Declassified Untold Stories of American Spies_7of8_Hunting War Criminals
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00:00The following footage is from our vault of classics, taken ten years ago.
00:05Some characters and events are fictitious.
00:08This was the same kind of genocide we had seen in World War II.
00:34What could motivate that kind of hatred?
00:38That was the question that seized Western leaders.
00:43We had to show the world that we were not going to allow those responsible to get away
00:47with killing innocent people.
00:49This is a story about how the United States captured one of the most notorious war criminals
00:55the world's ever seen.
00:58Because there cannot be peace without justice.
01:04As a former FBI agent and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, I had oversight
01:09of all 16 of our nation's intelligence agencies.
01:12My name is Mike Rogers.
01:16I had access to classified information gathered by our operatives.
01:20People who risked everything for the United States and our families.
01:24You don't know their faces or their names.
01:27You don't know the real stories from the people who lived the fear and the pressure until
01:32now.
01:39Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has been removed from power.
01:43When the Soviet Union fell, it was the end of the Cold War.
01:46And nations in Eastern Europe were released from the constraints of working with the Soviet
01:51Union.
01:52We saw countries establish their own independence, became separate nations.
01:58And that wave impacted on Yugoslavia, which was a patchwork nation to begin with.
02:04And so political and religious leaders decided, we're going to take back territory which was
02:11ours thousands of years ago.
02:12And we're going to redefine these lines between Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia.
02:19But what happens in a lot of these redistricting aspects is everyone starts seeing the lines
02:24drawn differently.
02:26You had the Bosniaks, which were Muslims, you had the Serbs, which were Orthodox.
02:33And so years and years of cultural divides and pent up anger were now unleashing.
02:41And Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb dictator, had talked about Serb ethnic pride for years,
02:48which deepened the divisions.
02:55There was a concern that because the Muslims were the majority in Bosnia, there would be
03:06a Muslim nation in the middle of what was formerly Yugoslavia.
03:11And the Serbs did not want that to happen.
03:14The Bosnian government is claiming that a majority has voted for independence.
03:19When Bosnia declared its independence in 1992, Serb forces formed up to fight against
03:25the Bosnian Muslims.
03:27And the Bosnian Muslims, they weren't trained, they weren't equipped.
03:31It was the Serbs who had the weapons and the Serbs who struck.
03:35The United States did not get involved because this is a civil war, it's happening in Bosnia.
03:42At the time, the United States felt that the Europeans ought to play a role.
03:47Why does the United States have to deal with this?
03:51The brains and commander on the ground was General Milotic, who was the leader of the
03:56Serb forces.
03:57Milotic was known as a hard-fisted commander.
04:02His number two was General Krstic.
04:05General Krstic was the commander of the Drina Corps.
04:08The Drina Corps is a corps of Serbian forces.
04:12It's 10,000 to 15,000 people with weapon systems and artillery and tanks.
04:18So Krstic had command over a very large organization that could do a lot of damage.
04:25Krstic and his men and General Milotic, their goal here was the annihilation of the Muslims
04:36inside of Bosnia to make it a Serb state.
04:43This was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple.
05:01They basically took over communities.
05:03They imprisoned the men, starved prisoners in the prisoners of war camp, and raped the
05:09women.
05:13The Muslims out in the farmlands didn't have anyone to protect them, so the Serbians would
05:18just drive down the villages, round them all up, shoot them, and push them in a ditch.
05:28In one camp, they practiced a game every night, and the idea was to call the Bosnian Muslim
05:33prisoners out and then tell them to turn their back, and then the Serb guard would see if
05:38he could chop them in half with an axe.
05:42They were completely dehumanized by another human being.
05:45You go, how does this happen?
05:49The fighting in Bosnia was severe on a number of fronts today.
05:51The United Nations and NATO are watching for now.
05:55People here are beginning to wonder whether anybody out there really cares anymore.
06:00In the Balkans, early on, we saw this incredible catastrophe that was taking place, but the
06:05United States was trying to figure out how they should define their role as the single
06:09superpower.
06:11In the early days of the Clinton administration, we were still in the process of, what is the
06:15national strategy?
06:17Because we won the Cold War, but we lost our adversary, and when we lost our adversary,
06:23we lost our strategy.
06:26And so we were rudderless.
06:28We had the forces, but what were we supposed to do with those forces?
06:33Am I supposed to get involved in every one of these flare-ups?
06:36The determination back in the early 90s was, that's not our issue.
06:41The United States is not the world's policeman.
06:44We cannot interpose our forces to stop every armed conflict in the world.
06:50The United States sat back and went, it's a human tragedy, but I have no existential
06:56threat that's facing me if I don't solve this problem.
07:00By 1995, there'd been three or four years of intensifying slaughter that was taking
07:12place in the Balkans.
07:15And so the designation of safe zones had been created by the United Nations for the purpose
07:22of trying to take non-combatants, family members, who might have been targets for ethnic cleansing
07:29and to move into an area where they could feel safe.
07:33One of the safe zones was Srebrenica.
07:36It was an isolated enclave east of Sarajevo.
07:40Srebrenica became a location where Bosnian Muslims could feel protected.
07:46So there was a motivation to go there, to be with each other.
07:49Several hundred are arriving each day.
07:51They arrive tired and hungry, desperate not only for food, but for shelter as well.
07:56It was a small village.
07:57It then grew to about 60,000, and the United Nations was there to enforce the safe zone.
08:04But they were not equipped, they didn't have the capabilities to do that, because the United
08:08Nations had no charter to engage militarily.
08:14So in the summer of 1995, the Serbs decided they would further clamp down and try to win
08:19this militarily by going after these safe zones.
08:23The Serbs took clear advantage of that increased population in Srebrenica, and the Serbs just
08:29took over.
08:30They told the UN peacekeepers, you're hopelessly outnumbered, give up.
08:39And so the UN peacekeepers, who weren't really equipped to fight a war, said, okay, I mean,
08:44I guess we're giving up.
08:48They separated women and children and moved them aside, and they went about a systematic
08:53slaughter of the males.
08:56And Milotic put Krstic in charge of the cleansing of Srebrenica.
09:03And Krstic was up for the task.
09:07Krstic directed subordinate commanders, kill them, kill them all.
09:24Krstic and his men used basic ways of committing these murders, shooting them, clubbing them,
09:30knifing them.
09:31You've got these military men that are slaughtering, they're cleansing a population of noncombatants.
09:38These are family members, they're not fighting.
09:49Over the course of several days, thousands of individuals had been slaughtered and shoved
09:55into mass graves, as the world watched and as the United Nations stood by.
10:03This was mass genocide that we have not seen since World War II.
10:12What could motivate that kind of hatred?
10:16That was the question that seized Western leaders.
10:21Srebrenica really became the turning point.
10:24Suddenly the world was inexorably focused in on the tragedy of the Balkans.
10:30When somebody like Krstic is issuing an order that says, kill them, kill them all, not a
10:36single one must be left alive, society has a responsibility to make sure that that person
10:42pays a price.
10:46The Bosnian War had been horrible for years, but the massacre that occurred in Srebrenica
10:59was a turning point.
11:03Suddenly the world paid attention.
11:05The men that were killed were unarmed, not military, mostly farmers, mostly Muslim, who
11:14were killed systematically by General Krstic and his men of the Druina Corps.
11:21Milotic and Krstic applied the same standard that Hitler did in World War II.
11:28And we could not just stand by and allow them to get away with it.
11:32With Srebrenica, it was so horrendous that the United States went to the NATO allies
11:37and says, we can't allow this anymore.
11:39This was the Clinton administration saying, we've been in office two and a half years,
11:43it's horrible, it's continuing, no more.
11:47President Clinton made the decision, I am not going to be president of the United States
11:51and stand by and allow that to happen.
11:55And it was at that point, as chief of staff, where I realized, if the United States doesn't
12:00lead this effort, it's not going to happen.
12:05It was suspected that some of these people, like Krstic, would be indicted, because they'd
12:10done criminal things.
12:12But President Clinton understood that before we could bring them to justice, what you really
12:16needed to do was get a peace plan and stop the killing.
12:20So they put together a seven-point peace plan that said, there'll be a 49-51 division of
12:25territory, the U.S. will contribute 25,000 troops, NATO, not the U.N., will head the
12:30occupation force.
12:33And the NATO decision was, if the Serbs strike again, we're going to bomb the Serbs.
12:39And then Richard Holbrook, who was an ambassador working out of the State Department, had to
12:43actually go and sit down with all of those involved to try to make sure that they would
12:49be willing to do this, and it wasn't easy.
12:52And then you've got Wes Clark working with Holbrook to make sure that we can get these
12:56individuals to come to the table.
12:59Meanwhile, the Serbs had taken the occasion of a market day in Sarajevo to fire a mortar
13:05shell in and kill 32 people.
13:10And so this was the trigger point that NATO needed to start the bombing.
13:16And so while we're conducting combat operations, we're now sitting down with the enemy leadership
13:21trying to determine what the end state is going to look like.
13:27Ambassador Holbrook and I and the delegation went to see President Slobodan Milosevic,
13:31the Serb president.
13:33As the European Union, he says, General Clark, you must stop this bombing.
13:41This is very bad for peace.
13:42I said, well, President Milosevic, I think it's good for peace, because this is what's
13:48going to happen when we don't have peace.
13:51It's why we need to move forward with these negotiations.
13:55Because otherwise there's no incentive for people to negotiate peace if they're not afraid
13:59that something bad may happen.
14:02And that's why, ultimately, it brought them to the table.
14:05We got the Serbs to pull back the heavy weapons.
14:08And then NATO stopped the bombing.
14:10And then we continued the negotiations on the peace plan.
14:14We would talk to the Bosnian president.
14:16We'd go to the Serbs and back and forth around in the circle.
14:20All the real issues are finally being negotiated for the first time in 16 months.
14:27And then later, we met at Dayton in November of 1995.
14:32Encouraged by American mediators, these, the bitterest of enemies, then shook hands, hoping
14:37to bury their differences as they have their dead.
14:41And after three weeks of negotiations, we signed the Dayton Accords.
14:46And it was formalized in Paris in December of 1995.
14:51And I was promoted to my fourth star and went to the U.S. Southern Command in Panama.
14:57And after a year, I became the NATO Supreme Allied Commander.
15:02I am firmly of the opinion the reason that the Dayton Accords worked is because everybody
15:08had already done enough killing.
15:10There was so much slaughter that took place, everybody got tired.
15:15And I said, OK, we'll sign up for something.
15:16I'm kind of worn out, man.
15:20So after the Dayton Accords are signed, NATO decides to put in what we call the Implementation
15:25Force, or I-4, which was a contingent of several countries, one of them being the United States.
15:33Our job with NATO was to make sure that the peace accords were kept in check, because
15:38the frustration and the friction between the factions was still there.
15:44There was a tremendous sense of injustice on the part of the Bosnian Muslims.
15:50They'd been forced from their homes, their property had been confiscated, 150, maybe
15:54200,000 people had been murdered, 8,000 men in Srebrenica.
16:02There were aggrieved families, and here we were forcing them to make an accommodation
16:10with the murderers.
16:11I mean, I would be in the market one day listening to a Bosnian woman complain about the man
16:19across the street because he had raped her three daughters.
16:24And he's now selling vegetables at another stand, and she wants to know why we don't
16:29do anything about it.
16:33Bear in mind what happened.
16:34The Dayton Accords stopped the warring elements.
16:38It did not include people who were war criminals to take off your uniform, give yourself up,
16:45you need to be arrested.
16:46None of that took place.
16:48You had a guy like General Krstic who committed atrocities, but after the Dayton Peace Accords,
16:54he got the slay clean, and now he's a credible commanding general, and he'd committed genocide.
17:02So the Muslims kept asking themselves, where is the justice?
17:06And what we recognized, and what they were insistent on, was you couldn't have peace
17:12without justice.
17:15And so the justice meant identifying the perpetrators of the war crimes so they could be turned
17:20over to the criminal tribunal and the hate.
17:23It's the location of a lot of international justice agencies associated with the United
17:28Nations.
17:29And so the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, had been
17:34formed at The Hague in the Netherlands.
17:37Their job was to decide who was going to be indicted for the war crimes that were committed
17:42during the Bosnian War.
17:43These war criminals, like Krstic, who was put in charge of the cleansing of Srebrenica,
17:50needed to be captured, needed to go to The Hague, and needed to be brought to justice.
18:03The ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, had been formed
18:08at The Hague by the United Nations to decide who was going to be indicted for the war crimes
18:14that were committed during the Bosnian War.
18:16The Hague is the international court that reviews cases that are not specific to one
18:23country.
18:24The concern being a local court might allow this criminality to be accepted.
18:31The International Criminal Tribunal was set up with the best concepts of Western law because
18:37to produce an indictment, it had to collect evidence.
18:40It had to prove the existence of a crime, and the UN investigators had to go find witnesses.
18:48At the beginning of 1996, the indictments began to come out, the U.S. began to hear
18:53about it, but the decision was, don't get involved, let the UN deal with it.
18:59We're here to enforce the Dayton Peace Accords, nothing more.
19:03And so these persons who were indicted for war crimes were betting that the international
19:07community would never have the skill to capture them.
19:11And for the first year and a half, they were lulled into that because, in fact, the international
19:16community didn't have the skill.
19:21But when Prime Minister Tony Blair was elected, he went to President Clinton and said, I just
19:25don't think we can live with this peace agreement without justice.
19:29At that point, the president basically made the decision, we're going to do everything
19:34possible to go after those targets.
19:37The unit of choice for the United States to go after these very specific individuals
19:42was Joint Special Operations Command.
19:44The National Command Authority decided that the unit would be the best organization to
19:49execute these manhunt operations for NATO.
19:52Why?
19:53Number one, we're the highest trained Tier 1 force in the U.S.
19:56Two, we know how to blend into civilian places, so we can conduct tactical level reconnaissance
20:02surveillance.
20:03And three, this mission was a capture mission, not a kill mission.
20:09There's not many units that when you go out, your number one goal is just to capture.
20:14And so our ability to execute a complex operation without firing a bullet was critical.
20:20You wanted to get in and out quickly without any casualties or any conflict.
20:24Because you want to try to avoid to reignite these hatreds that, let's be frank, exist
20:30anyway.
20:31You don't want this thing spinning out of control.
20:34And there was already political opposition in the United States to this mission.
20:38There were many in the Congress who were asking, what are we doing over there?
20:41How many soldiers are going to lose in this mission to capture these people?
20:46And so we promised the Congress we'd be successful.
20:49And we knew we'd be held to account.
20:52So what's critical for the unit is we're able to get national level intelligence, which
20:57comes from DIA, NSA, CIA, that gives us a start point on all these so-called war criminals.
21:05We call them persons indicted for war crimes, abbreviated PIFWC, which of course the troops
21:13immediately begin to say PIFWC.
21:15They were PIFWC.
21:18And so the number one CIA guy in Bosnia was routinely digging up great intelligence, running
21:25sources, very specifically against certain PIFWCs.
21:29And so the CIA, in concert with forces on the ground, would then build the intelligence picture.
21:36My role was as a task force commander to command the reconnaissance and surveillance forces
21:43that looked for and identified these war criminals.
21:48Our job was to blend in with the environment, and we lived out in the communities and start
21:54setting up a pattern of life on all these war criminals.
21:59So when you establish a pattern of life, it's just what it sounds like.
22:02Where does this person start their day?
22:04Do they go to work?
22:05What happens at the end of the day?
22:06Where do they go?
22:07Do they go to a home?
22:08Do they go to a bar?
22:09Do they have friends, family?
22:11And what we're doing on the unit is developing a plan of how do we take that lifestyle to
22:16help us figure out where can we conduct a capture mission when we are ready to execute
22:21the operation.
22:23Go.
22:24All of these pieces were absolutely essential to rendering justice.
22:30Troops nabbed the man who called himself the Serb Adolf here after spotting him on the
22:34streets.
22:35The operation, the first to be led by American troops, went off without a hitch.
22:41The first person indicted for war crimes that the United States captured was in early 1998.
22:47Jelisic is charged with commanding a prison camp during the war and is accused of dozens
22:52of murders.
22:53He was not at the same level as Kristic or Milotic, but that began the process of how
22:59these war criminals would be indicted and how those special operations teams would go
23:04about precisely grabbing one of those people and getting them back into the Hague for justice.
23:11Guilty of murdering Hasan Yasharovic.
23:15Guilty of murdering the brothers Huso and Smilo Zahirovic.
23:20Guilty of murdering Stipo Kravicevic.
23:23The thing that was frustrating at the outset is the United States, British, and other forces
23:28captured minor persons.
23:31And then people would say, what's the matter with NATO that you can only get the little
23:34fish, the small fry?
23:36What about the big ones that were behind all this?
23:40And so when Kristic's indictment was brought down to the stabilization forces the end of
23:45October 1998, there was a little bit of a high five moment.
23:49We wanted to get Kristic for several reasons, primarily.
23:53He was directly involved in this murderous rampage that had taken place in Srebrenica.
24:01And so everybody was very enthusiastic about opening the door to go get this guy.
24:06If we wanted to see justice done, the criticality of this mission was off the charts.
24:12We had to capture Kristic.
24:21When the indictment came down for Kristic at the end of October 1998, we had already
24:27that year captured a handful of war criminals.
24:30But this was the most senior and frankly at the time we knew the most significant.
24:36If we wanted to see justice done, the capture of Kristic was critical.
24:42He was associated with Srebrenica.
24:44He was the first one wanted for genocide.
24:47He was the big target, the big symbol.
24:50It was the proof that the International Criminal Tribunal could go after the most significant
24:55war crime.
24:56When you understood exactly what he had done, the numbers that had been slaughtered under
25:01his command, you go, really?
25:05He's horrible.
25:07The guy's a monster.
25:10We knew it would have a big political impact if we could take him.
25:13But the most important thing was not to make mistakes.
25:16So do the operation, do it successfully, do it quietly.
25:21Get in, get out.
25:22There couldn't be any shots fired.
25:25There couldn't be any reaction force from the Serbs that got involved in this thing.
25:29Because one thing we didn't want to do is reignite the war on the Balkan Peninsula.
25:35And so it had to be a secret operation capture mission.
25:39And we had a President of the United States say, we are going to bring our full resources
25:45to bear to make sure that this individual is brought to trial.
25:50And so the mission was defined.
25:53You need to capture Kristic.
25:55How it was going to take place was up to the operators.
25:59We got the mission.
26:00It was like, you flip the switch, here we go.
26:03Everyone's, we get focused, we don't sleep, we study, we research.
26:08It's like doing brain surgery.
26:10You start refining the intelligence picture.
26:13We've got on the shelf what we know about Kristic and then we start adding intelligence
26:17to it to make it current.
26:18That's in a very short amount of time.
26:21At that same time, another assault force from our unit, we called the Aztec force, which
26:28is at Fort Bragg, and that's the force that's on a three-hour window to deploy anywhere
26:33in the world was deployed to execute the capture mission because we did not want to burn our
26:40operators who were living in Bosnia.
26:43And while they are flying, they have a real-time operation center in the aircraft that we're
26:48feeding them information, so we're doing this immediate planning.
26:54Once the force got on the ground, then we pick a place called the X.
26:58Where do we get the X to capture Kristic?
27:02Kristic was a good example of having a lot of people around him to protect him.
27:07And if he did not move into an area where we had both our forces and capabilities to
27:13be able to go after him, this wasn't going to happen.
27:16We knew Kristic would move between Serbia and the Republic of Srpska, which was territory
27:22inside the country of Bosnia that was given to the Serbs in the Dayton Accords.
27:29Within the Republic of Srpska, we knew that Kristic, as a matter of routine, would go
27:32from one location to another location during the day.
27:36He was in a vehicle and he had a driver.
27:39Just those two guys, single vehicle, not a convoy, no protection.
27:43So we knew that we would need special operations forces to stop a vehicle probably going 75
27:49miles an hour, not kill everybody inside, capture Kristic, stick him in a helicopter
27:54and take him back to The Hague.
27:57These special operators are incredibly gifted, creative folks who understood the mission
28:03set, had been given a task, and determined how that vehicle was going to slow down in
28:08a very short distance.
28:10How did they do that?
28:11Well, I can't tell you how they did that.
28:13I'm just not at liberty to talk about it.
28:17Special operators were going to now have this incredible mechanism to execute the capture.
28:23But before the mission could be executed, you've got to figure out, what are your no-go
28:27criteria?
28:28When would you not do this mission?
28:30When would you let it go by rather than risk compromise and failure?
28:34And so once I asked all the tough, dirty questions I could ask, I approved the mission, had confidence
28:41in the special forces operators to be able to execute it.
28:45Once the decision's been made to execute the mission, the capture force left their
28:49containment area on December 2nd, 1998.
28:53They moved into what we call the VI, the Vehicle Interdiction Zone, and set up in the ditch
28:59hiding in the woods by the side of the road.
29:01How many men were on the capture force?
29:03I'd rather not discuss that.
29:05At the same time, our CIA counterparts and the reconnaissance surveillance teams were
29:12following General Krstic from Serbia into the Republic of Srpska.
29:17Their job was to establish positive identification, or PID, and then to follow Krstic to make
29:23sure that he got onto the correct road into our capture zone.
29:28We had to be able to ensure that his movement met that routine that had been established.
29:34And the special operators did all that.
29:37They ensured he was channelized to that road, that he didn't have options to get off.
29:42Along the road, we set up construction stops and turned over pipes so he couldn't turn
29:47off and not come into the Vehicle Interdiction Zone.
29:50And he just bombed right through that, didn't blink an eye.
29:54But there's some things you just simply can't control.
29:57We had several abort criteria that, one, come from us, and two, from higher command up at
30:04NATO.
30:05One of the things NATO did not want is anyone in the Vehicle Interdiction Zone there to
30:10see the operation.
30:11Unfortunately, there was abort criteria that happened while we were waiting for Krstic
30:17to enter.
30:20Road workers stopped in our zone and started picking up litter along the road, right above
30:26where part of our capture force was laying down in a ditch, camouflaged, hiding.
30:33At that same time, a guy pulled up with a small barbecue, and he starts barbecuing meat
30:38for the workers to come over and have lunch.
30:40And the barbecue guy was even closer to the capture force, literally almost right on top
30:46of them.
30:48But these are measured guys who know exactly what they're trying to achieve, and are not
30:53bashful about saying go, nor are they bashful about saying no-go.
30:59Krstic, at that time, was about 30 to 45 minutes away, and we were waiting to see if the barbecue
31:07guy and the workers would clear out.
31:09But I was starting to think we might have to abort this mission.
31:18Krstic and his driver are coming closer and closer to the Vehicle Interdiction Zone.
31:22We call it the X, and our surveillance team is following him.
31:27He's moving with complete confidence that he's going to make it from where he's going
31:31to where he needs to be, because in his mind, he's immune to these kinds of charges.
31:36He's still a senior leader, and so he's not concerned that somebody's there to capture him.
31:43At the same time, the capture force is in place.
31:45They're in a ditch, they're hidden in the woods, they're laying in the mud, waiting
31:50for Krstic to come into our capture zone.
31:54But these abort criteria have been coming up.
31:57We have folks that are working right in the middle of our zone, and a guy barbecuing food
32:03for the workers.
32:04So our guys are holding their breath, they're staying low, so we don't get compromised.
32:09There was nothing but a very, very detailed focus and a real effort on everyone's part
32:15to make sure we don't screw this thing up, because you want to get this guy and you want
32:19to bring this guy to justice.
32:21What you don't want in these missions is failure, because you're dealing with NATO credibility
32:26and the credibility of the U.S. forces.
32:28And so, up the chain of command, everyone's wondering, do we abort, not abort?
32:32And the operators on the ground are making that decision.
32:35Hold fast, they've got it, let's continue to assess the situation.
32:39So as a commander, I'm saying, he's 25 minutes out, he's 20 minutes out.
32:44So we have to make a decision.
32:46What are we going to do?
32:48And lucky for us, because there's luck involved in these operations, all those criteria moved
32:54out of the zone as Khristik came into what we call the limit of advance, and he crossed
32:59and the zone was clear.
33:01There's a final confirmation that says, Khristik's in that vehicle, there it goes, get ready.
33:07And that ambush site is just down the road, maybe 30 seconds away.
33:12Khristik's vehicle is moving at a high rate of speed.
33:15As it makes the turn into the zone, the car hits the trigger line, which is our key to
33:20trigger the capture devices to stop the car.
33:23And we had a special kit that we had devised to slow the vehicle down without snapping
33:29everybody's neck in the vehicle.
33:31What was it?
33:32I really can't talk about it.
33:34It's still classified, but it was a tool that slows down a vehicle so it doesn't crash.
33:41So his vehicle hits the device, it literally comes from high rate of speed to zero, just
33:48like that.
33:49It's phenomenal.
33:50It's phenomenal.
33:51It's phenomenal.
33:52The operators come out of their hiding places, we collapse on the car as quickly as we can.
33:57We break open the window, cut the seatbelt, grab Khristik right out of the car.
34:02The driver defecated himself.
34:05They don't even know what's happening.
34:06That's what we call violence of action.
34:09Boom.
34:10The helicopter now flies in on command.
34:13I mean, just think how precise that is.
34:15As we started to move Khristik to the helicopter, he had a prosthetic leg from when we stepped
34:20on a landmine and that prosthetic leg fell off and one of the operators had to pick it
34:24up as we now carried him up to the helicopter to evacuate.
34:28The capture of Khristik was very, very short.
34:30Within 30 seconds, he's in a helicopter heading off to a classified airfield.
34:36And he's handed over to what we call a competent authority from The Hague.
34:41They identified him, confirmed it was him before he got on a plane to fly to the World
34:45Court in the Netherlands.
34:51When it was successful, I was extremely happy.
34:54It was quiet, seamless, almost like magic.
34:59Suddenly, he's taken, he's shown as in detention.
35:04And they say, how did they do that?
35:08We talked to him 15 minutes before this.
35:11He was fine.
35:12How did NATO get him?
35:14The plane carrying General Radislav Khristik arrived in the Southern Netherlands on Thursday.
35:20Khristik is believed to have led soldiers in massacring thousands of Muslims.
35:25This capture of Khristik was the biggest deal so far because he was the highest ranking
35:31individual who had been personally indicted for genocide.
35:35And so as a human, you feel good about it.
35:37His crimes are unspeakable.
35:41Once it was announced that Khristik had been captured, the gloves were off and other big
35:45fish like General Mladic knew that they were being hunted.
35:49The capture of Khristik sent a very powerful message to all of his buddies who were still
35:54out there at the time.
35:55We're coming after you, you're next.
36:03We captured Khristik on the 2nd of December of 1998.
36:08But when we took Khristik down, others responsible for the massacre inside Bosnia who thought
36:15they could be indicted knew that they were being hunted.
36:17That made a lot of these guys change their patterns of life.
36:21All of these guys are cowards.
36:23And when suddenly they realize that the gig is up and the world is coming after you by
36:29name based on these crimes that you authorized and participated in, these folks start to
36:36scatter.
36:37And that made these manhunting operations to capture the indebted war criminals much
36:42more complicated.
36:44And as we worked to find these war criminals, Khristik was brought to trial.
36:50General Khristik was tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity and genocide.
36:54I plead not guilty.
36:57The International Tribunal went through a very prolonged trial.
37:01There were literally hundreds of witnesses who said that they saw Khristik issue orders,
37:06that they saw what he did.
37:18In his mind, everything he had done was justified.
37:22He was following orders.
37:25But ultimately, Khristik was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity in
37:30August of 2001.
37:33And he was sentenced to 46 years behind bars.
37:36It's essentially a life sentence.
37:39It's the longest sentence in the tribunal's history.
37:42It's a significant sentence, particularly when measured against General Khristik's age,
37:45which is in his 50s.
37:48By the time that Khristik was found guilty, we had captured a whole bunch of war criminals,
37:54which included Slobodan Milosevic.
37:58Slobodan Milosevic, the Serb dictator and mastermind of it all, finally was detained
38:04and brought on charges of genocide.
38:06I consider this tribunal a false tribunal and indictments false indictments.
38:13But while Milosevic was on trial, he died.
38:17I deeply regret the death of Slobodan Milosevic.
38:23It deprived the victims of the justice they need and deserve.
38:30The brains and commander on the ground, General Mladic, remained in hiding for 14 years.
38:35But finally, he was detained and brought to the Hague for trial.
38:40The chamber sentences Mr. Ratko Mladic to life imprisonment.
38:49Mladic was sentenced in November of 2017.
38:56Justice is a never-ending challenge.
38:59Ultimately, there were 161 persons indicted for war crimes.
39:10Of the 161 persons indicted by the tribunal, today, none remain at large.
39:24100,000 men, women, and children were killed during the war.
39:29That number is in dispute.
39:31Many believe it was much more.
39:33In retrospect, when you look at it, it's clear.
39:35We should have gone in much sooner.
39:37We should have had much more courage.
39:39We should have taken steps to bring justice much sooner, much more effectively than we did.
39:46It is really important to pay attention to the genocide committed by people like Mladic and Krstic
39:53because it really provides a lesson in history that we've got to be smart enough
39:59not to repeat the mistakes of the past, but to learn from them
40:04so that we really do make the world better for our children.
40:08Everybody has an individual definition of justice.
40:11The family members that lost their husbands or their dads or their mothers were raped.
40:16I'm not sure how they would feel.
40:18But from the soldiers' perspective, grabbing those war criminals
40:22and getting them to the Hague for justice, it's the best we could do.
40:26In 1997, before the conclusion of the U.S. mission, a U.S. senator comes to visit me in Bosnia.
40:34And she goes down and meets the women whose husbands were massacred at Srebrenica.
40:39And she says, now, you know, this is a terrible thing.
40:41It was a great tragedy, the United States.
40:43You have our deepest sympathies.
40:45But, you know, bad things happen.
40:51Bad things happen.
40:52And you have to move forward with your lives, and we're here to help you do that.
40:57And a woman says, Senator, maybe you don't understand, she said,
41:03but in 1992, I had a husband, two sons, a house, a vacation home, a car, and a profession.
41:14She said, now I have no profession, no car, no vacation home, no house, no sons, and no husband.
41:24And she said, I will not forget.
41:37You can't have peace without justice.
41:44For more information, visit www.fema.gov
42:14www.fema.gov