HIR | The Freezer Truck Hoax: How NATO framed the Serbs

I have established in Part 2 of this series that the freezer-truck allegations came from people with a track record for lying. I have also established that the media had to know the accusations were lies.[1]

Although the accusations themselves are absurd, I would like to demonstrate a related point: even the claim that carrying out such massacres would even occur to the Milosevic government defies all reason. Defending such an idea -- i.e. that Belgrade even wanted to carry out massacres -- requires that the media construct an almost infinite web of absurdities.

Remember, the freezer truck allegations were made for the first time in April 2001, two years after NATO's bombing of Serbia, which began March 24th, 1999. Such allegations were therefore a retroactive attempt by NATO, after the fact, to justify what it did. So what reason did NATO give at the time, in 1999, as sufficient cause for bombing the Serbs?

In January 1999, before it started bombing, NATO accused the Yugoslavs of having massacred about 45 civilians in the Kosovo town of Racak, and a few weeks later this became the pretext to start the NATO onslaught.[2]

1. The Yugoslav army was steadily losing territory to the KLA because NATO, at the point of a gun, had forced them to retreat;[3]

2. OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) observers -- also forced on Yugoslavia at the point of a NATO gun (see here)[4] -- were swarming all over Kosovo; and

3. Madeleine Albright was salivating for a pretext to drop bombs on Yugoslavia (she was so eager that the war eventually got called “Albright’s War”).[5]

The Yugoslavs were under the full glare of international attention, and losing territory to their KLA enemies. Any massacres committed against Albanians, in these circumstances, would necessarily leave evidence behind for the international observers to examine.

So what would have to be true for the Yugoslavs to even think of attempting a massacre under such conditions (even assuming they had genocidal impulses)? Well, the Yugoslav government would have to be run entirely by imbeciles, for such behavior would give both NATO and the KLA -- Yugoslavia's enemies -- the propaganda gift they were praying for.

The allegation of a massacre at Racak therefore offends the intelligence of anyone familiar with the facts. But that is a minor offense compared to another one...

For you see, the Yugoslav security services actually invited teams of reporters, including television cameras, plus OSCE observers, to watch its operation at Racak (conducted against a heavily fortified KLA terrorist stronghold, not an innocent village). The whole thing was filmed at the instigation of the Yugoslavs! [6]

Who invites the media, and international observers, to come watch and film the massacre they are about to perpetrate? Imbeciles? Words fail me; something stronger seems called for. If this kind of stupidity must be imputed to the Serbs in order for the allegation to be true, then one naturally grows skeptical of the allegation.

And so, given that the Racak accusations were preposterous, what has now been made public is not so surprising. First, that the American OSCE-KVM (Kosovo Verification Mission) team, the same one making the Racak accusations, was crawling with CIA operatives.[8] And second, that these operatives colluded with the KLA in hoaxing the Racak ‘massacre’ (see here).[9]

According to the official story, it was on March 19, 1999 that Milosevic gave the order for freezer trucks to cover-up evidence of supposedly "Hundreds, maybe thousands, of [massacred Albanian] bodies."[10] The implication, of course, is that the Albanians whose bodies were supposedly covered up were supposedly murdered before this date. And that's convenient for NATO because it would mean that when they began bombing the Serbs on March 24, they had a good reason.

Now let me show you why this official story is impossible, because at no time could Milosevic's forces have carried out the supposed massacres.

First, we can establish that there were no massacres by Milosevic's forces against Albanian civilians before January 16, 1999. Why? Because this is the day that the KLA staged the Racak 'massacre' hoax. If there really had been "Hundreds, maybe thousands, of [massacred Albanian] bodies" lying around at the time, as The Independent alleges,[11] then the KLA could have done the safe and easy thing: showcase some of the bodies from among the massacred multitudes. Only a KLA run by... well, by imbeciles would have tried anything so risky and difficult as the staging of a hoax if it was not necessary.

We must now ask: is it possible that "Hundreds, maybe thousands" of Albanian civilians were massacred by Milosevic's forces between January 16 and March 19, when the supposed order for the supposed cover up was given?

It was the Yugoslavs who immediately demanded an investigation into the Racak accusations of January 16, 1999, precisely because they wanted to deny NATO the excuse it so desperately was seeking to start bombing Serbia.[19] Given that (1) no Albanians had been massacred, (2) the Serbian government was hotly disputing the Racak allegations, and (3) the glare of the international media was upon them, why then would the Serbs now begin to massacre anybody?

The Serbs had not done anything wrong, so to begin now would be to turn their enemies' lies into prophesies, and they were fighting a propaganda war with their NATO enemies. Even if we were to assume that the Yugoslavs didn't care about the lives of innocent Albanians (which would be false), it is obvious that massacring any Albanians after January 16th would have been...well, not very smart.

But there is no need to speculate. We know for a fact that "Hundreds, maybe thousands" of Albanian civilians were not murdered by Milosevic's forces before March 24, when NATO started dropping bombs. Why do we know this? Because NATO's excuse to start bombing on this date was the allegation of a massacre at Racak on January 16, which massacre never took place.

The argument is not subtle. NATO would have never used the Racak lies as an excuse to bomb if the Yugoslav government really had murdered any Albanians between January 16 and March 24, 1999. Unless NATO were run by... well by imbeciles.

So in order to believe the official story, we have to believe also that Milosevic, the Serbs, the KLA, NATO... all must be imbeciles. Not exactly a plausible hypothesis.

Those who don't believe the freezer-truck story, on the other hand, need make no apologies for accepting rank nonsense. They can also point out that, other than the American OSCE mission (which was crawling with CIA operatives), the international observers made no accusations of ‘massacre,’ and stated that they had seen nothing to suggest systematic persecution of any kind (which is of course why hoaxes became necessary in order to accuse the Serbs).[12]

Any attempt to fix the inconsistencies in the freezer truck story only produces fresh absurdities, so it is not recommended (see appendix).

Well, if it is absurd to believe that Milosevic ordered civilians massacred before January 16, 1999, and absurd to believe that he would want to massacre them between January 16 and March 24, then it is just absurd to believe that Milosevic would want to massacre civilians.

Any yet I know that, all the same, the idea that Milosevic wanted to, and simply must have, murdered Albanian civilians will exert a powerful pull. Such tenacity is not gratuitous stubbornness; it is understandable. Newspapers, magazines, and TV stations all taught us to believe in the Media Milosevic, the cartoon character who supposedly wants nothing better than to murder members of other nationalities. This cartoon monster never existed, and he bears zero resemblance to the real Milosevic. And this is why, in order to create the Media Milosevic character out of whole cloth and sell it to millions of people, the Western media had to lie, shamelessly and repeatedly (see here).[17]

So what have we proved here? That the freezer-truck allegations are nothing but lies? Well, no. That was already shown in Part 2 by examining the final body count reported by The Hague and also what they did and didn't say when they reported those figures. And that is not even my best demonstration, for I have the smoking gun that shows who perpetrated the freezer-truck hoax and how (as we shall see in Parts 5 through 9).

What the present analysis demonstrates is something else: namely that, in order to allege that Milosevic even wanted to organize massacres followed by freezer-truck cover-ups, anybody familiar with the details is asked to accept all sorts of absurdities. Since those who write and edit the copy in the Western media were familiar with the details, and since they did write all sorts of absurdities, we are left with two hypotheses:

I do not believe the second hypothesis is even remotely plausible. I shall therefore not bother with it and examine a bit further the first hypothesis instead. In Part 4, the next section, I take a look at the incoherent details of the freezer-truck story, which the media printed with a straight face.

Footnotes and Further Reading
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[1] http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/freezer2.htm

[2] “U.S. Foreign Secretary Madeleine Albright, eager to make war against then-Yugoslavia and speaking on CBS' Face the Nation, cited Racak where, she said, there were 'dozens of people with their throats slit.' She called this the 'galvanizing incident' that meant peace talks at Rambouillet were pointless, and 'humanitarian bombing' the only recourse. Germany's Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, told the newspaper Berliner Zeitung that the Racak massacre 'became the turning point for me' and war was the only answer.”

SOURCE: The Toronto Sun, April 1, 2001 Sunday, Final Edition, Comment;, Pg. C6;, 1382 words, The Hoax That Started A War; How The U.S., Nato And The Western Media Were Conned In Kosovo, PETER WORTHINGTON, TORONTO SUN.

[3] "…In October 1998, responding to NATO's threat to bomb Yugoslavia, the Yugoslavs pulled back their troops and allowed OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) observers into Kosovo. At that point, most of the 2,000 deaths had already been sustained, Yugoslavia's war against the KLA was mostly over, and the death toll would have steeply declined the following year. Because of the Yugoslav withdrawal of troops, the KLA quickly took or retook many villages, and by March 24th, militarily controlled 40 percent of Kosovo's territory."

SOURCE: Liberty, July 1999: Inquiry: How Murderous Are the Serbs? By David Ramsay Steele.

[4] THE OSLO WAR PROCESS; Norwegians are the diplomatic 'advance guard' of the US-European empire. They helped destroy Yugoslavia. They set Israel on the path to destruction. Now they will finish destroying Sri Lanka. Next: India; Historical and Investigative Research, 29 Oct 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/oslo-intro.htm

[5] To the dismay of State Department officials, NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia has been called 'Albright's war.'; The Washington Post, May 02, 1999, Sunday, Final Edition, BOOK WORLD; Pg. X04, 1947 words, Identity Crisis, Walter Reich, Special to The Washington Post.

[6] Shortly after William Walker alleged a massacre at Racak, Diana Johnstone posted a translation of the articles from 'Le Figaro' and 'Le Monde' which contradicted him. These articles were written based on what journalists who witnessed the scene, because they were invited by the Yugoslav government, had reported. Johnstone included her own comments as well. See 'The Racak Incident' at
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/racakhoax.htm

[8] THE OSLO WAR PROCESS: Norwegians are the diplomatic 'advance guard' of the US-European empire. They helped destroy Yugoslavia. They set Israel on the path to destruction. Now they will finish destroying Sri Lanka. Next: India; Historical and Investigative Research, 29 Oct 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/oslo-intro.htm

[9] THE ROAD TO JENIN: The Racak “massacre” hoax, and those whose honesty it places in doubt: Helena Ranta, NATO, the UN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Associated Press, and Human Rights Watch; Historical and Investigative Research; October 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/ranta.htm

[10] The New York Times:

“Police officials and Serbia’s new interior minister, Dusan Mihajlovic, told a news conference last week that in a meeting in late March 1999 Mr. Milosevic ordered his interior minister, Vlajko Stojiljkovic (who was also later indicted by The Hague tribunal) to remove civilian casualties in Kosovo that could be the source for investigations by the tribunal.”

SOURCE: The New York Times, June 1, 2001, Friday, Late Edition - Final, Section A; Page 10; Column 4; Foreign Desk, 1153 words, A Dark Secret Comes to Light in Serbia, By CARLOTTA GALL, KLADOVO, Serbia, May 29

The man who originally made this claim was one Captain Dragan Karleusa, who was put in charge of the freezer-truck 'investigation' by the NATO-installed government in Belgrade. In court, at The Hague, he put an exact date on this supposed meeting:

[Start Quote From ICTY Transcript]

DRAGAN KARLEUSA: The first meeting in relation to this was held in the office of the then president, Mr. Milosevic. It was held in the month of March 19 1999 [my emphasis].

Source: ICTY court transcripts for Monday 22 July, 2002 (p.8395, lines 15-19)
http://www.un.org/icty/transe54/020722ED.htm

[End Quote From ICTY Transcript]

This is the official story because it is good for NATO. The implication is that massacres happened before the supposed order to cover them up, which Karleusa alleges was on 19 March. Since this is before NATO began dropping bombs on 24 March, the allegation makes it look as if their bombing was in response to ongoing atrocities.

[11] The Independent (London), June 29, 2001, Friday, NEWS; Pg. 3, 615 words, MILOSEVIC FACES JUDGEMENT: THE MISSING BODIES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT CAME BACK TO HAUNT HIM, Justin Huggler In Skopje

[12] Former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bissett, an ardent critic of NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia, has said: “…a number of credible OSCE observers have publicly stated that in the weeks leading up to the bombing they witnessed no murders, no deportations and nothing that could be described as systematic persecution.”

SOURCE: The Globe and Mail, January 10th, 2000.

[13] This is what The Independent wrote:

“. . .As the Nato bombs rained down, body-snatchers roamed Kosovo. Mete Krasniqi saw them in action, after Serb forces machine-gunned the inhabitants of his village, including his son. The villagers buried them. A month later, hiding in the woods, they saw men in orange overalls dig up the bodies and load them into two trucks.”

SOURCE: The Independent (London), June 29, 2001, Friday, NEWS; Pg. 3, 615 words, MILOSEVIC FACES JUDGEMENT: THE MISSING BODIES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT CAME BACK TO HAUNT HIM, Justin Huggler In Skopje.

Now, consider what this means. First, The Independent says that the cover-up was happening “As the Nato bombs rained down.” And The Independent’s ‘witness’ Krasniqi says the killings took place a month before the freezer trucks came around to take the bodies away. That means they are claiming that the supposed killings and the supposed cover-up did not happen at the same time -- naturally, any cover-up has to follow the killings. The New York Times claims the cover-up was ordered in "late March 1999" (see footnote 10), and this is information that came from Karleusa, who in court alleged that the meeting happened specifically on March 19, 1999 (see footnote 18). Since that is before the NATO bombing, and since they are saying the supposed massacres happened even before that, they are telling us that the massacres happened well before the NATO bombing began. Which makes sense for them to claim as an accusation, because the whole point of these lies was to argue retrospectively that NATO had a justification for attacking Serbia.

[14] “Police officials and Serbia’s new interior minister, Dusan Mihajlovic, told a news conference last week that in a meeting in late March 1999 Mr. Milosevic ordered his interior minister, Vlajko Stojiljkovic (who was also later indicted by The Hague tribunal) to remove civilian casualties in Kosovo that could be the source for investigations by the tribunal.”

[15] The claim is that “thousands” of Albanians were massacred: “Hundreds, maybe thousands, of bodies disappeared from Kosovo during the Nato air strikes in 1999.”

SOURCE: The Independent (London), June 29, 2001, Friday, NEWS; Pg. 3, 615 words, MILOSEVIC FACES JUDGEMENT: THE MISSING BODIES OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT CAME BACK TO HAUNT HIM, Justin Huggler In Skopje

[16] http://emperors-clothes.com/book/book1.htm

[17] "How Politicians, the Media, and Scholars Lied about Milosevic's 1989 Kosovo Speech: A review of the evidence"; Historical and Investigative Research; 8 Sep. 2005; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/yugo/milospeech.htm