Thread by @johngansjr

For my NSC book, I visited 6 presidential libraries. In 2012, I spent a week @WJCLibrary in Little Rock looking for 1 document on Bosnia decision-making from Aug 1995. It took 8 years -- but it finally got declassifed. 1/x
clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/101…

@WJCLibrary This is the "End Game" packet that @ARVershbow, Tony Lake, the late-Nelson Drew and many others developed to convince Bill Clinton to try one more time to try to bring peace to the Balkans. It also includes papers by @madeleine, @SecDef19 and many others.

@WJCLibrary @ARVershbow @madeleine @SecDef19 Eventually, Clinton became convinced he needed to “roll every die” to find a solution, and this plan was the best idea on the table. He gave responsibility for the diplomatic mission to Richard Holbrooke, which George Packer covers in his new book Our Man. 3/x

@WJCLibrary @ARVershbow @madeleine @SecDef19 Holbrooke ran with the opportunity. He went on to push the parties to accept a cease-fire and begin talks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, which would lead to peace in the November 1995 Dayton Accords. 4/x

@WJCLibrary @ARVershbow @madeleine @SecDef19 One of the most important US foreign policy accomplishments of the last 80 yrs began with these words. If you want to know what government can do, and if you want to have hope in what can be done again, take a look. 5/x

@WJCLibrary @ARVershbow @madeleine @SecDef19 Sadly, it should not have taken 24 years for these words to get released. Government is too good to hide behind walls of classification. I wrote a book and a dissertation in the 8 years since I requested declassification, but I'm very glad it's out now. And hope people look. 6/x

@WJCLibrary @ARVershbow @madeleine @SecDef19 I'll just add the link again and thank folks like @derekchollet, @IvoHDaalder, and @ARVershbow who helped me learn about this without seeing the document. clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/101… 7/7

@WJCLibrary @ARVershbow @madeleine @SecDef19 @derekchollet @IvoHDaalder Suppose I should mention #twitterstorians!