March 9, 1995: CIA Report Claims Serbs Responsible for 90 Percent of War Crimes in Bosnia, but Report Is Later Disputed

It is revealed in the New York Times that a CIA report completed earlier in the year has concluded that 90 percent of the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia has been carried out by the Bosnian Serbs, and that leading politicians in Bosnian Serbia and possibly Serbia itself almost certainly played a role in these war crimes. One anonymous US official says: “To those who think the parties are equally guilty, this report is pretty devastating. The scale of what the Serbs did is so different.” [New York Times, 3/9/1995] However, three months later, the Telegraph will report that “authoritative diplomatic sources in Europe” believe that pro-Bosnian Muslim factions in Washington, DC, including parts of the CIA, are “blatantly distorting” intelligence summaries to push for US intervention on the Bosnian Muslim side. [Daily Telegraph, 6/2/1995] Peter Viggers, a senior Conservative British member of Parliament, will claim the report was leaked at a diplomatically important moment to influence policy. Viggers is a member of the British House of Commons Defence Committee and will say the report conflicted with the committee’s own experience in visits to Bosnia, where it was clear that ethnic cleansing had been carried out by all sides. [Daily Telegraph, 6/3/1995] The 1999 documentary Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War later shown on the History Channel will claim that the CIA report only looked at areas held by the Bosnian Serbs and that international agencies later determined that 40 percent of the war refugees were Serbian, suggesting that Serbians were the target of a similar percentage of “ethnic cleansing” war crimes. [George Bogdanich, 4/14/2001]