Soldiers Made Me Look Good

by Lewis MacKenzie

  KOFI ANNAN, QUOTING A UN COMMISION’S CONCLUSION

  ON THE EVENING of December 1, 1992, while I was still in uniform, I received a phone call from Canadian journalist John Burns, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter with the New York Times. John, the newspaper’s senior reporter in Sarajevo, was calling from London, England, where he had just flown to see his son. He and I had got to know each other in Sarajevo, and he said he wanted to give me a heads-up regarding the firestorm of accusations that he thought might soon surface: I had been branded a rapist and war criminal. Neither of us had any idea that these accusations would continue to circulate for the next fifteen years or, indeed, that they would continue to this day.

  In late 1992, the Bosnian-Serb soldier Borislav Herak was arrested by the Bosnian police in Sarajevo and charged with the murder of multiple citizens. He had allegedly described how he practised cutting the throats of pigs in preparation for doing the same to his Bosniak victims. The trial received worldwide coverage, and John Burns was permitted to do a one-on-one interview with Herak, with a Bosnian government “minder” present.

  John explained to me that during the interview Herak recounted how he had worked at the Sonja Café, which had been converted to a prisoner camp in northern Sarajevo. He said that I had come by in a Jeep and had taken away four young Muslim girl prisoners, who I then presumably raped and murdered, since their bodies were found later. Herak insisted all this had happened sometime in mid-August 1992. John knew that I had departed Sarajevo in July, so he asked Herak how he knew it was me. Herak replied that he had seen me often on TV. When he was asked to describe my uniform and rank badges, he described something similar to that worn by a junior officer from a Scandinavian country. All of that, combined with the fact that I never moved about in a Jeep, caused John to turn to the Bosnian government’s keeper and advise him that his government should not go public with the accusations against me because they would destroy the credibility of the rest of the story he was writing on Herak. John described Herak as “a Charles Manson type” and didn’t think Herak’s accusations regarding me would be released to the media, but he wanted me to be prepared if they did.

  Within thirty-six hours, the accusations made headlines in the Arab world, just at the time Bosnian President Alija Izet-begovic was arriving at the Islamic conference in Saudi Arabia. The North American press showed better taste and, considering the source—a prisoner of war accused of multiple murders— declined to carry the story. This was not the case in Germany, Italy and Croatia, where the accusations were repeated.

  Within weeks, those accusations were officially discredited: it was determined that a number of the people whom Herak had allegedly murdered were alive and well and that many of his other “achievements” as a soldier were fabrications. It was generally accepted that Herak had been coached before his interview with Burns—but not particularly well, it would seem. Nevertheless, the damage had been done. Most people, particularly those in the Muslim world, who based their opinion of me on Herak’s evidence, were not going to change their mind overnight. With my encouragement, the UN carried out an extensive, two-month formal investigation of the accusations by the Bosnian authorities. It was followed by a personal letter to me from Kofi Annan, under secretary of the UN at the time, in which he repeated the commission’s conclusion that “Allegations against Major General Lewis MacKenzie are unfounded.” He went on to say, “May I say again how appalled I am to hear of the difficulties with which you have had to deal and take this oppourtunity to thank you for your service to UNPROFOR.”1 My critics, however, were far from convinced, and the slander gained momentum in Germany, Italy and the Muslim world.

  Six months later, I inadvertently contributed to the volume of the criticisms against me when I accepted a contract to speak to the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. I was doing one or two speeches a day in Canada, and this one didn’t seem out of the ordinary. It was arranged by a serving U.S. congresswoman, Helen Bentley, whom I had met in Belgrade during my time in Yugoslavia when she was attempting to locate and return an American citizen’s children who had been spirited there by the father. During the speech I indicated that the Bosnian Serbs certainly bore the majority of the responsibility for the fighting that was going on at the time but that there was a good deal of responsibility left to be shared by the Bosniaks and the Croatians.

  I returned to Washington two weeks later to fulfill the second half of the contract. This time I gave no speech, but I did appear as a witness before a U.S. congressional committee and did a number of media interviews, including spots on CSPAN and Larry King Live.

  That evening I received a phone call in my Washington hotel room from Roy Gutman, another Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who had covered the Balkan conflict. He asked, “Did you know that your speaking fee when you spoke to the Heritage Foundation was paid by Serbnet?”

  I drew a blank and could only respond, “What’s Serbnet?”

  Gutman replied, “It’s a Serbian-American group that monitors the media and tries to put their own spin on all the bad press the Serbs are getting.”

  The best I could come up with at the time was: “I suppose I’ll have to check it out.”

  The next day the story was all over the front pages of most newspapers, particularly in Europe and the Muslim world. I was branded everything from a “hero with feet of pay” to a Serb-lobbyist who was on the Serbs’ payroll during my entire time in Sarajevo and the months that followed. So I contacted Congresswoman Bentley for some clarification. Then I got the bad news: Serbnet had indeed paid part of my fee for the single speech. Although I donated the entire amount to CANFAR, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research, the damage had been done. Accusations of “MacKenzie’s pro-Serb, cross-America speaking tour,” paid for by the Serbs, became the story.

  Shortly thereafter I was visited by the RCMP, who explained to me that reliable intelligence sources had advised them that three “hit teams” had left Sarajevo. Their three targets were the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and yours truly. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was marked presumably because he was insensitive and ignorant enough to go to Sarajevo and tell its citizens, who were under fire at the time: “I can list ten other cities in the world where the situation is worse than Sarajevo!” And Brian Mulroney was on the list because his wife, Mila, was born a Serb in Sarajevo.*

  I was the only one of the three who had no security other than my own military background, so it was decided that RCMP Corporal Dave Hartley would keep an eye on me and coordinate a modest level of security, particularly during my frequent travels. I was spending a lot of time on the road fulfilling the many professional speaking engagements that were being requested at an alarming rate. I had signed on with David Lavin and his Lavin Agency, headquartered in Toronto and with an office in Boston, and as a result I was crossing the U.S. border frequently. Dave arranged for the FBI to monitor me when I made presentations in the United States.

  My first concern in this situation was for my family. I was spending a lot of time away from home. Dora and I hadn’t made up our minds yet about where we would settle. At the time, we were renting an unfurnished penthouse apartment close to the Lester Pearson International airport in Etobicoke while we considered our options. It was a relatively easy building to monitor, and I was pretty confident that Dora was well protected. Our daughter, Kimm, who was living in Ottawa, also needed protection, so arrangements were made by the police to enhance her security.†

  I was also authorized to carry a handgun. I didn’t feel I needed it, but the weapon stayed with Dora in the apartment when I was away. To ensure she was comfortable with it, we ventured into the backwoods of Muskoka, where she proved to be a quick learner with the 9 mm pistol. A senior police chief and friend mentioned to me that it might be a better idea to have Dora get comfortable with a pump-action shotgun, as it would be “more accurate” in a high-pressure situation and that even the “clack-clack” of it being c
ocked would be enough to dissuade most potential troublemakers. I took the advice and then advised all my male friends: “For God’s sake, don’t get into the booze and decide to pay me a surprise visit on a Friday night unless you’re sure I’m home!”

  Corporal Hartley became a close friend to our family. It was a terrible shock when, on the first day back at work following a few weeks’ holiday, he suffered a heart attack and died during his daily exercise routine. I never asked, but I doubt if this young, dedicated policeman was a day over forty.

  Shortly thereafter, the threat level was reduced and we were back on our own. But I still wouldn’t recommend that you try to sneak into our house when I’m away!

  * Mila, née Pivnicki, and her family left Yugoslavia for Canada when she was five years old.

  † Kimm is finding this out only now as she reads this!

  14: On the Road Again

  “Are you out of your bloody mind? You stole the pistol of an indicted war criminal!”

  DAVID KIRK, DIRECTOR OF A SOLDIER’ S PEACE

  LARGELY THANKS TO the free publicity provided by the international media during my relatively short tour of duty in Sarajevo, my first attempt at writing ended up being a best seller in 1993–94. I was flattered when I learned that American and Canadian networks were discussing the wisdom of producing a movie based on the book. I was apprehensive, though, because I knew it wouldn’t have a substantial budget, and the previous attempt at turning a book about the Canadian military into a Monday night TV movie was a disaster. Robert Mason Lee’s insightful book, Death and Deliverance, concerning the heroics associated with the 1991 crash of a Canadian Forces Hercules resupply aircraft en route to the Canadian Forces’ Station Alert, close to the North Pole, deserved much better than it got in the movie Ordeal in the Arctic. Fifty-seven-year-old actor Richard Chamberlain, who had become famous as TV’s Doctor Kildare three decades earlier, played the young Canadian captain John Coach. Most of the movie was filmed in an aircraft hangar in Edmonton, where—at a simulated 20 to 30 degrees below zero— no one’s breath was visible throughout the entire movie.

  Literary agent Linda McKnight, who had taken me by the hand and led me through the process of writing my first book and getting it published, came to the rescue. Linda explained that documentary filmmaker extraordinaire Michael Maclear was considering making a documentary based on my book. That really piqued my interest because Michael is one of the very best in the documentary business. He was well known internationally as a combat reporter during his younger days, but his groundbreaking documentary, Vietnam: The 10,000 Day War, which looked at the conflict in Vietnam from both sides, including unique interviews with top North Vietnamese and Viet Cong leaders, set him apart.

  Michael decided he would buy the movie rights to my book on the understanding that he would not make a movie, but would instead produce a serious documentary on the United Nations. He put together an outstanding team. David Kirk would direct the effort; with his CBC experience directing superior mini-documentaries for The Journal, his qualifications were unequalled. Mike Grippo, who had extensive experience in operational theatres including Bosnia when I was there, would be the cameraman; and Alistair Bell, one of the great characters in the sound game, would round out our team. Back at Michael’s Toronto headquarters, Tom Gould, a well-known Canadian TV personality and journalist, would research and write the documentary’s narrative.

  It was decided that we would film in locations where I had served or where a UN mission was struggling to achieve its mandate. Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Cyprus and Somalia would be our major stops, with side trips to interview well-known leaders and personalities, including President François Mitterrand of France, President Kiro Gligorov of Macedonia, Brent Scowcroft from President George Bush’s administration, Radovan Karadzic and President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides and his Turkish Cypriot opposite number Rauf Denktash and our own prime minister, Jean Chrétien. We would travel light, carry our own kit and bum rides with military aircraft where and when we could.

  At the end of January 1994 we flew to Cyprus, where I had served in 1965, 1971 and 1978 with the UN force monitoring the separation of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. Since the force had been there since the intercommunal troubles of 1964 (and remains there to this day!), we wanted to make the point that the presence of a UN peacekeeping force often stands in the way of a negotiated settlement between the belligerents. Both sides in a conflict frequently remain intractable when they know that fighting is unlikely to break out again due to the presence of the “blue berets.” To make the point, I interviewed Greek Cypriot President Clerides, following which I walked a relatively short distance across the Green Line to the office of Turkish Cypriot President Denktash. They were the leaders of the two communities on the island and, although they had gone to school together, they had not spoken to each other in an official capacity since the Turkish intervention in 1974. Furthermore, the international community had not forced them to do so in spite of the cost of maintaining a UN force on the island.

  While looking for another example of the UN being exploited by a festering conflict, we discovered an outstanding case to make the point. The commander of the UN’s Austrian contingent that was patrolling the Green Line on the south of the island had been on Cyprus thirty years earlier when he was five years old and visiting his father, who was commanding the Austrian contingent at the time. Here was a commanding officer walking the same patrol routes and observing from the same observation posts that his father had established three decades earlier. If that didn’t make the point that the UN can get sucked into staying around much too long when the belligerents refuse to negotiate, nothing would.

  From Cyprus we flew to London for an interview with Lord Carrington, the European Community’s special representative for Bosnia during my time in Sarajevo. I recalled with him his comment to me as he boarded a plane at the Sarajevo airport during the summer of 1992, after talks with the Bosnian President Izetbegovic and Radovan Karadzic. He stopped on the top step of the ramp to his aircraft, turned, looked me in the eye and said, “Lew, I leave them to you. They are all mad!”

  Two days later we were in Paris and very appreciative that President Mitterrand had agreed to an extensive interview. This was quite a coup, for two reasons. First, the president was terminally ill with cancer, and second, he rarely granted interviews to foreigners, particularly unilingual anglophones. We set up simultaneous interpreters in adjacent rooms to a grand ballroom in the Élysée Palace and waited for the president to arrive. An aide appeared at the door and beckoned me to join him. I followed him to a small room where the president was having makeup applied. I was shocked at his appearance. I could see the bone structure of his face quite clearly because his skin was translucent. He was obviously suffering from both the cancer and the treatment, and I felt guilty about taking up his time but enormously grateful for his co-operation. We chatted in English, recalling his surprise visit to Sarajevo, which helped kickstart the humanitarian airlift to the city in July 1992.

  The interview lasted an hour and provided us with the soundbites we wanted regarding the laborious decision-making process at the UN Security Council. I could see the president was getting tired, so I attempted to bring the interview to a close. As I started to rise, he extended his arm, palm down, and moved his fingers gently up and down, motioning to me to sit down again. He then spoke softly for a few minutes. The gist of his message was: “General, I had no hesitation in sending my soldiers to Sarajevo under your command. I was confident they would be well led and safe with you. And you exceeded my expectations.” I was dumbfounded, and before he departed I managed only to thank him for sending me such fine French soldiers, including the four bodyguards he had directed to be assigned to me during my last month in Sarajevo.

  A three-week filming hiatus followed during which I fulfilled a contractual obligation with Price Waterhouse. I was to head up a small team, of my own choo
sing, to study the structure of the Irish Defence Force and make recommendations for its reorganization. I chose two old friends to work on the project: retired Lieutenant-General Charlie Belzile, who had commanded the Canadian army for five years and had been a mentor to me, and retired Colonel Don Ethell, who had been a sergeant patrol commander in my platoon during our first tour of duty in Cyprus in 1965, and whose rapid rise through the officer ranks reflected his outstanding abilities. Together we produced a plan that was well received, and many of its recommendations were implemented to the letter. Unfortunately, the plan also generated one of my most serious and embarrassing cock-ups.

  Our plan was submitted to the Irish government by Price Waterhouse. It was confidential and highly sensitive, and it was not to be discussed until it was released by the government. A few months later, I received a call from an Irish journalist who told me that the government had released the report and that he had been given a copy. He read from the report and asked me for some clarifications, which I obligingly provided. Twenty-four hours later, all hell broke loose in Ireland. It soon made its way to my end of the telephone line in Canada. Apparently, the report had not been released by the government after all; the reporter had obtained a bootleg copy via questionable channels and had duped me into giving him an interview. For someone who was pretty familiar with the media, I had been naive in the extreme. I was mortified. Price Waterhouse, too, was less than pleased, and it was easy to understand why.

  Still reeling from my humiliation, our documentary team went on the road again, this time flying with the U.S. Air Force into Mogadishu, Somalia, via Cairo. It was important to highlight the UN’s failure in Somalia in our documentary because of the general public ignorance about the mission. Most outsiders assumed that the United States was in charge because the intervention devolved into a disaster culminating in the Black Hawk Down incident, in which the stripped cadaver of an American helicopter crewman was dragged through the streets of the capital.