Papers prove US knew of genocide in Rwanda
By Rory Carroll
April 1, 2004

US president Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being
engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to
justify its inaction, classified documents made available for the
first time reveal.

Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of
the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the
president had already decided not to intervene.

Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act
show the cabinet and almost certainly the president knew of a planned
"final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached
its peak.

It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder about
800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed
reports were reaching Washington policymakers.

The documents undermine claims by Mr Clinton and his officials that
they did not fully appreciate the scale and speed of the killings.

"It's powerful proof that they knew," said Alison des Forges, a Human
Rights Watch researcher and authority on the genocide.

The National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental
research institute based in Washington, went to court to obtain the
material.

It discovered that a secret CIA briefing circulated to Mr Clinton, his
vice-president, Al Gore, and hundreds of officials included almost
daily reports on Rwanda. One, dated April 23, 1994, said rebels would
continue fighting to "stop the genocide, which . . . is spreading
south".

Three days later the secretary of state, Warren Christopher, and other
officials were told of "genocide and partition" and of declarations of
a "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis".

However, the administration did not publicly use the word genocide
until May 25 and even then diluted its impact by saying "acts of
genocide".

Ms des Forges said: "They feared this word would generate public
opinion which would demand some sort of action and they didn't want to
act."

The administration did not want to repeat the fiasco of intervention
in Somalia, where US troops became sucked into fighting. It also felt
the US had no interests in Rwanda, a small central African country
with no minerals or strategic value.

Many analysts and historians fault Washington and other Western
countries not just for failing to support the token force of
overwhelmed United Nations peacekeepers but also for failing to speak
out more forcefully during the slaughter.

Mr Clinton has apologised for those failures but the declassified
documents undermine his defence of ignorance.

On a visit to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in 1998 Mr Clinton
apologised for not acting quickly enough or immediately calling the
crimes genocide.