"Ten years ago, in the small East African country of Rwanda, 800,000 people were slaughtered by their own government." "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY, Military Ass't to Gen. Dallaire:" "This was ordinary men, women and children, and the only reason that they were killed was because they were Tutsi." "Virtually the entire world turned away and did almost nothing to stop the genocide." "MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, U.N. Ambassador:" "In retrospect, it all looks very clear." "But at the time, what was happening in Rwanda, the situation was unclear." "PHILIPPE GAILLARD, Red Cross:" "They cannot tell me that they didn't know." "Everybody knew what was happening." "Tonight on FRONTLINE, the full story of perhaps the darkest and most brutal tragedy of our time." "It is a story told by the victims and by the killers," "by those who turned away and by those who stayed and tried desperately to save as many people as they could." "CARL WILKENS, Aid Worker, Adventist Church:" "By the time the genocide was over," "I was so angry at America," "America the beautiful, America the brave." "They are all still haunted by what happened" "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE, U.N. Force Commander, Rwanda:" "I was the commander, and hundreds of thousands of people died." "I can't find any solace in statements like, "I did my best."" "...still haunted by the Ghosts of Rwanda." "GHOSTS OF RWANDA" "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "Rwanda will never, ever leave me." "It's in the pores of my body." "My soul is in those hills." "My spirit is with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered and killed that I know of." "And lots of those eyes still haunt me, angry eyes or innocent eyes." "No laughing eyes." "But the worst eyes that haunt me are the eyes of those people who were totally bewildered." "They're looking at me, with my blue beret, and they're saying, "What in the hell happened?" ""How come I'm dying here?"" "Those eyes dominated, and they're absolutely right." "How come I failed?" "How come my mission failed?" "How come, as the commander, I did not convince," "I lost soldiers, and 800,000 people died?" "August 1993" "For General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, it was his first trip to Africa." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "You know, the first breath of air of Africa... oh, what a... what a phenomenal experience!" "It's... it felt like you were in another continent, that you were..." "you were... it was different." "Felt a little nervousness, of course, you know, of the first shaking hands with... with those leaders and starting up the mission." "For Dallaire, a Canadian general who had never seen action, this was the command of a lifetime, a U.N. peacekeeping mission" "in the heart of Africa." "His job seemed simple." "He would enforce a peace agreement between the Rwandan government in Kigali and a rebel army positioned behind a ceasefire line." "The rebels were mostly Tutsis, an ethnic minority that had been persecuted for decades." "Gen. PAUL KAGAME, Cmndr, Rwandan Patriotic Front:" "Some of us had been refugees since 1959." "And over the years, in the early '60s and '70s, there had been killings of Tutsis from different parts of Rwanda." "So we mainly focused on the very fact that there was a need for change in the country and that these stateless people, ourselves, who were everywhere in the neighboring countries and beyond, needed to come back home." "The rebel threat had heightened tensions between Tutsis and the ethnic majority, the Hutus." "The Hutus had ruled since independence from Belgium in the early '60s." "Under the U.N.-backed peace accord, the Hutus would be forced to share power with the Tutsi rebels." "But the peace process was already faltering, even as General Dallaire set up his command center in a rundown Kigali hotel." "With only 2,500 lightly-armed troops, he was ill-prepared to enforce a fragile peace in a country he did not understand." "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY, Military Ass't to Gen. Dallaire:" "We had very, very little information, knowledge of the background to Rwanda, its history, its culture, the... you know, what had taken place in the country since independence or even before independence, and especially even in the last couple of years." "So, we went in quite blind." "From the moment he arrived, someone was testing Dallaire's ability to keep the peace." "There were mysterious riots and assassinations." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "And-- and also, we were already getting all these stories about a third force, you know, of... squadrons of killers." "And we couldn't confirm anything." "We were just getting all that, you know, as rumors, innuendoes, and we couldn't cross-check the damn stuff because I was not allowed to have an intelligence capability." "So all that sort of... sort of came as a dark cloud." "Ultimately, I..." "I felt we could do it." "But that is a bravado, I think, also, from my part." "Nothing was going to stop me." "Bit of innocence in there, eh?" "January 1994" "Then, from inside the third force, an informant emerged." "The informant revealed that a secretive group of Hutu extremists was plotting to derail the peace agreement and exterminate their enemies." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "And he was within the higher structures of the MRND party, which was the hard-line party of the president." "He said that he... he simply wasn't going to continue to work in that atmosphere, that they were undermining the whole process and they were ultimately planning the evilest of deeds, of... of attacking not only Tutsis but all the moderate Hutu leaders also." "The informant was a trainer for the Interahamwe, a paramilitary youth movement." "He said they were planning to kill some of Dallaire's troops," "Belgian soldiers, the backbone of the peacekeeping force." "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY:" "Jean-Pierre, the informant, said they felt that if the Belgians were killed, that Belgium and the U.N. would pack up and leave." "So already, the situation was changing, that somebody didn't want us there and that they were going to target us to-- to encourage us to go." "In an urgent cable to the U.N. leadership, Dallaire repeated the informant's warnings that there was a plan to exterminate all Tutsis in Kigali, that Belgian peacekeepers would also be killed in the belief that Belgium would then withdraw all its troops." "Dallaire told New York he was going to raid the militia's arms caches." "He signed off in his native French, "Where there's a will, there's a way." "Let's go."" "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "I sent that, and then I went to bed and probably slept one of the best nights I had because I felt that, finally, we were going to... we were going to take a certain level of control that would permit us to do so much more." "The cable arrived in New York at the United Nations' peacekeeping department, then run by Kofi Annan." "KOFI ANNAN, Head of Peacekeeping, U.N:" "And the fax came in." "And General Dallaire had also been in touch on the phone with General Baril, and in fact, he has sent other messages where sometimes his question that," ""Somebody came and gave me this information." "I don't know how sincere it is, whether I'm being manipulated or not," because intelligence can also be used to manipulate you." "Annan was skeptical." "In his response, he ordered Dallaire, first, not to take any action, and second, to share the informant's secrets with the Rwandan government, which he knew had strong ties to the Hutu extremists." "KOFI ANNAN:" "Why did we go that route?" "Often, sharing-- shining light on these things and telling those planning it at a governmental level that, "The international community knows what is being planned, we are monitoring, we are going to deal with you harshly and we know what you are up to"" "sometimes it's a very good deterrent." "Annan told Dallaire he was not to raid the arms caches and he must avoid any action that might cause U.N. troops to use force." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "The big hammer at the end of the message that came to me within hours of my sending my information message was, "Stop, decease, and by the by, you're totally outside of your mandate."" "At that time, the whole philosophy was, "We don't want another Mogadishu, and so keep it tight."" "Mogadishu." "Three months earlier, when the Black Hawks were shot down in Somalia and 18 American soldiers died on a U.N. mission, it changed everything about Washington's commitment to peacekeeping, especially in Africa." "MICHAEL SHEEHAN, White House Liaison on Somalia:" "The Clinton administration was brought to its knees by the -- by the problem in Somalia." "A secretary of defense was fired, a presidency was dramatically weakened." "They were enormously criticized for this adventure in Somalia." "And now you had another situation unfolding in Rwanda." "And certainly, no one was clamoring for a re-intervention into the heart of Africa." "March 1994" "Despite the growing sense of danger, Kigali was teeming with thousands of Western expatriates diplomats, aid workers and their families." "The official line from the U.N. and all their embassies was that Rwanda was still safe." "CARL WILKENS :" "It was strange because, on the one hand, here's little groups of eight U.N. soldiers, fully decked out, you know, with all of their gear and their machine guns and everything, patrolling the city... of eight, you know?" "And we used to joke, you can't... you can't spit without hitting a U.N. car." "And so you got all this white vehicles, black "U.N." all over them, and... and occasionally, you would see some white tanks or something." "There was an incredible sense of security in that." "And yet we also knew things were going to blow." "Hutu extremists were now confident the U.N. would not stand in their way." "They imported thousands of machetes, prepared death lists and began targeting their political opponents." "MONIQUE MUJAWAMARIYA, Human Rights Activist:" "It became simply a nightmare for the Tutsis, for all of the members of the opposition parties, even if they were Hutu, and we lived through a series of political assassinations almost on a daily basis." "Every day, every day God gave us, we had three, four, five dead bodies, people that we picked up on the streets every day." "JOYCE LEADER, U.S. Embassy, Kigali:" "The people tried to tell us and tried to explain to us or help us understand, but we just-- maybe we just didn't get it." "It was just very hard to conceive of something so awful actually being meticulously planned and carried out." "April 6, 1994" "In central Kigali, a group of friends gathered for dinner at the home of a young American diplomat, Laura Lane." "LAURA LANE, U.S. Embassy, Kigali:" "We had a couple of friends over, and you know, I just... we just sat down to dinner, and all of a sudden, there was a huge explosion." "And I..." "I... didn't instantly, you know, come to me what that was because I wasn't used to hearing those kinds of sounds." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "And then at 8:30, the first phone call came in, saying that there... originally, the first phone call said that there had been a big explosion in Kanombe camp, which is just at the end of the runway of the airfield, the Kigali airfield," "saying that it looked like an ammunition dump had exploded." "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY:" "And it went from "There's been an explosion at the airport" to "We think it's the ammunition dump at Kanombe that's blown up"" "to "It's a plane that's crashed" to "It's the presidential plane that's crashed."" "Someone had fired a missile that shot down the Hutu president's airplane." "Even 10 years later, the responsibility for the attack remains a mystery." "Lt. Col. CHARLES VUCKOVIC, Defense Intelligence Agency:" "There are many theories as to who shot down the plane." "I don't know if anybody has the answer to that." "Was it Hutu extremists or was it Tutsi extremists?" "Was it done by the Tutsis as an excuse to begin the movement south by the RPF and take control of the country?" "Hard to say." "Or was it used by the Hutu extremists to begin the genocide that took place?" "I don't know the answer to that." "That night, U.N. commanders were summoned to a crisis meeting at Rwandan Army headquarters." "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY:" "We were heading through very darkened streets in Kigali, very quiet streets." "There was no one-- the streets were just empty." "It was like a ghost town." "They found a leading Hutu extremist, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, in control." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "Colonel Bagosora was the chef de cabinet of the minister of national defense and a hard-line person ...in fact, considered even more than hard-line." "He was chairing the meeting." "Bagosora had once vowed to launch an "apocalypse" against the Tutsis." "Dallaire insisted he step aside and hand power to the moderate acting prime minister Madame Agathe." "Dallaire knew she would resist the extremists' power grab and appeal for calm." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "Bagosora kept saying that she's of no use and she never was able to garner her cabinet anyways, and" "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY:" "An officer that was sitting next to me stunk a booze, started swearing in French underneath his breath about her and calling her various names and... so we were stalemated." "April 7, 2:00 AM" "Dallaire asked U.N. headquarters for guidance." "They responded by tightening his rules of engagement." "He was ordered not to intervene, and above all, to avoid armed conflict." "KOFI ANNAN:" "We were concerned, one, that Dallaire and his force didn't have the capacity and didn't -- to take on that sort of responsibility and that if they attempted to do it and any of the peacekeepers were killed," "we may see a repeat of Somalia and we may not even be able to offer any assistance." "LAURA LANE:" "You heard gunshots." "You heard screams." "You heard-- you heard just so much activity that you knew this was going to be, you know, an awful night." "And in ...in the darkness, you were just " " I remember feeling like, "I don't want" " I don't want the daylight to come because I don't want to see, knowing what I'm hearing."" "CARL WILKENS: [home video] Well, what's going on here, huh?" "We got all the kids in the hallway and the television." "This is April 7." "It's about-- it's about 6:00 o'clock in the morning, and we were woken up at about 5:15, 5:20, by a lot of gunfire and stuff." "Yeah, the killing was happening right there." "Our kids were listening in." "We-- while they're describing on the radio and I'm talking back to them and saying how people are being killed in their front yard, and I'm saying, "We're trying to get help." And we're just trying to figure out what we can do." "This whole drama's unfolding, and our kids are standing there, glued to this thing." "And all of a sudden, I go, "Whoa."" "I see, you know, one of them standing there and just transfixed." "And I say, "Theresa, take him away." That morning, Dallaire sent Belgian and Ghanaian peacekeepers to guard Madame Agathe, the moderate prime minister." "Then he went to find the extremist leadership." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "Agathe was getting all the protection she needed, at least, we expected to need." "I mean, we ended up by having 25 troops there." "With that sort of in hand, my job now, because I was moving around, is to go get ahold of Bagosora and say, "OK, what's going on now?" "What is the situation?"" "Roadblocks were coming up." "But as I got closer to the inner core of the city, the roadblocks became more serious, and ultimately, the roadblocks in that inner circle there was controlled by the presidential guard." "And so we made our way to the ministry of defense." "Nobody was there." "And so I said, "Well, maybe they're right back to where they were last night."" "So we just turned and went towards the center." "As Dallaire looked for the extremist leaders, the prime minister's house was surrounded by Rwandan troops." "Inside, U.N. peacekeepers sent to protect her were under orders not to use force." "The prime minister called her neighbor, American diplomat Joyce Leader." "JOYCE LEADER:" "About 8:30 in the morning, she called and asked if she could come and hide in my house." " The prime minister?" " The prime minister." "And... I didn't give it very much thought, and I said yes, but then when the Ghanaian peacekeeper who was guarding her... he must have put a ladder up on her side of the fence," "and he came up above the -- he raised his head above the fence, and there were shots fired, just then." "Rwandan troops stormed the prime minister's compound." "The peacekeepers radioed for instructions from Dallaire's Ghanaian deputy." "Gen. HENRY ANYIDOHO, Deputy U.N. Cmndr, Rwanda:" "We were in communication with them all along, and it was not even rational for them to try to oppose them." "The best they could do was to talk to them, to negotiate, to tell them, "Look, what you are about to do is wrong." "You cannot do it."" "At gunpoint, the U.N. troops surrendered their weapons to the Rwandans." "The Ghanaian peacekeepers were soon released, but the 10 Belgian troops were taken hostage and led away." "Gen. HENRY ANYIDOHO:" "Their radios became silent." "Then you suspected something had gone wrong because communication was utterly cut off." "Then you sense the danger." "Something must have happened." "JOYCE LEADER:" "About another half hour later, we actually heard a scream and a shot and realized that it was the prime minister who had been found and killed." "General Dallaire hadn't heard of the attack, but he'd learned the extremist leadership was meeting at army headquarters." "As he approached, Dallaire caught a glimpse of his soldiers inside the Army compound, lying in the dirt." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "And at the gate, as we went by, I saw two soldiers in the Belgian uniform lying on the ground about 50-odd meters inside... inside the camp." "And so your whole life is dependent on those nano-seconds of taking that right decisions because it's life and death." "I was already saying, "I can't get those guys out of there." "I just don't have the forces or the deployment capability." "I've got so many other troops that I don't know of and all the vulnerability of the rest." "I can't take these bastards on."" "To do anything for them and for the others, I had to negotiate." "Dallaire carried on through the next gate to confront the extremist leadership." "But he decided not to mention his troops, who he knew were being beaten 200 yards away." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "What I said was, "Get a grip of your units." "I'm staying."" "The informant, Jean-Pierre, had told us that they were trying to set up to wipe out a dozen or so or 10 Belgians in order to break the back of our mission because if the Belgians pulled out, I had no real substantive capability to sustain myself, and that the international community would pull us all out." "These guys knew about Mogadishu also." "And so what I was making clear to them was, is that I'm staying." "Dallaire later demanded to know what had happened to the Belgians, but he took no military action to rescue his troops." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "Finally, a phone call, after insistence, came in and said that they are all at the hospital, at the morgue." "And so I said, "Right." "Let's go."" "Morgue was a little shack, and a bit of an L-shaped small shack." "And it was a 24-watt bulb, at best." "And there in the corner of the L-shape was this pile of potato bags, just looked like a pile of potato... big, huge potato bags." "And as we got closer, we saw that they were bodies." "April 8" "In the wake of Somalia, the murder of more Western peacekeepers triggered an immediate response." "MIKE McCURRY, State Department Spokesman:" "Good afternoon, everybody." "I wanted to start with the situation in Rwanda." "The president called the secretary of state this morning to express the president's concern about the safety of Americans in Rwanda in light of the deteriorating situation there." "LAURA LANE :" "By that morning, we kind of had a sense that we were not going to be able to wait this out." "I took our wedding album." "We took our guns and put the dog at our feet and literally slumped down in the car and drove down the streets, like, just looking over the dashboard, you know, as we hear fire in the background, and made it to the embassy." "The Clinton administration ordered an immediate evacuation of all 257 U.S. citizens in Rwanda." "It was up to Laura Lane to get every American out alive." "LAURA LANE:" "We said, "We have to, you know, evacuate the American community out" because we couldn't risk, you know, their lives trying to wait this out because if this was a plan, it had a larger purpose, and that larger purpose would not be good where you'd want anyone in harm's way." "But Lane told Washington she wanted to stay and keep the embassy open as a safe haven for Rwandans." "LAURA LANE:" "I felt very, very strongly that if there is someone who is planning this kind of evil, they need to know that there is also another group, that we, the Americans, will stand right here and stand against them." "And I felt very, very strongly about that because otherwise, they'd think they could get away with it." "GEORGE MOOSE, Ass't Sec'y of State for Africa:" "Yeah, I do recall there-- there the notion that, yes, maybe we could stay behind and maybe we could do something." "And then you have to say, with what do you create a safe haven?" "If the Belgian troops could not defend and protect the prime minister from a ruthless attack, what were unarmed Americans bearing a flag going to do?" "LAURA LANE:" "Maybe hopelessly naive." "I mean, we are four people in an embassy, and a very small embassy community." "But I don't know," "I think one person can make a difference, and maybe if we just saved one life, that was one life worth saving." "Maybe we couldn't save everyone, but I would have rather stood there and said-- and stayed and said, "I am going to stay because it is worth that risk."" "So in the end, the decision was taken out of my hands." "All embassies in Kigali closed." "Aid workers and diplomats were ordered out of the country." "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY :" "We started going out, picking up our military observers, who were at various locations, picking up our U.N. staff, picking up diplomats, picking up people at risk." "And we started a whole series of what we call rescue missions to go pick people up, try to locate them." "Beardsley went to rescue Polish Catholic priests trapped with two U.N. observers in a Kigali church where Tutsis had sought refuge." "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY:" "The military observers and the priests could hear people screaming over the church,so they'd left their quarters and had come over to see what was going on." "They were grabbed and they were put up against the wall with rifle underneath their chin, and they were held there while the identity cards were-- were captured and were burned." "And then the militia came in and the gendarmes literally -- the police literally handed them over to the-- to the militia, who then proceeded through the rest of the evening to chop them apart with machetes." "Inside the church itself were about 150 people." "About 15 of them were still alive." "The rest had been attacked with machetes and had been killed." "And-- and the thing that stood out in my mind, up until that day, it almost bore resemblance of a coup, taking out the moderates." "But this was different." "This was... this was just ordinary men, women and children, and the only reason whatsoever that they were killed and targeted was because they were Tutsi." "Northern Rwanda" "Behind the ceasefire line, the Tutsi rebels of the Rwandan Patriotic Front were preparing to respond." "Gen. PAUL KAGAME :" "The information very clearly came in very fast, showing how targeted killings were being carried out and how these were spreading out not only in Kigali, but going beyond Kigali to other parts of the country." "And we knew that was the usual style." "The massacres had started, and we have to take action." "The rebels declared the peace process dead and attacked the extremist government." "General Kagame had gone through training at Fort Leavenworth." "The U.S. military maintained contact and understood the rebel leader's intentions." "Lt. Col. CHARLES VUCKOVIC :" "In retrospect, there was no chance, I think, that RPF was in any mood to negotiate right from the beginning." "INTERVIEWER:" "They wanted what?" "They wanted to control the country." "They wanted to take over control politically, militarily." "There was no way you were going to stop the RPF." "There was no way that they were in the mood to negotiate once this all started." "April 9" "Overnight, 1,000 French and Belgian paratroopers had arrived without warning, seizing Kigali airport." "These troops were not under U.N. command." "Their mission was solely to get the expatriates out." "Dozens of journalists had arrived with the new troops." "They traveled with Belgian soldiers to Kigali's psychiatric hospital, where the Western staff was trapped." "On the way in, they drove past the Interahamwe waiting outside." "Tutsis emerged from the hospital building, where they'd been hiding for three days." "They said they were surrounded by the militias, that some of them had already been killed." "When it was clear the soldiers weren't going to help, the refugees appealed to the journalists." "KATELIJNE HERMANS, Belgian Television:" "There was a whole group of people, but in the whole group, one woman started to speak and started to explain why they were afraid and what was happening to them." "And she started begging us to take her and the others with us." "She was speaking to me, a woman to a woman, saying, "I'm afraid." "Please help me!"" "And we were just listening to her, and we couldn't do anything." "At that moment, we thought we couldn't do anything, just listen and say "Yes."" "So we left." "For the white people, it's over, but we knew the hundreds that stayed." "And we heard the shooting at the moment we left." "So it was clear for me that hell starts for them." "All Western troops and U.N. peacekeepers were under orders not to evacuate ordinary Rwandans." "Maj. BRENT BEARDSLEY:" "What that meant was, anybody that was white-skinned got to get on an airplane and fly to safety, and anybody that was black-skinned got to stay in Rwanda and get killed." "And that's as simple as it came down to." "It still to this day leaves a very, very bad taste in my mouth that the United States of America could have 350 Marines sitting at Bujumbura Airport, that the French were able to get in 500 or so paratroopers, that the Belgians had over a 1,000 paratroopers." "You know, we basically had our intervention force already on the ground." "You know, what they later told us, is it was impossible to get on the ground." "We had it on the ground on the 10th of April, within three days of this thing starting and but it wasn't there to intervene." "It wasn't there to save Rwanda, it was there to save white people." "And that's what it came down to." "With the airport taking fire, the American embassy decided to evacuate its staff and expatriates overland in convoys, south to Burundi, where U.S. Marines were waiting." "JOYCE LEADER, U.S. Embassy, Kigali:" "And there were people standing on either side of the road, and it's my recollection that I saw some instruments, like machetes, in their hands." "And I remember thinking, "Well, they're just waiting for us to get out of here before they go on about their gruesome business."" "BONAVENTURE NIYIBIZI, U.S. Embassy Employee:" "I was working for the American embassy, basically." "I saw them leaving." "I saw the flags on the vehicles." "I knew all the vehicles." "I know all the people they belong to." "And so I said, "OK."" "I think it was sad, surprising to see that by the end of the day, you are a person who have-- who has to die, when other people are allowed to be alive." "This is a strange feeling." "Americans were allowed to be alive." "My neighbors were allowed to be alive." "They were walking on the street." "They were going to the market." "And we were here, feeling that we had to die anyway." "As she organized the last American convoy, Laura Lane made a final attempt to do what she thought was right." "LAURA LANE:" "We had-- we had a convoy of over 100 vehicles with over 600 people, only 9 Americans." "Greg and I were the last two." "The ambassador was at the front." "And yes, there were-- there were Rwandans in there." "There were Tutsis in there, and in some cases, there were Hutus." "And so if they made it to our checkpoints and we... you know, we could hide them, we did." "Some of them were... you know, we dubbed them Americans for the day, you know what I mean?" "We made them honorary Americans so that they could be in the convoy." "CARL WILKENS :" "If people in Rwanda ever needed help, now was the time." "And everybody's leaving." "Carl Wilkens had put his family on an American convoy, but he decided to stay behind with Rwandan colleagues and workers who'd sought refuge in his home." "CARL WILKENS:" "That Tutsi young lady and that Tutsi young man were faces right there to me representing the country, and I felt if I left, they were going to be killed." "And then... and then I recognized, you know, how is it..." "I've got a..." "I've got this blue American passport." "That means I can go." "But all of these people don't have a passport." "They can't go." "And... and while all of those things played in, the bottom line is it just seemed the right thing to do." "By the evening of April 10th, Carl Wilkens was the only American left in Rwanda." "WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State:" "As far as I know, everyone in Kigali who's wanted to leave has been able to leave, and they're probably successfully out by now, safely out by now." "The Clinton administration breathed a sigh of relief." "In Belgium, the country was in crisis." "With 10 of its soldiers dead, the government wanted to pull all its peacekeepers out of Rwanda, but it didn't want to be embarrassed by leaving alone." "The foreign minister called Secretary of State Warren Christopher." "WILLY CLAES, Belgian Foreign Minister:" "The reaction of the public opinion in Belgium was..." "was very strong." "And I may say there was unanimity in all, in order to ask to pull out the troops after the killing." "Warren Christopher told me that he understood perfectly why the Belgian government took that decision." "He confirmed that the preference of the Americans went to the withdrawal of the MINUAR." "GEORGE MOOSE :" "Quite right." "The Belgians wanted to have a cover of having others leave, as well." "And I think... and we sort of... we did." "We yielded to that request." "In retrospect, I wonder if that was the right thing to do." "Christopher instructed Madeleine Albright, America's ambassador at the U.N., to push for the withdrawal of the entire peacekeeping force." "MADELEINE ALBRIGHT:" "My instructions were to support full withdrawal." "And I listened to the discussion very carefully in the Security Council, and I could see that we-- our position was wrong, and especially in listening to the African delegate, Ambassador Gambari from Nigeria was very moving on this." "IBRAHIM GAMBARI, Nigerian U.N. Ambassador:" "And I had the full backing of my of my colleagues to argue, on the contrary, that we must forget about cutting and running, that it would be... it would be callous." "It would be contradictory to the spirit of the charter, which says the Security Council has a responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, everywhere in the world,including Africa." "MADELEINE ALBRIGHT:" "And I asked my deputy to take my seat while I left and went out into the hall, into these phone booths, and called Washington." "And they said, "Well, no, we're worrying about this, and we-- these are your instructions."" "And I..." "I actually screamed into the phone." "I said, "They're unacceptable." "I want them changed."" "Albright's call was to Richard Clarke, head of peacekeeping at the National Security Council." "Clarke declined to talk to FRONTLINE, but he did talk to journalist Samantha Power." "SAMANTHA POWER :" "And they end up in a screaming match." "The fight is not about whether to send U.S. troops to Rwanda." "That's not even contemplated." "The fight is simply about how to withdraw the U.N. peacekeepers and how many to withdraw and how many to leave in place and what the function of those peacekeepers should be who remain in place." "That's what the fight is about." "That's the extent of the dissent at the highest level of the U.S. government about this genocide." "That's it!" "That phone call." "With the United States demanding a withdrawal, the U.N. instructed General Dallaire to start closing his peacekeeping mission." "Dallaire turned to his deputy, General Henry Anyidoho, for advice." "GEN." "ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "And I remember sitting in front of his desk-- huge man sitting there, stoic." "And I said, "Henry, they want us out." "We've failed in the mission." "We've failed in attempting to convince." "We've failed the Rwandans." "We are going to run and cut the losses." "That's what they want us to do."" "Gen. HENRY ANYIDOHO :" "And I said, "No, we haven't failed." "And as commanders, we are going to sit here, work hard, and see to its solution." "So let's tell those people back in New York that we do not think that the mission should be closed." "Anyidoho assured Dallaire his Ghanaian peacekeepers would stay." "Gen. ROMEO DALLAIRE:" "And that was all I needed." "That meant that I would still have troops on the ground, which were good troops-- not well equipped, but good troops." "So I stood up and I said, "Henry, we're not going to run." "We're not going to abandon the mission." "And we will not be held in history of being accountable for the abandonment of the Rwandan people."" "It was just morally corrupt to do that." "And that's why I went back and told them to go to hell." "Nyarubuye, Eastern Rwanda" "As the U.N. debated whether to keep a peacekeeping force in Kigali, the extremist Hutu leadership implemented the next phase of its plan, to spread the killing across the nation by exploiting Rwanda's culture of obedience." "They told Hutus the Tutsi rebels were foreign invaders bent on turning them into slaves." "Their propaganda reminded Hutus that the Tutsis had ruled them for centuries, often treating them with disdain." "GITERA RWAMUHIZI, Hutu Farmer:" "Tutsis used to abuse Hutus." "For example, if a Tutsi chief wished to stand up from his chair, he would call up a Hutu, who would allow his foot to be pierced by the Tutsi's spear as he stood up." "My understanding is that Tutsis are not originally from Rwanda." "I heard that they might have come from Egypt or somewhere else." "An extremist hate radio station told Hutus to eliminate their Tutsi neighbors." "VALENTINA IRIBAGIZA, Tutsi Schoolgirl:" "Then, when the war began, people changed." "One day across the valley, we saw houses burning and people fleeing from their homes." "A 12-year-old girl named Valentina followed her parents into the Catholic church in Nyarubuye, where along with more than 5,000 other Tutsis, they waited." "It was April the 15th." "VALENTINA IRIBAGIZA:" "I was a young girl." "My parents thought the church was safe because no one would be killed in a church." "When we arrived, I could see the older people were very sad and upset." "Everybody was scared, but nobody knew what was going to happen." "GITERA RWAMUHIZI:" "The leader of the local community told us that Tutsis had fled to Nyarubuye and that we're to go there and kill them." "On the morning of April 15th, we woke up and started walking towards the church." "It was like going to the marketplace." "VALENTINA IRIBAGIZA:" "I saw the soldiers come in, and they started shooting and shooting." "All we had to defend ourselves were rocks." "Then our local governor, Gacumbizi, came in and stood in front of us." "Gacumbizi said that everyone should know what they were there for." "He said that all those who were there should be killed, that no one should survive." "Then they started killing, hacking with their machetes." "They kept doing it, and I was hiding under dead people." "They didn't kill me." "Because of the blood covering me, they thought they had killed me." "GITERA RWAMUHIZI:" "It was as if we were taken over by Satan." "When Satan is using you, you lose your mind." "We were not ourselves." "You couldn't be normal and you start butchering people for no reason." "We'd been attacked by the devil." "VALENTINA IRIBAGIZA:" "It was very late, around 2:00 AM, when the Interahamwe came back." "One of them stepped on my head." "He was shaking me with his foot to see if I was alive." "He said, "This thing is dead," and so they left." "I lived among the dead for a long time." "At night, the dogs would come to eat the bodies." "Once a dog was eating someone next to me." "I threw something at the dog and he ran away." "I hid in a small room." "That's where I stayed and slept for 43 days." "As the Tutsi rebel army pushed south towards the capital, they found evidence of massacres in village after village." "With the rebels approaching, extremist Hutus unleashed more Interahamwe militias to accelerate the killing." "The murdered prime minister had been replaced by Jean Kambanda, who incited followers to repulse the Tutsi rebels and their sympathizers, known as Inkotanyi." "JEAN KAMBANDA:" "The Inkotanyi did not come to conquer power only." "They are after you, too." "They want to kill you all." "Guns are not only for soldiers." "Every person can own a gun." "If they shoot, you shoot back." "I, too, carry one all the time." "Here it is." "Red Cross Hospital, Kigali" "Extremist Hutus referred to Tutsi survivors as "those not finished off."" "The Red Cross had never left Rwanda, and those who stayed confronted a stark moral dilemma." "What do you do in the face of evil?" "A BBC reporter spoke to the Red Cross leader in Rwanda, Philippe Gaillard." "FERGAL KEANE, BBC:" "Walking around here, the images are quite horrific." "You've been dealing with this for a long time." "What do you think?" "PHILIPPE GAILLARD, Red Cross:" "I don't know if I... if I still feel something." "I'm..." "I have a brain of iron." "That's the way I've survived." "That's the way I can speak to you in so clear language." "FERGAL KEANE:" "Is there a high price to be paid for that kind of brain of iron?" "Later on, perhaps?" "PHILIPPE GAILLARD:" "Later on, maybe." "For the time being, so far, so good." "Soon after the killing began, Gaillard decided he had to challenge the extremist government." "Rwandan troops had stopped a Red Cross ambulance and killed six patients." "PHILIPPE GAILLARD:" "I decided to call my headquarters in Geneva to tell the story." "And my counterpart in Geneva told me, "Do you think we could make it public?"" "And then you think twice." "I mean, because if you make it public, then you know that people might kill you," "or would really decided to kill you because of what you told." "It was a bit spoken." "We decided to do it." "So following day, BBC, Reuters, Radio France Internationale... it was everywhere." "The publicity embarrassed the extremists, and their government gave the Red Cross safe passage throughout Rwanda." "PHILIPPE GAILLARD:" "So these six people didn't die for-- for nothing." "I mean, they... because of their deaths, hundreds of other people could be saved." "Gaillard cultivated a relationship with the extremist leadership, which he believes helped the Red Cross save 65,000 lives." "PHILIPPE GAILLARD:" "When... when we talk about mass saving, I think that's best." "And the only way is to talk with the people who want to kill them." "I remember one day, I met by chance Colonel Theoneste Bagosora." "I told him, "Colonel, do something to stop the killing." "I mean, this is-- this is absurd." "I mean this this... this is suicide." "I mean ...And his answer was ...there are words you never forget, you know?" "His answer was, "Listen to, sir." "If I want, tomorrow I can recruit 50,000 more Interahamwe."" "So..." "I took him by the shirt." "I'm 58 kilograms and he must be 115...now" "I took him by the shirt, looked his eyes and told him," ""Theoneste, you will lose the war."" "Gaillard's network of aid workers across Rwanda gave him the most accurate count of the death toll." "He estimated that in the first two weeks, 100,000 Rwandans had been killed." "The Red Cross has a tradition of neutrality and public silence, but Gaillard decided that this genocide would be different." "PHILIPPE GAILLARD:" "The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is a 140 years old organization, was not active during the Armenian genocide, shut up during the Holocaust." "Everybody knew what was happening with the Jews." "In such circumstances, if... if you don't at least speak out clearly and... you are participating to... to the genocide." "I mean, if you just shut up when you see what you see... and morally, ethically, you cannot shut up!" "It's a responsibility to... to talk, to speak out."