WILLIAM C. POTTER

   William C. "Bill" Potter is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Michigan Law School.  He has had a long and successful career as an attorney, businessman and civic letter.  A retired colonel in the Florida Air National Guard, he served for almost three years as the head of the Department of Law for the United Nations Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina.  A Bosnian Diary:  A Floridian's Experience in Nation Building is his almost daily recollections of the UN's efforts to restore order and sanity to a region racked by ethnic cleansing, economic collapse and the utter destruction of orderly government.

This "first person" account IS a historical document, complete with minutes of meetings, copies of speeches and other items of interest to students of diplomatic history, government planners and, in particular, to the general public.

   Potter is available for signings, lectures and consultations.  He can be reached by e-mail at wlpott@yahoo.com.

REVIEWS:

William C. Potter's A Bosnian Diary...

    Given the myriad complexities of attempting to weld a viable government from the multi-ethnic scrap iron of a culture blasted apart by civil war, perhaps a simple anecdotal snapshot can summarize the frustration.

    A decade ago, thanks to the international muscle flexed by the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, the Balkan peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina were bound by treaty to establish a democracy that respected human rights.

    Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the volatile region that triggered the opening round of World War I had produced a powder keg once again, this time with horrific "ethnic cleansing" purges that claimed some 200,000 lives.

    Despite the breakthrough at Dayton, the three main factions -- Christian Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats -- eyed each other with debilitating suspicion.

    Propelled by his legal and military affiliations, Melbourne attorney Bill Potter made a series of trips to the Balkans beginning in 1996, most notably as an elections supervisor, until joining the Office of High Representative three years ago.

But in 1999, Potter submitted some ideas concerning consolidation to the disjointed military. Two weeks later, with no response to his letter, Potter phoned the military office for an answer.

    "They told me they hadn't read the letter," Potter recalls. "I asked why not, and they said they hadn't even opened it. They told me it had been sitting there because they couldn't agree on who should open the envelope."

    Welcome to nation building.

    It's a compelling story with what appears to be an upbeat ending. After all, the American representative to the Peace Implementation Council has described the Office of High Representative as potentially "the best peacekeeping bargain" in history.

Unfortunately, Potter claims, all the tedious, painstaking but ultimately invaluable lessons learned in Bosnia have been discarded in Iraq.    

    "What we've done in Iraq is tremendously destabilizing. It's a disaster," laments the lifelong Republican. "The idea that we could turn that country around in three years was just a fantasy."

    A Melbourne resident since 1965, the Brown University-educated commercial litigation attorney has been an ubiquitous local presence during his long career. Melbourne Airport Authority attorney, Florida Tech Board of Trustees, municipal judge for Melbourne and Melbourne Village, chairman of the East Central Florida Health Care Coalition steering committee, president of Potter, McClelland, Marks & Healy, a partner with Holland & Knight -- Potter's track record on the Space Coast is too extensive for a complete listing here.

    But it was his military background -- 34 years with the Air Force Reserves, from which he retired as a colonel with Judge Advocate General experience -- that led to his participation in Bosnia-Herzigovina's reconstruction. In 1992-93, during the power vacuum left by the disintegration of the USSR and Yugoslavia, Potter attended nation-building classes at the Special Warfare Center in Fort Bragg, N.C.

    His first trips to Bosnia were with the Reserves, but his most prestigious assignment, as top legal gun for the Office of High Representative, ran from July 2002 to February this year.

    "Initially, we were only supposed to stay for a year and a half," says Potter, who moved with his wife Wendy to Sarajevo, where his office overlooked what used to be the front lines of the bloody, 31/2-year siege that destroyed the city. "But Paddy twisted my arm."

Often described as innovative and charismatic, Paddy Ashdown is the former leader of England's Liberal Democrats who now heads the OHR. Created by the Dayton treaty, the OHR's long-range goal is to assist Bosnia-Herzigovina into becoming a stable and peaceful member of the European Union. Next year, Bosnia-Herzigovina enters its first contractual agreement with the EU, and if all goes well, Potter predicts the nation will join the organization by 2009.

    Bosnia-Herzigovina 2005 is a far cry from the nightmare of the early '90s, when clashing armies and militias displaced more than a million refugees. NATO responded with 65,000 peacekeeping troops, 23,000 of whom were Americans.

    "Today," says Potter, "less than 150 U.S. troops are there, and the EU has about 7,500. The total U.S. expenditure in Bosnia -- in 10 years, total -- is less than $4 billion. And in 10 years we've not had one single death due to military action. And 51 other countries have contributed. I think Bosnia is a tremendous success."

    As deputy for the OHR's Rule of Law Department, Potter commanded a 17-nation team of 235 lawyers, judges, prosecutors and investigators (reduced to 75 today). Potter's job was to clean house and start over again; accordingly, he fired all 1,900 judges and prosecutors in the country and made them re-apply for their old positions.

    "We faced huge problems over there," says Mike O'Malley, a Chicago prosecutor who worked alongside Potter with the OHR's anticrime and corruption unit. "I think Bill's greatest asset was his intellect, and his ability to cut through red tape, if I can use the politically correct term."

    Judge Charles E. "Chip" Erdmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C., recommended Potter for the position he vacated in 2001.

    "While Bill's role was not of the headline-grabbing variety," Erdman wrote in an e-mail, "the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude for his work in reforming the judiciary."

Potter's "Bosnian Diary" details those challenges and triumphs in an anthology of weekly e-mail reports he dispatched from Sarajevo. It wasn't just the recalcitrant Bosnians who erected barriers. After completing the book, Potter posted a reflective addendum titled "Afterthoughts," which pulls no punches.

Among other things, Potter takes aim at:

    "The amateurish nature of the intelligence being gathered by the U.S."

American embassy staffers "more concerned about how various actions might affect their careers and performance evaluations than whether those actions really advanced the peace implementation process"

    In one case, the U.S. embassy's nomination of an international judge "who had written and published several articles such as one arguing that one of the reasons God had created the United States was to promote Christianity throughout the world."

    "Bill worked longer hours there than he ever worked here, and he always worked very hard here," says his wife Wendy, who says there were four mosques, one Catholic cathedral, and one Eastern Orthodox church within five minutes of their house in Sarajevo.

The Potters so thoroughly immersed themselves in the local culture, they befriended their young translator, Amina Bilajac, brought her to the States, helped her through college, and were witnesses at her Muslim wedding.

    It's partially because of the reasonably bright prospects for Bosnia's future that Potter voices such dismay over America's chaotic occupation of Iraq. Although Bosnia isn't out of the dark yet (he cautions against local officials' tendency to rely on international mediators to make difficult political decisions), he says the contrasts with Iraq are stark.

    One of the early mistakes in Bosnia was holding elections too soon, just 15 months after the end of its war, before economic stabilization.

    "The people inevitably elected radical nationalists who said, 'I'll protect your rights,' " Potter says. "That worked against their collective economic interests." Regional stability, he adds, is equally critical. Bosnia's European neighbors are far less combustible than those on Iraq's borders. Furthermore, the reconstruction of Bosnia enjoys a broad international commitment. "The fact that the United States is bearing 90 percent of the burden in Iraq is significant," he says.

    Today, Potter, 64, likes to consider himself retired, though he continues to extend himself as a consultant on many issues, including Bosnia. "What I really want to do," he says, "is spend more time with my grandchildren."

Bill Cox, Florida Today