- 30/06/2025
Corridors of Power: Should America Police the World? (2024)
Why did the world stand by in 1994 as nearly one million people were murdered in Rwanda?
Why did the world stand by in 1994 as nearly one million people were murdered in Rwanda?
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00:00I have come today to pay the respects of my nation to all who suffered and all who perished
00:19in the Rwandan genocide. Four years ago, in this beautiful, green, lovely land,
00:27Rwanda experienced the most intensive slaughter in this blood-filled century we are about to leave.
00:36Families murdered in their homes, people hunted down as they fled by soldiers and militia,
00:43killed because their identity card said they were Tutsi.
00:49Today, the images of all that haunt us all.
00:53The president spoke, and he spoke very movingly. He felt that this was a terrible mistake and that
01:03the U.S. had stood by. It reminded me of a real story. It's a young woman in Brooklyn who was
01:13attacked. It's a story that was reported in the New York Times.
01:17She was outside of her apartment building, and she yelled for help. And no help came. And she
01:27was killed. There were all these people in their apartment building. And when they heard the cry
01:34for help, the windows went down. And I felt that what was happening in Rwanda was very comparable to
01:42this. The windows were down. Nobody was paying attention.
01:49They were hearing the information, but they weren't acting on it.
01:54So I'm glad that he went to Rwanda. I think it was important to do that.
01:59I think much more important, frankly, would be a thorough inquiry inside the U.S. government,
02:06which was never undertaken, as to why the U.S. government didn't act. This has never happened
02:12in the U.S.
02:13The Western world has been freed of the evil forces. We're the nation that liberated continents,
02:28concentration camps, and the death camps still bear witness that evil is real and must be opposed.
02:37Decent people must never remain silent and inactive in times of moral crisis.
02:41The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans unwilling to witness or permit the small
02:50undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed.
02:57It is easy to say never again, but much harder to make it so.
03:03Mother Nation has made the advancement of human rights and dignity so central to its foreign policy
03:07because it's central to who we are as Americans.
03:10America truly is the world's indispensable nation.
03:15The one indispensable nation in world affairs.
03:18A shining city on a hill where all things are possible.
03:23We can make a difference and we will do it.
03:26We are Americans.
03:30Never forget, never again.
03:32I grew up in Illinois in the middle of the heartland.
03:55And I always believed in being a part of a bigger world.
04:00And I really wanted to join the Foreign Service so that I could create that bridge with other cultures
04:05and bring the world closer together.
04:10When I first landed in Rwanda,
04:13I had never been to a fourth world country.
04:17The first few months was a daunting task.
04:27I didn't command respect.
04:28Every time I crossed the DMZ, I was harassed at every checkpoint.
04:32They'd make me get on my knees.
04:33They'd hold a gun to my head and question why I was going to talk to the other side.
04:37There were elements at the time that were gaining strength
04:42and it was the embassy's great fear that they could blow up further
04:47and become more wide-scale violence.
04:55Hutu militias were preparing for war.
05:00They had secretly imported tons of machetes and hidden them across the country.
05:05The Hutus were driven by long-standing resentment and fear.
05:18The Belgians who colonized Rwanda had ruled the country through brutal violence
05:23and developed an elaborate racial theory to justify it.
05:35Though the Hutus were the majority,
05:41the Belgians decided that the Tutsi were racially superior.
05:45They promoted the Tutsi as Rwanda's ruling class,
05:48installed a racial caste system with identity cards
05:51classifying every Rwandan as either Tutsi or Hutu.
05:55After Rwanda gained independence in 1962,
06:04the Hutus took power.
06:06Now they could persecute the Tutsi.
06:11Many Tutsi fled to neighboring countries.
06:13In 1990, the racial tension flared into civil war
06:20when a Tutsi-led rebel army,
06:22the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by Paul Kagame,
06:26invaded from Uganda.
06:29Three years later,
06:31at a peace conference in Arusha, Tanzania,
06:34the Tutsi rebels and the Hutu government in Kigali
06:37reached a power-sharing agreement.
06:39A force of 2,000 UN peacekeepers,
06:46made up mostly of Belgians and known as UNAMIR,
06:50was sent in to enforce it.
06:53Hutu extremists bitterly opposed the agreement
06:56and plotted to derail it.
06:58They considered the Tutsi traitors
07:00and judged them less than human.
07:02We sent very strong cables
07:10into the Department of State
07:12indicating that we expected
07:14a lot more violence
07:15that could destabilize the peace process.
07:19We absolutely knew something was brewing.
07:22The cable would have been received
07:28by the Africa Bureau
07:29and probably stayed within the Africa Bureau.
07:36The State Department,
07:37like a lot of organizations,
07:39is highly hierarchical,
07:43and the information that gets to the top
07:46is the information that the top wants to hear.
07:48I think it's fair to say
07:54that Africa tends to fall
07:56to the bottom of the list
07:58in terms of our American priorities.
08:00We're talking about a lot of factors
08:02that lead to that.
08:04Some of them have to do
08:04how we calculate our national interests.
08:07Some of those are, I would say,
08:09racial and racist.
08:11All of those things, though,
08:13result in the fact that
08:16Africa and Africa's concerns
08:18and African interests and needs
08:19tend to fall to the bottom
08:21of that list of priorities.
08:27President Clinton was voted into office
08:31on a domestic agenda.
08:33He had won on the economy, stupid,
08:37and were looking at ways
08:39to provide a payback,
08:41the peace dividend,
08:42to the American people.
08:43I was the person in the bureaucracy,
08:47in State Department bureaucracy,
08:48charged with conflict resolution in Africa.
08:52And we were losing resources.
08:55And I, who had the transnational agenda
09:00for 46 African countries,
09:02was trying to keep abreast
09:03of huge numbers of issues.
09:08I was constantly defending
09:10even keeping our embassies open in Africa
09:12because people said,
09:13well, why do we need those?
09:14Somebody else can play that role.
09:16We don't have to,
09:16it doesn't have to be the United States.
09:20What we were ignoring in all of that
09:22was what was happening
09:23in the country at the time.
09:26Those underlying indicators
09:29of the potential
09:32for a much larger kind of violence.
09:35In January of 1994,
09:42a high-ranking official
09:44in the Hutu extremist party
09:46secretly informed
09:47the commander of Unamir,
09:49General Romeo Dallaire,
09:50that a group of Hutu extremists
09:52was plotting to launch
09:53a campaign of extermination
09:55against the Tutsis.
09:56The extremists planned first
10:04to murder some
10:05of the Belgian peacekeepers,
10:07to force the Belgians
10:08to withdraw the force,
10:09and then to exterminate the Tutsis.
10:15The informant tells General Dallaire
10:17that weapons were being stockpiled
10:19and that he himself
10:20has been ordered to register
10:22all Tutsi in Kigali.
10:23He suspects to make way
10:26for their extermination.
10:28Greatly alarmed,
10:30Dallaire writes an urgent
10:31and detailed cable
10:32to UN headquarters.
10:35His superiors do not respond.
10:45It is, uh,
10:48like, you know one of those moments
10:49in your life you never forget?
10:51We were hosting a dinner party
10:54and, uh,
10:55all of a sudden
10:56we heard really loud explosions.
10:59And then loss of electricity,
11:01a lot of commotion.
11:03We had some over 250 Americans
11:07in the country
11:07all connected by radio network,
11:10and so all of them
11:11were communicating in
11:12what they were hearing,
11:13what they were seeing.
11:15We started getting, um,
11:17sporadic information
11:18that there was military movements,
11:22uh, around certain, um,
11:24sections of the city.
11:27People were being pulled
11:28out of their homes.
11:29Some people were being executed.
11:33I really, I, I wasn't scared.
11:36I was just,
11:37I, I didn't know
11:38what was happening.
11:38A plane crash
11:41near the capital city
11:42of Rwanda
11:42killed that country's president
11:44and the president
11:45of neighboring Burundi.
11:46The two were returning
11:47from a peace summit
11:47when their plane crashed.
11:49Rwandan government says
11:50the plane was shot down.
11:51That means that
11:52the government has collapsed.
11:53It is not at all clear
11:55who is in charge
11:55of Rwanda at the moment.
11:58I was in my office
11:59and the desk officer
12:01called me
12:02and I immediately
12:04went into denial.
12:05I remember the words I said.
12:06I said,
12:07oh shit, it can't be.
12:08So cursing
12:09and then denial.
12:11And I sent a memo up
12:13to Secretary Christopher
12:15saying that, you know,
12:16peace agreement
12:17is at risk.
12:18There, you know,
12:18there's chaos
12:19in the streets
12:20and, um,
12:22worst case scenario
12:23if we don't do anything,
12:24hundreds of thousands
12:25of people could be killed.
12:28There is a very
12:29unstable situation
12:30on the ground
12:31that is unfolding
12:32very quickly
12:34and I have
12:35one objective
12:36in mind
12:37as I
12:39guide people
12:40through this
12:41and that is
12:42the safety
12:43of American citizens.
12:49After the,
12:51you know,
12:51first 24 hours
12:52passed,
12:53we started getting
12:54additional reports
12:56of systematic
12:57movements
12:58throughout the city
12:59and people
13:00being executed.
13:01it's at that moment
13:03that I realized
13:05this is completely
13:06different.
13:07My husband and I
13:09were the only
13:09two Americans
13:10that were armed
13:11in the community.
13:13We brought a rifle,
13:15a shotgun,
13:15I had my sidearm,
13:16he had his sidearm.
13:18We definitely
13:18grabbed those.
13:19I grabbed our wedding album,
13:21I grabbed our dog.
13:22Before we pulled out
13:23of the driveway,
13:24Samuel,
13:25our guard,
13:26at the front gate,
13:27I gave him my coat,
13:29I gave him the keys
13:30to our food locker,
13:32I told him
13:32that I would be back
13:34and that he needed
13:35to take anything
13:35he needed in our house
13:37and then we drove
13:37through the lines
13:38of fighting
13:38to get to the embassy.
13:40We literally drove
13:44looking just over
13:46the dashboard,
13:48you know,
13:48with our heads low.
13:51See the eyes
13:52of the people
13:52at each of the checkpoints,
13:54they look scared
13:54and they look on edge
13:56and that's all I remember.
13:58I didn't look to the right,
13:59I didn't look to the left,
14:00we just stayed focused
14:01on driving through.
14:04And then when we got
14:05to the embassy
14:06is when we
14:07started figuring out
14:10what we needed to do.
14:16We had created
14:18a crisis,
14:1924 crisis center
14:20on the 7th floor
14:22of the Department of State.
14:23We were getting
14:25our information
14:26from Laura Lane
14:28who was at the embassy.
14:31Laura,
14:32who was on her first tour,
14:34was magnificently calm
14:36and composed.
14:37I called today
14:39the secretary of state,
14:41the secretary of defense
14:42and my national security advisor
14:43and had extended conversations
14:45about the situation
14:46in Rwanda.
14:47It's a very tense situation
14:48and I just want to assure
14:50the families
14:52of those who are there
14:52that we are doing
14:54everything we possibly can
14:55to be on top
14:56of the situation
14:56to take all
14:58appropriate steps
14:59to try to ensure
15:00the safety
15:01of our citizens there.
15:05The first time
15:06this really came
15:07to my attention
15:09was when I went
15:10over to the tank,
15:12the conference room
15:12in the Pentagon
15:13for a conference
15:15on how do we get
15:16the Americans out.
15:18I remember
15:19explicitly asking
15:20one of the people there
15:22from the defense
15:22intelligence agency,
15:23what's going on?
15:25Who's killing whom?
15:27Why?
15:29And his basically saying,
15:31don't know.
15:33And I should have,
15:34when I got back
15:34to my office,
15:36said,
15:37I want to know more
15:38and insisted
15:38on getting more involved.
15:40And I was at the time
15:41arguing about
15:42whether to intervene
15:43in Haiti
15:43and Bosnia
15:45and all kinds of stuff.
15:47And I didn't.
15:48And that was,
15:49that's on me.
15:50And I'll regret it forever.
15:53In fact,
16:09had the American
16:10administration
16:10examined the cables
16:12filed away
16:12by the State Department's
16:14Africa Bureau,
16:15they could have found
16:16the entire plan.
16:19What was happening
16:20in Rwanda
16:20was not violent chaos,
16:23but a well-organized plot
16:25unfolding precisely
16:27as General Dallaire's
16:28informant had predicted.
16:33Hutu extremists
16:34set up roadblocks,
16:36stopped every Tutsi
16:37they saw,
16:38and murdered them
16:39on the spot
16:40with machetes
16:41or cudgels.
16:43squads of extremists
16:54armed with lists
16:56of prominent Tutsi
16:57went from neighborhood
16:59to neighborhood
17:00and massacred them
17:01and their families.
17:06Suddenly,
17:07death was everywhere.
17:08It was orchestrated
17:22by leading
17:23Hutu extremists
17:24like Colonel
17:25Theonest Bagasora,
17:27who had once
17:28vowed openly
17:28to launch
17:29an apocalypse
17:30against Tutsis.
17:32And now,
17:33as that apocalypse
17:34unfolded,
17:35used his voice
17:36to cheer
17:37the Hutus on.
17:47All over Africa,
17:49the voice of the radio
17:50was all important.
17:52In the case of Rwanda,
17:55the Radio Mill Colleen
17:56was being used
17:58by the Hutus
17:59to bring people
18:00out into the streets
18:02to commit crimes
18:04and to continue
18:05committing crimes,
18:06saying,
18:07the job is not yet done.
18:08The job is not yet done.
18:32Within 24 hours,
18:35there were two things
18:35that I learned
18:37almost simultaneously.
18:39One was
18:41Madame Agat,
18:42the prime minister.
18:44I cannot tell you
18:45on television
18:47how she was slaughtered,
18:48but she was slaughtered.
18:49She was pregnant
18:50in front of her husband
18:52and her children.
18:54At the same time,
18:56we were learning
18:56that the Belgian peacekeepers,
18:58who had been there
19:00to provide protection
19:03for her,
19:03had been kidnapped
19:04and taken to the airport
19:06and killed.
19:09Oh my gosh,
19:10we knew if they started
19:11killing white people,
19:12it would be over.
19:13We in African Affairs
19:14did not have
19:15the rose-colored glasses
19:16and thinking that,
19:18yes, this is a continent
19:18like any others
19:19and we look upon
19:20African people
19:21as we look upon
19:22European people.
19:24The fact that
19:26they decapitated
19:27the Belgian peacekeepers
19:28so gruesomely
19:29and that the killings
19:30were so violent
19:31in that sense
19:32underscores
19:34the intentionality
19:35in my view of this.
19:37The reason
19:37they were executed
19:40was that the signals
19:41that the genocide planners
19:43had been receiving
19:44so far
19:45were that
19:47it was unlikely
19:48after the Somalia incident
19:50and the killing
19:51of the 18 U.S. Rangers
19:54in Black Hawk Down,
19:55it was unlikely
19:56that the U.S.
19:57would, in fact,
19:59continue to engage
20:01in a similar kind of event
20:02in Rwanda.
20:05In Black Hawk Down,
20:0718 Americans
20:08had been killed
20:09in Mogadishu.
20:10It was a catastrophe
20:11for the new administration.
20:15But it was the last president,
20:17George H.W. Bush,
20:18who had ordered
20:19that American troops
20:20be sent to feed
20:21the starving Somalis.
20:23Sometimes,
20:24President Bush declared,
20:26America must act.
20:29That was in December,
20:301992,
20:32a month after
20:33Clinton had defeated him
20:34in the election.
20:35And the lame duck president
20:37had done nothing
20:37to build political support
20:39for the mission in Congress
20:40or among
20:41the American people.
20:42Good evening.
20:51It has been a bloody day
20:52in a troubled world
20:53and now, again,
20:55Somalia,
20:55where a dozen U.S.
20:56forces were killed today.
20:58Two Black Hawk helicopters
20:59have been shot down.
21:00They were dragging him
21:01by ropes
21:02and they paused
21:03every once in a while
21:04to allow people
21:04in the crowd
21:05to abuse the body
21:06by kicking it
21:07or stomping on it
21:08and spitting on it.
21:09It was a horrible thing
21:09to watch
21:10because they kept
21:11running the film
21:12of our soldiers
21:13being dragged
21:14through the streets.
21:15It was horrifying
21:16to watch.
21:17Horrible, horrible day.
21:19It was one of the worst days
21:20for me
21:21in the White House.
21:22if peacekeepers
21:22get murdered
21:23doing their job,
21:24there has to be.
21:25I am concerned
21:26that the president
21:27has no coherent policy.
21:29If he has it,
21:30he has certainly
21:31kept it to himself.
21:32Mr. President,
21:33reports from Somalia today
21:34get worse by the minute.
21:36It's time to come home.
21:37When we entered
21:38Somalia...
21:40The Clinton administration
21:41responded, I think,
21:42very well,
21:44but initially
21:44they were in shock.
21:46This was a new administration
21:47and now Bill Clinton,
21:50this new, young
21:51commander-in-chief,
21:52he was presiding
21:53over a military disaster
21:54and the uniform view
21:56in the State Department
21:57and the White House
21:58from the president on down
21:59was enough already
22:01with the UN peacekeeping operations.
22:03We should just
22:04get the hell out.
22:07A lot of people
22:08the message was clear
22:09that the United States
22:09is not invincible.
22:12All you have to do
22:13is hit it hard enough
22:15and perhaps
22:15it'll withdraw,
22:17it'll disengage.
22:22Even as the funerals
22:28are being held
22:29for the slaughtered
22:30Belgian peacekeepers,
22:31the French
22:33and Belgian governments
22:35send their paratroopers in
22:36to seize Kigali Airport.
22:39Their mission?
22:41To get their nationals out.
22:44The paratroopers
22:45make their way
22:46to foreigners' homes
22:47and evacuate them
22:48one by one.
22:49Then they proceed
23:07to Kigali Psychiatric Hospital
23:09where many Westerners
23:11are trapped.
23:12Alongside them
23:13are hundreds of Tutsis
23:15seeking refuge
23:16from the killers.
23:19At the hospital's entrance,
23:21the paratroopers
23:22drive past
23:23armed Hutu militiamen
23:24who watch them
23:25pass,
23:26waiting patiently.
23:32Only when the paratroopers
23:33enter the compound
23:34did the Tutsis
23:35dare emerge
23:36from hiding.
23:36They tell the European soldiers
24:04how their relatives
24:05have been murdered outside.
24:07They describe
24:08how they would be massacred
24:09if they were left behind.
24:11They appeal
24:12to the few officers
24:13that are there.
24:15One woman explains
24:16to a journalist
24:17why they are afraid.
24:35She begs the paratroopers
24:40to take them
24:41in their convoy.
24:45But the paratroopers' orders
24:47are strict.
24:50Only white people
24:51are allowed to leave.
24:52They have allowed to leave.
24:53Why they are allowed
25:05to leave.
25:06So they have rolled
25:06to the police
25:08and we have been
25:08to kill them.
25:11And we've seen
25:11more people
25:12that are in the
25:13land.
25:16Come on.
25:16Come on.
25:17Come on.
25:17Come on.
25:18Scarcely has the convoy of whites passed through the gates than the Hutu extremists close in.
25:27As they leave the compound, people in the convoy can hear the shooting and the screaming.
25:38I remember when the order came that we were going to start evacuating non-essential personnel
25:44and then move eventually to closing down the embassy.
25:48Our role was to get all Americans out.
25:53The deal we made was that in return for safe passage of diplomats,
26:00not only Americans but diplomats of other embassies,
26:04we would not take any Rwandan citizens with us.
26:08And we left our U.S. government employees, colleagues, to fend for themselves.
26:14We could have the Germans join our convoy.
26:16We could have French join our convoy.
26:18We could have, you know, any host of other nationalities, just not the Rwandans.
26:26And I remember thinking at that moment, how can that be the orders that I'm being given?
26:33I get to live because I was born in Evanston, Illinois.
26:38But that woman that just brought her child to the embassy,
26:42begging that someone take that child, we're going to condemn that child to death?
26:47It's at that moment that I actually started issuing transportation letters
26:52where I would take the person's name, give them a piece of paper with the U.S. Embassy seal
26:58so that they could offer something at a checkpoint to say,
27:02no, no, no, no, these aren't Rwandans.
27:04These are, you know, part of a protected convoy that's moving, you know, south.
27:14In December 1993, before the genocide,
27:17I escorted a remarkable woman whose name is Monique Mujamabari to the White House.
27:24She had an opportunity to meet President Clinton and talk about the human rights situation in Rwanda.
27:30I think he was impressed by her as well as the others,
27:33but he was particularly later on focused on her because she went missing.
27:39I remember repeated telephone calls from the White House asking about Monique.
27:47And I kept saying, we don't have the people to go out in the streets to find out where Monique is.
27:54And frankly, it was a little grating to get pressure from the White House asking about one person
28:03when thousands were being slaughtered.
28:09The final convoy started from the embassy.
28:12And we'd see a lot of soldiers along the roadways just watching us leave.
28:20The bodies that I saw, I couldn't make sense of it, right?
28:36As you're driving along, you just think how out of place it is to see the bodies laying by the roadside.
28:42You didn't know how to, like, conceptually, I knew that someone had been killed.
28:52And I guess I tried to just keep moving on and focus on the task at hand.
29:00There were times where I felt like that evil was there and you could see it in the eyes of those
29:11that were clearly part of the genocide plot.
29:24When we reached the Burundi border and crossed over, I think that's the first time I cried.
29:30And I remember now thinking, you know, how blessed we were that everything had gone according to plans.
29:43And just as you and I were speaking, I, to this day, have always thought, I got lucky.
29:51God watched over me.
29:53And yet, now in talking with you, I realize it was all part of the plan for them to get us out.
30:00It wasn't luck.
30:01They really did allow us to leave overland without incident.
30:06And that was part of their plan.
30:07And that was part of their plan.
30:08They got a license to kill.
30:09They did.
30:13And then came out as long as a result of them to be taken of this march.
30:16As soon as the Americans were out of Rwanda, the interest of the White House evaporated.
30:22Point of fact, the president had come to the State Department for an official dinner and
30:28stopped by the crisis group to say, thank you and congratulations for getting Americans out.
30:34And that was the last I heard about Bill Clinton's interest in Rwanda.
30:39I want this to be clear.
30:44This issue never rose to the level of the president to say, should we or shouldn't we?
30:50I don't even believe there was a meeting of the principal's committee, cabinet members.
30:56This is not a long-term peacekeeping...
30:59We never really came to grips with the issue, and we should have.
31:02I could blame all kinds of other people for it, but it was my job to say, wait a minute.
31:09When I saw reports of bodies being found, I should have demanded more intelligence about it.
31:17And then had a principal's meeting, looked at what we could do on an urgent basis,
31:23and then acted, or not acted, at least as a result of a conscious decision.
31:29Government is like a body, a big body, a Leviathan, but there's a brain.
31:35And the brain is the leadership.
31:39And the leadership is not a whole lot of people.
31:42And if they are very, very preoccupied with a crisis here, a crisis there, and a crisis there, you just miss things.
31:51Rwanda were not in that scope.
31:57That was a local thing.
31:59Horrendous, but local.
32:02None of that is an excuse.
32:06The local thing that was taking place in Rwanda was a well-planned systematic genocide to annihilate Rwanda's million Tutsis.
32:21Hutu militiamen, Hutu soldiers and police, and Hutu civilians were openly working together before the eyes of the international community.
32:39As the violence spread, more and more ordinary Hutus joined in, using machetes, clubs with nail, axes, and hammers.
32:55French and Belgian paratroopers had come and gone.
32:58And now the few remaining UN peacekeepers, under the command of General Dallaire, were the only ones doing anything to slow the slaughter.
33:08The peacekeepers set up protected areas for the Tutsis, crowding them into schools, churches, and stadiums.
33:15Dallaire cabled back to UN headquarters increasingly desperate reports, describing the carnage and pleading for additional men and resources.
33:25But no help came.
33:28And things were about to get worse.
33:38In atrocity prevention, the issue is not, is the information available?
33:43The question is, is the critical information, you know, being pushed up and forcing policymakers to confront the issue and the decision?
33:56So this is a memo for Susan Rice and Don Steinberg.
34:01I just heard from Human Rights Watch pleading that we oppose a quick UNAMIR pullout from Rwanda.
34:07Human Rights Watch seemed to indicate that UNAMIR is protecting thousands.
34:11I put 25,000?
34:13And if they pull out, the Rwandans will quickly become victims of genocide.
34:17Shouldn't it be a major factor in forming high-level decision-making on this issue?
34:23Has it been?
34:24You wrote it to Susan Rice and to Steinberg, Donald Steinberg.
34:27Yeah, yeah.
34:28Hypothetically, when you read something like that, what kind of course of action would you expect?
34:32Your question is making me uncomfortable because, no, I'll explain why, because, you know, my answer has implications for the people that I wrote it to.
34:47But look, you know, what can I say, man?
34:55You know, I think that—let me just answer this question.
35:03Let me just make this statement.
35:05I mean, when you're in public life and you're a U.S. government official and you get information about something like this,
35:24it is—what can I say? It's incumbent upon you to act.
35:27Well, my experiences in Somalia would make me more cautious about having any American—
35:33I was the one who got the first call.
35:35Belgians had called to say they wanted us to know that they were going to be informing the Security Council of their intention to withdraw their troops.
35:45And what they did not wish was for the United States to oppose that request.
35:49Obviously, we did not wish them to leave, but by the same token, we were in no position to tell them that they could not withdraw their troops.
35:58The Belgians were looking for a way out, and they were feeding into the narrative that was going on at the National Security Council that we should not be doing peacekeeping in Africa.
36:14Sure enough, that was the information that people who did not want peacekeeping in my government needed to begin looking at the withdrawal of peacekeepers.
36:26I had at the time the wonderful title, Special Assistant to the President for Global Affairs.
36:41Anything that was a mess was usually given to me, and UN peacekeeping was certainly a mess.
36:48Remember the time the Clinton administration had just suffered enormous political problems over Somalia.
36:57And everybody in Washington said, when American interests are not at stake, let's not put American forces in a situation where they can be killed.
37:09I saw the United States government take the lead in removing peacekeepers in the face of a genocide.
37:22I will never, ever forget the look on the face of team members, including our desk officer from Rwanda.
37:32He looked at me and he said, you know what's going to happen.
37:35It was a look of utter horror because both of us knew what was going to happen, and it did happen.
37:45Rwanda was discussed in the National Security Council meeting in the Situation Room in the White House.
37:51It was in the president's daily intelligence briefing.
37:54The president knew about it.
37:55The senior leaders of the government all knew about it.
37:57People were aware.
37:58What I'm saying is that no one of all the senior leadership in the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, no one ever said, gee, let's drop in the 82nd Airborne.
38:11The idea, frankly, never came up.
38:18After weeks of searching, Monique was finally rescued from the carnage in Rwanda and brought to the United States.
38:24My country and I suffered grievously since we last met, she wrote President Clinton.
38:31I'm sure you know that tens of thousands of Rwandans have been executed.
38:37The forces of the UN are protecting thousands of Rwandans, but the UN Security Council is considering withdrawing these troops.
38:45If the UN lacks the will or the courage, what is to stop them from destroying every single person who ever opposed them and every single Tutsi?
38:58I appeal to you to act immediately and ensure a continued and effective peacekeeping force in Rwanda.
39:06Sincerely, Monique Mujawa Maria.
39:15Monique finally came to the White House again, but she never met President Clinton.
39:21The United States and the entire UN Security Council voted to withdraw the peacekeepers in Rwanda.
39:33The UN ordered General Dallaire to start closing his peacekeeping mission.
39:37Dallaire's deputy, General Henry Agnodo, assured Dallaire that his Ghanaian peacekeepers would stay.
39:44The couple thousand Europeans left, leaving Dallaire with 270 people.
40:00The end of the superpower standoff lifted the lid from a cauldron of long-simmering hatreds.
40:05Now the entire global terrain is bloody with such conflicts from Rwanda to Georgia.
40:11Whether we get involved in any of the world's ethnic conflicts in the end must depend on the cumulative weight of the American interests at stake.
40:22At one point, we requested that the radio Mille Colline broadcasts be jammed.
40:28First, I was told that jamming radios is against international law, to which I said it's genocide, not against international law.
40:40Then I was told by my DOD colleagues that, did I have any idea how expensive it was?
40:47Did I have any idea how many man hours it would take?
40:51Then it was, we have no radio jamming equipment at all in Haiti.
40:56And finally, a man leaned forward and kindly mansplained to me proof.
41:03Radios don't kill people.
41:06People kill people.
41:08And what am I going to say to that?
41:12They flew all of us back stateside.
41:28They had me land back to my home in Chicago, Illinois.
41:34And I remember getting off the plane and looking around and it's, you know, America.
41:45Everything's safe. Everything's clean.
41:47I remember having an awful time sleeping at night.
41:51I'd have all the images coming back to me.
41:54I'd relive every moment, every decision, everything that I had done or hadn't done.
42:03I couldn't talk to anybody.
42:05Because how do you talk to someone about everything you just witnessed?
42:08Who would understand that?
42:10It was an awful feeling.
42:15They put me on the State Department Operations Center, which is the 24-7 watch for the Secretary of State.
42:22Anybody that would talk about Rwanda and the next steps that would be taking, Lord knows I offered my opinion countless times.
42:31But if you're a junior officer in the State Department, you're offering opinions, but there are larger forces at play.
42:42I wanted to actually go and see for myself what was happening.
42:46Here's this Holocaust that's underway, and I've got to go.
42:52I traveled to Rwanda.
42:58During one of the most terrible times in the genocide when the killing was going on at a rate of about 21,000 people per day.
43:06The most vivid example of what I saw was on the border area between Tanzania and Rwanda, where there was a river.
43:16It's called the Kagera River.
43:19From a relatively high place, it looked as if there were these little logs that were flowing in the river down toward Lake Victoria.
43:27And I said, I don't understand this. It can't be logs. Let's go down.
43:36At several hundred feet, it was clear that these were not logs. These were bodies. These were human bodies.
43:44And they were flowing at, you know, rapidly. And there were many of them down the river.
43:50And that's why they looked like logs. There were so many.
43:57It's a memory that is so searing that sometimes when I'm in a small river, I think I see bodies floating in the river again, because it's just something that stays with you that you can't ever get out of you.
44:22It's the physical elements of the genocide that I will carry with me forever.
44:31I went from this trip to Geneva. I gave a press conference in which I said genocide is going on in Rwanda.
44:48And then I was told by Washington, particularly by the Legal Advisors Office of the State Department, that that was not the policy.
44:56We don't call this genocide. It was against policy. The U.S. policy was that we haven't determined yet that this is a genocide. It's unbelievable.
45:04Does the State Department have a view as to whether or not what is happening could be genocide?
45:10Well, as I think you know, the use of the term genocide has a very precise legal meaning.
45:16Although it's not strictly a legal determination, there are other factors in there as well.
45:22The debate was over, what are we going to call this? And if we call it genocide, the legal obligations that governments have, particularly those who have signed the International Genocide Convention,
45:37they have an obligation under the very terms of the convention to take steps to prevent and punish genocide.
45:46But because it's the language of the treaty, because it's so clear, the lawyers didn't want anyone to actually find that this is a genocide.
45:54If we don't determine that it's a genocide, then we don't have to do anything about it. That's where it was.
45:59The case of Rwanda revealed our bureaucracy at its very worst.
46:15It took us forever to get a paper up to Secretary Christopher that would make the case that this was genocide,
46:24and we had to declare it as such, even if it meant we did not know what the next step was.
46:35We have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred.
46:38How many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?
46:42Alan, that's just not a question that I'm in a position to answer.
46:45It's true that the, that you have specific guidance, not to use the word genocide in isolation, but always to preface it with this, uh, this word's axil.
46:56Um, I have guidance which, uh...
46:58It was very painful. It was a low point, but it was at that point, it was, it, it, it, it was only reflecting the, the, the terrible fact that the United States government,
47:10that I was working in, had stood by and allowed, by then, 600,000 people to be slaughtered in Rwanda.
47:24In Rwanda, Radio Mil Kulin went on spewing hate. The Hutus went on slaughtering Tutsis.
47:35Their only hope was the soldiers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi rebel army, under the command of Paul Kagami, fighting now inside Rwanda.
47:44The government forces had more men and better weapons, but they concentrated on massacring Tutsi civilians.
47:51Kagami's rebels focused on gaining territory.
47:56Fighting their way toward the capital, the rebels encountered vast scenes of carnage.
48:03At sunset, they approached the church of Nyarabue, where more than 5,000 Tutsis had sought sanctuary.
48:18They found a nightmare scene from the inferno.
48:24The house of God had become a killing zone.
48:27How many had done the killing?
48:41Hundreds?
48:43Thousands?
48:45Countless ordinary people had looked their victims in the eye,
48:50raised their machetes, and done the hard work of murder.
48:53Again and again.
48:58Thousands of times, over many hours.
49:03Through well-planned propaganda, through lies and the stoking of fear,
49:08ordinary citizens had been transformed into cold-blooded killers.
49:14By portraying the Tutsis as traitors and subhuman,
49:17Hutu leaders had unleashed in thousands of Rwandans the bottomless human capacity for cruelty and barbarism.
49:26Led by the indispensable nation, the international community had watched it happen.
49:34The Americans had convinced themselves they faced a simple choice,
49:38sending in the 82nd airborne, or doing nothing.
49:53A week after the discovery of the church at Nyarabue,
49:56Tutsi rebels entered the capital, and the killing came to an end.
50:00A quarter million women had been raped.
50:11Eight hundred thousand people had been slaughtered.
50:16Seven in ten of Rwanda's Tutsi were dead.
50:21It had taken scarcely one hundred days.
50:26It had taken scarcely one hundred days.
50:28Four in ten of Rwandans,
50:35One hundred days...
50:37In the 80's,
50:45Four in the 80's.
50:46One hundred days...
50:51One hundred days...
50:53Two hundred days...
50:54Four in the 80's...
50:55When they finally let me go back in to help reopen the embassy, on the plane ride over,
51:09I was hoping that I would find Rasimbi. I was hoping that I'd find Bernadette. I was hoping
51:14that I would see Samuel. I was hoping for the best possible outcome. Maybe it's that wonderful
51:22thing about being young, and you believe anything and everything is possible, and then arriving
51:28at the embassy and realizing, no, it was just the opposite.
51:35And that's when I learned about a lot of what happened after we closed down the embassy.
51:43My right hand, Rasimbi, had 11 children, and his one daughter survived at the house
51:52when they were all massacred. She basically hid under her family's bodies that had been
51:58mutilated, and they thought they'd gotten everyone. She survived.
52:03I had to go back. I made a promise. I made a promise to every one of those people that
52:10had worked alongside me, who had stayed behind, who we'd left behind, who we'd abandoned.
52:22I was among the first people from Washington back in Kigali, and I went to the memorial service
52:30we held for our Rwandan colleagues who'd been slaughtered, and I stood up and looked out over
52:40that congregation of colleagues and saw betrayal. They knew what we had done, and I knew what we
52:47had done, and I'm looking at the faces to whom we had said goodbye. And I do not remember what I said.
52:57That's how, I think, shocked I was. I just, it was, it was horrible to, um, to look in the face of
53:06someone you know you have betrayed. And what do you say? I'm sorry? I don't think I said I'm sorry.
53:12I think we talked about commemorating the lives of people who meant everything to their loved ones
53:20and to the U.S. government.
53:33I have come today to pay the respects of my nation to all who suffered and all who perished
53:40in the Rwandan genocide. It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members
53:49of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices day after day
53:57after day who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed
54:05by this unimaginable terror.
54:13It is hard for me to accept the fact that our president did not know the depth and the speed
54:20at which this genocide was taking place because we were sending memos. And to say later on it was because
54:28of ignorance is, um, to me, unbecoming of the leader of the free world and the American foreign policy, unbecoming.
54:45Even though I think his apology was genuine, it was a very hollow moment. It was hollow because
54:52800,000 people had perished and nothing had been done. There's also the nagging question that I will
55:00have in the back of my mind. Um, Africa is different from Europe. Now, did that mean that the U.S.
55:10responded to a crisis in Europe because people were white Europeans versus those in Africa who were
55:22black Africans? I would put a little twist on it by saying that the strategic, the way in which U.S.
55:30interests are assessed is where is the strategic interest in engaging in a situation? You'll do it.
55:37If there isn't, then you won't. There was very little strategic interest in Rwanda.
55:47That expression of regret, which is a mirror of the regret that so many of us who were
55:52involved in this at the time feel, is not meaningless because it has been an impetus
55:59for a whole series of actions and rethinking about how we, precisely how we address
56:07deal with situations like this. The traditional understanding of interests has changed in the
56:14last 20 or 30 years. You know, it is no longer the, the, the calculations of, of hard military
56:22strength and power that matter, or even economic strength, that moral, um, stature and standing
56:29credibility matter, that it has an, an influence, an important influence on national power. And all of
56:37those things are part of an evolution of thinking that has, was precipitated precisely by the events in Rwanda.
56:46And all of those things are the most important things that we want.
56:59And all of those things are the most important things that we want.
57:03So
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