.S. troops into Bosnia on my watch!" So I called up Jesse Helms' office, I talked to an assistant, a Steve Beacon(?), told him about the letter of April 22nd. He gave us the same type of response, that "President Karadzic is a liar," that "We've dealt with him before and we can't believe a word he says." I said, "Look. You may say that, but that's the person you're gonna have to deal with to resolve the situation." So I sent him a letter, and I pointed out to him that to not deal with President Karadzic and to start a war over there means that you're going to have to kill 1.9 million Serbs, living in the Republic of Srpska, who are going to die rather than surrender their homeland. And I don't think that the United States is prepared to do that.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Let me point this out: We're taping this show on June 6th, '95, and it won't go on the air for several weeks. By that time, Heaven knows what happens. I mean we may, like Viet Nam, have 100,000 of our troops there... In other words, somebody may create an incident that's good for the weapons business. I know that's a cynical viewpoint, but the weapons business must be considered. Somebody is doing a lot of business over there in the Balkans. I mean, somebody recognizes the Balkans is some kind of a boiling cauldron where, some way or another, some people like to kill other people and this is a good place to ship a lot of weapons. Is Germany shipping weapons there? I mean, who all is shipping weapons there?

ROBERT CLEVELAND:
One thing that really puzzles me in this: President Clinton ordered our planes to go in there and bomb certain parts of the country, killing Serbians. Killing them! Now what did they do in retaliation? They took hostages and didn't harm a one of them, followed (further along) by returning some of the hostages -- in fact, I think they let all of the peacekeeping force leave the country without being harmed. Why would they want to do that?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Maybe some kind of bargaining chip.

Nagle's got an explanation. Tell us.

JAMES NAGLE:
What people don't realize... We were there right before this happened. And on May 1st (that was 3 days, 4 days after we left), the Croatian army invaded the Serbian section of Croatia, killing three- to four-thousand civilians. And what may have been in response to that was to bomb the Serbs for allegedly violating a 12-mile zone of not having weapons. And obviously, the Serbs are seeing that, thinking to themselves, "The U.N. is taking sides, NATO is taking sides, with the Bosnians against us. Here we just had 3,000 civilians killed, why don't they do something to prevent that?"

How does the news media cover that? The news media reports that the Serbs in Croina fired a couple rockets into Zagreb; ten people were killed. Ten civilians were killed. They tell us nothing about the 4,000 Serb civilians that were killed on one day! On May 1st! And the Croatian army took over and occupied 50 percent of the Republic of Croina.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
So the news is slanted. Can you give any explanation why it is?

ANDREW SPIEGEL:
I can give you the explanation that the Serbs, that many people over there give. They believe that Arab oil money is behind the Bosnian Muslim government, and that the Vatican is behind the Croatian government. Now whether that's true or not, we don't know.

ROBERT CLEVELAND:
I get the impression that there's definitely been an agenda or game plan with the media in this country to wrongfully villify the Serbs. Is that correct?

ANDREW SPIEGEL:
That's correct. In fact, the analogy that I made was, the news media is treating this like it is a professional wrestling match: the Serbs are the "bad guys"; the Bosnians -- and the Croatians, of all people! -- are the "good guys". And their reporting of it is [similar] with a professional wrestling match.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
By the way, I made a cryptic remark before. The Serbian leader there sent a message on April 22nd. He didn't know it, but it was the worst possible time to send Clinton a message. Because it was on that day (which I believe was a Saturday) that Clinton and his wife were being questioned, in the White House, under oath, by the Whitewater independent prosecutor. So I don't think Clinton or the first lady were interested in peace in Serbia. They had this other problem.

ANDREW SPIEGEL:
Well they could have responded on May 26th. They could have responded on May 30th. They could have responded on June 1st.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What is the explanation that our president is changing his policy like, ten times a minute? Why is this?

MIKE PAVLOVIC:
I can say one thing. I'm not politician. My wife and I, we pray every night: to stop killings. That President Clinton should immediately stop killings, and negotiate around the table. He should call President Karadzic to sit around the table and negotiate and negotiate. What we pray every night.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
That's commendable. But you know, some Americans... I read the papers every day and I thought I'm well-informed. But on this Bosnia thing, it is so loaded with complications, I think most Americans do not understand this.

The other thing is, some Americans raise the question: What is the so-called "American interest" in the area? It appears to be a long-smouldering, one-thousand year civil war. What is the American interest to get involved? What are we doing there?

JAMES NAGLE:
I don't think there is any American interest. Obviously the Europeans have an interest, if there's a war in their back yard. Maybe there's an American interest from the standpoint that the United States is fearful that this is a tinderbox and if it spreads to Macedonia it might go down into Turkey and into Greece; and at this point, we're looking at a much larger war.

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What is our jurisdiction, what is our legality, of sticking our nose into their civil war?

ANDREW SPIEGEL:
If you want to look at it from a purely legalistic level, it was a violation of the United Nation's charter for Germany and the other European countries, and the United States, to interfere in the domestic affairs of Yugoslavia. It was a domestic affair in which certain constituent republics were illegally seceding from that country. It would be as if, when the South seceded from the United States -- what happened?

SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well some claim that the British fomented that. [CN -- See, for example, The Empire of "The City" by E.C. Knuth]

[...to be continued...]


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