The Education of an Idealist. Samantha Power
executioners were carrying out in Srebrenica. The President of the United States had not needed my help if he was to be spurred to action.
Nonetheless, I felt at sea. My law school classmates and I were of a generation that had unquestioningly embraced the slogan “never again.” Yet I was sure very few of my peers were actually aware of the Times investigation that had sent me spiraling, and even those who had seen it would probably have considered it “too depressing” to read. Powerless to affect the fate of men already killed, I decided that I could at least raise awareness on campus about what had happened.
In a move that at the time felt as bold as choosing to live under siege in Sarajevo, I asked my Contracts professor for permission to make an announcement before class. “I apologize for using this forum,” I said nervously after taking the floor. “But I just wanted to draw your attention to something that will be in your mailbox later.” I previewed the article, which documented “the largest single massacre in Europe in fifty years.” My lips quivered as I rushed to try to finish. “So please read it. Thanks.”
After class I met up with a new friend, Sharon Dolovich, who had done her PhD in political theory at Cambridge University and was seemingly curious about all subjects. While most of our classmates had shied away from discussing the upsetting events in the former Yugoslavia, Sharon pumped me for details on my recent experiences and seemed genuinely moved by the revelations about Srebrenica. Sharon and I dropped by the law school copy room to collect the five hundred Xeroxes I had ordered earlier in the day. Together, we solemnly stuffed a stapled copy of the article into the mailbox of each first-year law student. I knew enough not to linger and watch our classmates sift through their mail, which also included notices for an upcoming ice cream social, various law journal meetings, and book discounts at the Harvard Coop. If the Srebrenica article was to be tossed into the nearby blue recycling tub, I did not want to see it. A few of my classmates approached me later to thank me for alerting them to what had happened. But I got the feeling that most found me off-puttingly intense.
After saying goodbye to Sharon, I made my way to the law library. I had already fallen behind in my Property reading and needed to prepare for the next day’s class. After a restless hour in a carrel, I wandered to the nearest phone to collect my answering machine messages. I heard the voice of my friend Elizabeth Rubin, who had just returned to New York from Sarajevo.
“Power, I don’t know if you’ve heard,” she said. There was a pause, and then what sounded like muffled crying. “It’s David.”
Another pause. “Um … he’s been abducted.”
I flashed back to all that my friend David Rohde had written, doing more than any reporter to uncover Ratko Mladić’s summary executions. My mind jumped to Fred Cuny and his last days. “No! No! No!” I said, holding back tears as I raced to the bike rack and began fumbling with my lock so I could get home.
When I reached my apartment, I stood in the kitchen with no idea what to do. What more could I contribute to finding David that the US government, the UN, and the press corps weren’t already doing? I defaulted to what I usually did when I was in a bind, calling Mort.
He was constructive and typically specific. He told me to call Richard Holbrooke—who, in a fortunate coincidence of timing, had just arrived in Dayton, Ohio, for peace talks with the warring factions. He also told me to call Strobe Talbott and Steve Rosenfeld—both of whom I had haplessly lobbied the year before. “Get the Post to write something,” Mort advised.
Unable to get through to Holbrooke, I (somewhat absurdly) asked the hotel receptionist in Dayton to pass on a message—verbatim:
David Rohde has been abducted in Serb territory. Please make him the lead item in the peace talks.
I was able to reach Strobe, who started our conversation as courteously as ever. He told me that Secretary of State Warren Christopher had that day raised David’s case with Serbian president Milošević in Dayton. Instead of expressing gratitude, though, I snapped, “That’s not enough.”
Strobe continued, “Milošević understands that he will bear the consequences if anything happens to David.”
“The consequences!” I said, sarcastically. “What consequences?!” Strobe must have wondered why he ever took my calls.
“Well, if you’re going to take that view, then there’s nothing more I can say,” he responded, and the call quickly ended.
When I connected with Rosenfeld, I begged him to write an editorial demanding that the US government secure David’s release before proceeding with the Dayton talks. “He’s the only Western eyewitness to the mass graves,” I implored. “He’s in profound danger.”
Rosenfeld explained that the next day’s paper had already gone to press. “Well, if we don’t do something quickly, it will be too late,” I warned. “You have to understand: people don’t just disappear in Bosnia. We have a short window to shame David’s captors into not harming him, but it is closing.”
Rosenfeld gave me an opening. “If you want to write something,” he offered, “we will run it.”
Less than thirty-six hours after I heard Elizabeth’s message, the Washington Post ran my op-ed, the first opinion piece I had penned since the Daily Jang. The essay, printed November 3, 1995, concluded: “I relay David’s odyssey because he is my colleague and my dear friend. American officials claim they can do no more than ‘raise the issue at the highest levels.’ David did more. Why can’t they?”
I went to class and tried not to think about the barbaric treatment my friend was likely suffering—if he was even still alive. When I returned home a few hours later, I saw that the tape on my answering machine had been filled. Strangers—lower-level State Department officials, Hill staffers, journalists, and Post readers from all walks of life—had located my home number through directory assistance and left messages asking how they could help. One man moved me immensely with his simple words of support. “Howdy, my name is Bill,” his message began. “I am a truck driver. I just wanna know what I can do for David.”
Much more importantly, by nightfall, the Serb authorities acknowledged that David was in their custody. Had they planned to kill him, they would never have admitted to detaining him. I now believed that his family, who had staged a protest outside of the Dayton airbase where the Bosnia peace talks were taking place, would get him back.
David was released ten days after he was seized. Once free, he revealed that a source had given him a map with the exact location of four additional mass graves near Srebrenica. Blacklisted from entering Bosnian Serb territory because of his reporting in August, he doctored the date on his expired press pass and drove into Serb territory, where he found the first of the gravesites and evidence of murder: piles of coats, abandoned shoes, Muslim identity documents, even canes and shattered eyeglasses.
But as was David’s wont, he had pushed his luck, trying to find even more. He was arrested at rifle-point at the second grave, just as he was preparing to photograph two human femurs he had discovered. Because he was carrying a camera, a map with suspected gravesites circled, and film stuffed into his socks, the Bosnian Serbs labeled him a spy.
“Mr. David,” his interrogator repeatedly asked him at the remote police station where he was held, “What is your rank? Who is your commander in the CIA? And what is your mission?”
His captors forced him to stand through the night, denying him sleep. They threatened him with a lengthy stay in a Bosnian Serb prison camp, and even with execution. After three days of threats, fearful that he would be shot if he continued to hold out, David considered telling the interrogators whatever they wanted. But a friendly guard whispered in his ear that he knew David was a journalist. He urged him to stand firm. This gave US diplomacy and public advocacy time to succeed.
I was thrilled by David’s release and rushed to Logan Airport to be part of the crowd that welcomed him. After the dark discoveries of the previous months, the sight of David being reunited with his family felt like a sudden burst of light.
Close to midnight,