By Benjamin Works
Director, Strategic Issues Research Institute

Back in 1995, late in the Bosnian war, I got a reference to a 1986 Senate resolution proposed by Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, decrying Yugoslavian official oppression of the Albanian population of Kosovo --that's 1986, when the Albanian Autonomous government was still fully operational. Joseph DioGuardi, a New York Republican, sponsored the companion House Resolution, both of which never emerged from committee.

I got a copy of that Senate Resolution Nr. 150 from the CongressionalRegister of June 19, 1986 and then let it sit in my file for a long time, while the NATO occupation of Bosnia appeared to keep things calm.

Meanwhile, Bob Dole managed to lose the 1996 Presidential Election, then vigorously supported Mr. Clinton's year-by-year extensions for keeping some 6900 US soldiers in Bosnia.

As the KLA insurrection in Kosovo reached civil war levels, I began to think about that resolution and how it misrepresented history. I had done considerable reading on the origins of the Yugoslav conflicts,pulling Washington Post, New York Times and other reports from the 1980s, bearing on Kosovo and the collapse of the Federative Republic's communist government under the pressure of ethnic-nationalism.

Well, pieces fit together showing that all along it has been the ethnic nationalist fascist losers of World War II in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo who have been exploiting the political process in Germany and the United States. Their goal has been to effect the division of Yugoslavia and the cleansing of Serbian populations from their territories, while purporting that "Greater Serbia" was the menace to European security and not the post-fascist "Greater Croatia" and "Greater Albania."Survivors of the Croat Ustashe movement in southern Germany began their work in the 1960s, but Joseph DioGuardi must be given credit for a sustained campaign to influence Congress beginning in the mid-1970s.

DioGuardi, an Albanian American whose ancestors came from an Albanian transplant community in the heel of Italy, sat in Congress for several years in the mid-1980s as a Conservative Republican from New York'sWestchester County, but creating a Greater Albania was his agenda as a map on his website shows (www.aapac.com). His Political Action Committee (PAC) activities are easy to follow from 1988 on.

What makes the PAC and individual contributions to campaigns more interesting is the demonstrated connection between the Kosovo Heroin Mafia, its "pizza connection" distribution ("inherited" from the Gambino crime family) and money-laundering networks, and the number of pizzaria owner-contributors listed in DioGuardi's filings. The Croats and Albanians came up with big pots of launderedmoney, then spread it around selectively, with American politicians helping to persuade other members in Congress.

I have indications of a political alliance between DioGuardi and Bob Dole going as far back as the early 1970s, but have not yet got all the evidence in hand. What I do have is sufficient to reach tentative conclusions about how foreign policy, in a democracy, can be "bought" --that is precisely what happened in the case of the Kosovo Air War.

In early 1987, kicking off his 1988 bid to wrest the GOP nomination from then-vice president George Bush, Dole received $1.2 million from Albanian American supporters in New York City, while DioGuardi received $50,000 at the same dinner. I expect the funding trail goes back further, at least to Dole's 1976 campaign. It certainly continued from 1987 through to the present.

As the collapse of Yugoslavia loomed, the Croatian and Albanian lobbies continued their campaign: Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, Mar 31, 1993 issue, reported as much as $50 million was larded around Capitol Hill in a two-year period which saw the defeat of George Bush and led to Bob Dole's control of the Republican party:

The United States Congress, still reeling from a series of financial scandals involving representatives and senators, is now bracing for a new problem: the massive financial "contributions" which have been made to election funds of politicians by Croatian sources over the past two to three years. One Congressional investigator told Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy that the donations and expenditures on Washington lobbying by the Croatians over the past two years "could well exceed $50-million."

Much of this came directly from Croatian lobbyists, and some from Croatian American businessmen." Many of the campaign contributions have been recorded legally," the investigator said, "but many are questionable. But what is more important is that there has been a pervasive attempt to push the United States along a line defined by foreign powers-Croatia and Germany-and it has not been subtle. Elected officials are being told to either support the Croatian line or face either a removal of funding or are told that funding will be given to their opponents. Or they are literally bribed into supporting the Croatian line. This was going on long before Croatia even made its open bid for recognition as an independent state"

Now, as to individual contributions, there are campaign contribution limits on individuals, then there are Political Action Committees (PACs), "Soft Money" contributed to the parties and fed back to candidates, and there is the time-honored custom of passing bundles of hundred dollar bills in brown paper bags to favored candidates. Federal Election Commission (FEC) records are on-line (http://www.tray.com/fecinfo/) and I have been able retrieve records for Joseph DioGuardi's PACs going back to the 1988 election cycle, and have also tested Bob Dole's 1996 Campaign and Liddy Dole's Campaign-2000. It is all there in the lists of candidates and contributors.

In particular, most of the Congressmen speaking loudest against Serbia and Serbs are those receiving money from DioGuardi's PAC. Some have simply been beguiled, others may be more disingenuous. Recipients come from both sides of the aisle but are mostly members of the House or Senate foreign relations committees: Joseph Lieberman and Jesse Helms, Benjamin Gillman and Tom Lantos. These records do not reveal monster sums of money, but demonstrate the tip of the iceberg, where "soft money," individual declared contributions and bags full of $100 bills also find their way to select candidates .

It is clear that Bob Dole and Joe DioGuardi, in league with Croat and Bosnian fascist emigrees, worked very effectively to set up US foreign policy to dismantle Yugoslavia and ruin the Serb people. They have succeeded admirably because they were organized and persistent, while their opponents were disorganized and, ultimately, outnumbered by the overwhelming flood of media propaganda. Now, the US taxpayer is on the hook for Billions of Dollars, while our service personnel will be tied down for years in Bosnia and Kosovo, again attempting the kind of nation building that failed so spectacularly in Somalia and Haiti.

For those wishing to inspect the details of these fundraising, I have loaded the summary lists compiled thus far at my website along with a companion reading file on the KLA and Heroin:

http://www.siri-us.com/backgrounders/Archives_Kosovo/AlbanianAmericanPac-1980-98.html

and

http://www.siri-us.com/backgrounders/Archives_Kosovo/KLA-Drugs.html

If you're reading this article in a site other than Emperors-Clothes.com and would like to see more, please click here