Playing dumb
- CIA's report to top officials on day two of the crisis identified the "Presidential Guard, gendarmerie, and military" as killers of "several government officials--including the Prime Minister";
- State Department intelligence informed policymakers the morning after the shoot-down of the plane that "rogue Hutu elements of the military--possibly the elite presidential guard" were probable culprits;
- The U.S. defense attaché in Rwanda, who reported to State Department, defense intelligence and U.S. European Command officials, on the second day forwarded "reports that the Presidential Guard is "out of control" on the streets of Kigali while all other military units remain in their barracks."
Around 8 PM local time on the evening of April 6th, 1994 the plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi was shot down over Kigali, Rwanda as the presidents returned from a summit of regional leaders in Tanzania. Both men died, as did their senior aides and the French aircrew. Within hours, the Presidential Guard was out on the streets setting up roadblocks in Kigali and going house-to-house to find and attack prominent Rwandan opposition leaders and Tutsi civilians.
As Lt. Gen. Dallaire, the UN commander in Rwanda, recalls "In just a few hours, the Presidential Guard had conducted an obviously well-organized and well-executed plan--by noon on April 7 the moderate political leadership of Rwanda was dead or in hiding, the potential for a future moderate government utterly lost."
The genocide in Rwanda had begun.
