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[ gunshots ]. over the course of several days, thousands of individuals had been slaughtered and shoved into mass graves. as the world watched and as the united nations stood by. this was mass genocide that we have not seen since world war ii. what could motivate that kind of hatred? that was the question that seized western leaders. the turning point, suddenly the world was focused in on the tragedy of the balkins. when somebody like kristic is issuing an order that says kill them, kill them all, not a single one must be left alive. society has a responsibility to make sure that this person pays a price. the new $3 little john from jimmy john s
when the indictment came down for kristic, we captured a hand full of war criminals but this was the most senior and frankly at the time, we knew the most significant. if we wanted to see justice done, the capture of kristic was critical. he was wanted for genocide. he was the big target, the big symbol. it was the proof that the international criminal tribunal could go after the most significant war crime. when you understood exactly what he had done, the numbers slaukt slaughtered under his command, you go really? he s horrible. the guy say is a monster. the most important thing is don t make mistakes.
process of how these war criminals would be indicted and how those special operations teams would go about precisely grabbing one of those people and getting it back into the hague for justice. guilty of murdering hassan, guilty of murdering the brothers the thing that was frustrating at the outset is the united states british and other forces captured minor persons and then people would say what s the matter with nato that you can only get little fish, the small fry. what about the big ones behind all this? so when kristic s indictment was brought down to the stabilization forces, the end of october 1998, there it was a little high five moment. we wanted to get kristic for several reasons primarily. he was directly involved in this murderous rampage that had taken
do the operation, do it successfully, do it quietly, get in, get out. there couldn t be any shots fired. there couldn t be any reaction for the serbs that got involved in this because one thing we didn t want to do is reignite the war on the peninsula and so it had to be a secret operation capture mission. we had a president of the united states say we are going to bring our full resources to bear, to make sure that this individual is brought to trial. and so the mission was defined, you need to capture kristic. how it would take place was up to the operators. we got the mission like flip the switch, here we go. we get focused, we don t sleep. we study, we research. it s like doing brain surgery. we refine the intelligence picture. we have on the shelf what we know about kristic and add