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L-I: MORE ON WILLIAM WALKER
Meet Mr. Massacre
by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi (2-10-00)
(Excerpts)
www.tenc.net
There is a widespread belief not only in Russia, but in other countries, that
Walker's role in Racak was to assist the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] in
fabricating a Serb massacre that could be used as an excuse for military
action. Already, two major mainstream French newspapers--Le Monde and Le
Figaro--as well as French national television have run exposes on the Racak
incident. These stories cited a number of inconsistencies in Walker's version
of events, including an absence of shell casings and blood in the trench
where the bodies were found, and the absence of eyewitnesses despite the
presence of journalists and observers in the town during the KLA-Serb
fighting. [From "Meet Mr. Massacre"]
Years from now, when the war in Serbia is over and the dust has settled,
historians will point to January 15, 1999 as the day the American Death Star
became fully operational.
That was the date on which an American diplomat named William Walker brought
his OSCE war crimes verification team to a tiny Kosovar village called Racak
to investigate an alleged Serb massacre of ethnic Albanian peasants. ...
"From what I saw, I do not hesitate to describe the crime as a massacre, a
crime against humanity," he said. "Nor do I hesitate to accuse the government
security forces of responsibility."
We all know how Washington responded to Walker's verdict; it quickly set its
military machine in motion, and started sending out menacing invitations to
its NATO friends to join the upcoming war party.
How Russia responded is less well-known. One would assume that it began
preparations for a diplomatic strategy in the event of war, which it probably
realized was inevitable ...
"The people in the Russian military believe sincerely that they need to try
to stop the U.S. now, before it goes on a real rampage around the world,"
said military/defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. "That the U.S. is striving
for world domination, no one has any doubt."
Most Americans laugh off the idea of themselves as burgeoning world
dictators, and would dismiss Russian fears as paranoia. But what most
Americans don't realize is that the United States, through its prosecution of
the NATO bombing and in its foreign policy in general, has given foreigners
plenty of reasons to see conspiracy and military ambition behind everything
we do.
One good example is the role of the mysterious William Walker in starting the
war. As it turns out, even the most cursory review of the background of our
chief "verifier" would inspire almost any foreign government to regard the
entire Yugoslavia campaign as a cynical, unabashed act of imperialist
aggression. For if William Walker is not a CIA agent, he's done a very bad
job of not looking like one. Judge for yourself:
Walker's Background
According to various newspaper reports, Walker began his diplomatic career in
1961 in Peru. He then reportedly spent most of his long career in the foreign
service in Central and South America, including a highly controversial
posting as Deputy Chief of Mission in Honduras in the early 1980s, exactly
the time and place where the Contra rebel force was formed. The Contra force
was the cornerstone of then-CIA Director William Casey's hardline
anti-Communist directive, and Honduras was considered, along with El
Salvador, the front line in the war with the Soviet Union. From there, Walker
was promoted, in 1985, to the post of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
Central America. This promotion made him a special assistant to Assistant
Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, a figure whose name would soon be making
its way into the headlines on a daily basis in connection with a new scandal
the press was calling the "Iran-Contra" affair.
Walker would soon briefly join his boss under the public microscope.
According to information contained in Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's
lengthy indictment of Abrams and Oliver North, Walker was responsible for
setting up a phony humanitarian operation at an airbase in Ilopango, El
Salvador. This shell organization was used to funnel guns, ammunition and
supplies to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Despite having been named in Walsh's indictment (although he was never
charged himself) and outed in the international press as a gunrunner,
Walker's diplomatic career did not, as one one might have expected, take a
turn for the worse. Oddly enough, it kept on advancing. In 1988, he was named
ambassador to El Salvador, a state which at the time was still in the grip of
U.S.-sponsored state terror....
In late 1989, when Salvadoran soldiers executed six Jesuit priests, their
housekeeper, and her 15 year-old daughter, blowing their heads off with
shotguns, Walker scarecely batted an eyelid. When asked at a press conference
about evidence linking the killings to the Salvadoran High Command, he went
out of his way to apologize for chief of staff Rene Emilio Ponce, dismissing
the murders as a sort of forgiveable corporate glitch, like running out of
Xerox toner. "Management control problems can exist in these kinds of these
kinds of situations," he said.
In discussing the wider problem of state violence and repression...Walker was
remarkably circumspect. "I'm not condoning it, but in times like this of
great emotion and great anger, things like this happen," he said, apparently
having not yet decided to audition for the OSCE job.
...Shrugging off news of eyewitness reports that the Jesuit murders had been
committed by men in Salvadoran army uniforms, Walker told Massachusetts
congressman Joe Moakley that "anyone can get uniforms. The fact that they
were dressed in military uniforms was not proof that they were military."
Later, Walker would recommend to Secretary of State James Baker that the
United States "not jeopardize" its relationship with El Salvador by
investigating "past deaths, however heinous."
This is certainly an ironic comment, coming from a man who would later
recommend that the United States go to war over...heinous deaths.
One final intriguing biographical note: Walker in 1996 hosted a ceremony in
Washington held in honor of 5,000 American soldiers who fought secretly in El
Salvador. While Walker was Ambassador of El Salvador, the U.S. government's
official story was that there were only 50 military advisors in the country
(Washington Post, May 6, 1996).
A Spooky Choice ...The Iran-Contra incident isn't the only thing in Walker's
background which gives reason for pause. Another is his curious ability to
remain in Central and South America throughout virtually his entire
diplomatic career.
...After the Chinese Revolution, the State Department enacted what has come
to be known as the Wriston reform, which dictated that Department employees
be rotated out of their posts every few years. With thi/s reform, the
government was hoping to put an end to a problem which they termed
"quiet-itis"--the development of "excessive" sympathies towards the culture
of one's host countries.
With the Wriston act, the U.S. government eventually got exactly what it
wanted--a State Department characterized by fortress-like embassy compounds,
in or around which Americans live amongst themselves in monolingual,
isolationist bliss, counting the hours until they're rotated out to their
next job in Liberia, or Peru, or wherever. As a result, most State employees
see three or four different posts in different corners of he world every ten
years. It is well-known among career foreign service people, though, that one
of the few exceptions to this rule are the CIA agents in the embassies. Our
intelligence people take longer to develop their contacts, and in order to
preserve these "personal relationships" (bribe-takers don't like to change
bagmen), they tend to hang around longer.
Walker was in Latin America virtually throughout his entire career, until he
arrived in Kosovo. He had no experience in the region which qualified him to
head the verification team in Yugoslavia. Furthermore, he spent the entire
1980s occupying high-level State positions in Central America, under the
Reagan and Bush White Houses, when the region was the source of more
East-West tension than in any other place in the world, and Central American
embassies were the most notoriously CIA-penetrated embassies we had. You can
draw your own conclusions.
..."Ambassador Walker's record in El Salvador does not a priori invalidate
his testimony on the massacres in Kosovo, but it certainly does compromise
his reliability as an objective witness," said James Morrell, research
director for the Washington-based Center for International Policy.
"No question about it, they should have chosen someone else," said
Felgenhauer. "If this guy was working for Ollie North, then that's all anyone
in Russia is going to need to know, anyway."
There is a widespread belief not only in Russia, but in other countries, that
Walker's role in Racak was to assist the KLA in fabricating a Serb massacre
that could be used as an excuse for military action. Already, two major
mainstream French newspapers--Le Monde and Le Figaro--as well as French
national television have run exposes on the Racak incident. These stories
cited a number of inconsistencies in Walker's version of events, including an
absence of shell casings and blood in the trench where the bodies were found,
and the absence of eyewitnesses despite the presence of journalists and
observers in the town during the KLA-Serb fighting.
Eventually, even the Los Angeles Times joined in, running a story entitled
"Racak Massacre Questions: Were Atrocities Faked?" The theory behind all
these exposes was that the KLA had gathered their own dead after the battle,
removed their uniforms, put them in civilian clothes, and then called in the
observers. Walker, significantly, did not see the bodies until 12 hours after
Serb police had left the town. As Walker knows, not only can "anybody have
uniforms", but anyone can have them taken off, too.
The story of William Walker's involvement in the war is just one of a
rapidly-growing family of tales cataloguing the incompetence and arrogance of
the United States and its allies throughout the Kosovo conflict. Even if it
isn't proof of some as-yet-unreleased sinister plan to secure a permanent
military presence in the Balkans, the fact that the United States didn't even
care to avoid the appearance of impropriety in its search for Serb atrocities
says a lot about our approach to international relations. It says, "Go ahead
and think the worst about us. We don't care. We've got more bombs than you
do...
***
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