Democrats Join Critics of Bosnia Arms Secrecy

In midsummer of 1994, Charles E. Redman, then the chief U.S. negotiator in the Balkans, paid a private visit on Capitol Hill to Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and a small group of key lawmakers who were searching for ways to help the struggling government of Bosnia survive the Balkan civil war.

Nunn and his colleagues thought they had an answer for one troubling question: how the U.S. could help the outgunned Bosnians defend themselves without directly violating the international arms embargo. Nunn proposed ordering American troops to stop enforcing the embargo, while not actually breaching it themselves. Redman talked with the members at length and told them what kind of legislative language the administration could accept.

But he did not disclose one important fact: Three months before, the White House had given a green light to an Iranian arms smuggling operation that already was regularly shipping tons of weapons and munitions to the Muslim troops as well as their Croatian allies. And U.S. forces in the Adriatic Sea were already ignoring Iranian and other cargo planes that were delivering arms to Croatia and Bosnia. In effect, Redman was encouraging Congress to ratify a secret presidential policy that the lawmakers did not know existed.

“I don’t ever recall anybody in the administration telling me anything about that,” Nunn says now.

The White House decision to keep its policy to itself has emerged as a sensitive issue since the recent disclosure of the administration’s actions, even among some Democrats who supported arming the Muslims. Administration officials have maintained that Republican leaders had access to intelligence reports in 1994 and therefore knew that arms were trickling into Bosnia, and are only complaining now for partisan political reasons.

But some in Congress, including leading Democrats, now question the wisdom of cutting out key parts of the foreign policy apparatus, including the CIA and the appropriate congressional committees, on such an important matter.

“It seems to me the question is whether Congress should have been informed, not so much as a matter of law, but as a matter of comity,” Nunn says.

Even some administration officials now acknowledge that their failure to inform Congress was an error.

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“There is a growing understanding in the administration that in terms of Congress, this could have been handled better,” one administration official said. Administration officials added that the State Department and the Defense Department are now conducting a detailed review of congressional testimony given by senior officials to determine what was said to lawmakers at the time, while the National Security Council is conducting a similar review of White House public statements and correspondence.

Redman’s exchange explains why some Democrats, as well as many Republicans, are upset about the administration decision to allow Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia. Not only did the administration fail to tell them about its secret policy, it even gave them a false impression of what U.S. policy was.

Further, it adds to the picture of an administration that could not find a practical way to help the Bosnians and so found itself making policy reactively, in response to pressures from Iran, Bosnia, Croatia--and Congress.

Asked why Redman never told Nunn or other lawmakers about the new Iranian arms policy, an administration official familiar with the actions said: “It never came up.”

Redman and Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, are scheduled to testify in a closed session before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today about their roles in the policy.

Redman’s lack of candor in the session with the congressional group, which occurred in late July or early August of 1994, fit into a pattern of administration efforts to keep knowledge of the new policy closely held for months after it was implemented.

The secrecy was maintained despite an intense debate throughout the foreign policy community about the plight of the Muslims, who were suffering badly on the Bosnian battlefield because of the Serbs’ superior weaponry. Already, some in Congress were demanding that the U.S. unilaterally lift the arms embargo, even at the cost of a major rift with the European nations that had peacekeeping forces in the Balkans.

In April 1994, according to administration officials, Croatian representatives approached U.S. diplomats with the idea of opening an Iranian arms pipeline through Croatia into neighboring Bosnia. Top White House and State Department officials, including National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, weighed the proposal. On April 27, President Clinton signed off on the idea and Galbraith notified Croatian President Franjo Tudjman that he would have “no instructions” on the matter--diplomatic code meaning that the United States would not object.

Shortly thereafter, planeloads of Iranian arms began to flow to the Bosnians across the border, with the Croatian intermediaries taking a large cut of the cargo for themselves.

A week after the administration signal, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Service panel, received a lengthy letter from Talbott answering specific questions that Warner had posed about U.S. policy on the arms embargo. In his May 4 letter to Warner, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, Talbott never mentioned the new U.S. policy.

Further, Talbott’s answers defended the administration’s opposition to lifting the arms embargo, citing the threatened pullout of European peacekeepers.

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Talbott wrote that such action might also lead to an increase in the Iranian presence in Bosnia. The letter did not mention that the administration had just crafted a policy that would allow the Iranians to ship arms to Bosnia.

“Nations like Iran, who have standing offers to provide troops to the Bosnian government, might elect to do so, arguing that the U.S. had set a precedent for ignoring a U.N. resolution” if the embargo were lifted, Talbott wrote.

In his midsummer meeting on Capitol Hill, Redman, also directly involved in the secret diplomacy, counseled lawmakers on the measure for dealing with the embargo. The subsequent compromise mandating an end to U.S. enforcement passed Congress and became law in November 1994.