Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 23/7/2025; Author: Marija Ćosić
During the period marking the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, an image of a former American intelligence officer Steven Meyer was shared on social media along with the claim that he was a “CIA chief” who said the genocide in Srebrenica was fabricated. Meyer is one of the members of a commission whose report denies the genocide in Srebrenica, but it is not true that he was the head of the U.S. intelligence agency.
On July 11, 2025, the day marking the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, a Facebook group published an image resembling a newspaper cover with a photo of an American professor Steven Meyer and a headline stating:
CIA Chief: There Was No Genocide in Srebrenica
The image also claimed that Meyer said the genocide in Srebrenica was “fabricated only to exert pressure on the Serbs.”
This image continued to circulate in the days following the commemoration and was shared across numerous profiles and pages on different social media platforms (1, 2, 3).
What are the Facts?
Steven Meyer did deny the genocide in Srebrenica. However, he was not the head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as some media outlets and social media users have falsely presented him for years. Raskrinkavanje has written about such claims, as well as Meyer’s actual biography and role within the CIA, on two different occasions, in 2019 and 2021.
As explained in those analyses, it is not possible to determine this claim’s exact origin, however Meyer never held a position that could be interpreted as “CIA chief.” Steven Meyer was head of the National Security Program at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security, an American institution that, according to the official website, stopped its operations in July 2020.
According to his biography, still available on the school’s website where he was teaching, Meyer “served as deputy chief of the CIA’s Balkan Task Force (BTF)” during the war in Bosnia in the 1990s. His CV, also once posted there and still accessible in archived form, stated that he worked at the CIA as an “analyst and manager”, left the agency in 2011, and during the war in Bosnia served as deputy chief of the Interagency Balkan Task Force. In his CV, Meyer wrote:
“During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, I was deputy chief of the Interagency Balkan Task Force (a government-wide intelligence body at the time). I was responsible for overseeing all intelligence reporting, acted as liaison between the U.S. intelligence community and various agencies and offices in the Balkans, and traveled extensively throughout the region. I continue to work on Balkan issues and have published several papers on that period.”
The task force was established in June 1992 and consisted of members of different U.S. agencies. As mentioned in this analysis, many of its documents were made public. None of them mention Steven Meyer as its chief.
“Documents show that Daniel Wagner and Gene Wicklund held the position of BTF chief during 1993, followed by Norman Schindler from 1994 to 1996. Ray Converse is frequently listed as deputy chief. In over 300 publicly available CIA documents, Meyer is never mentioned as BTF chief — nor did he himself ever claim he was,” states Raskrinkavanje’s analysis from 2019.
Hence, Meyer was neither chief of this task force nor of the CIA. His official biographies contain no such claims, and his name does not appear on any list of CIA directors.
Later in his career, Meyer remained active in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina. For example, he had connections with the “Republic of Srpska Office for Cooperation, Trade and Investment” in the U.S., registered as a lobbying firm representing the interests of the RS government. Meyer has been a frequent guest in RS media and has published works on BiH politics. More details can be found in Raskrinkavanje’s analysis here.
Denial of the Srebrenica Genocide
In July 1995, more than 8,000 Bosniaks were killed in the Srebrenica area after the Army of Republika Srpska seized the town. The crimes in Srebrenica have been legally defined as genocide in verdicts handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the International Court of Justice, and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Despite these verdicts, various actors have long denied the genocide (1, 2).
Although it remains unclear whether the headline shown in the analyzed image was ever published in an actual newspaper (1, 2), Steven Meyer’s stance is clear regarding this subject: he denies that genocide was committed in Srebrenica. He was one of the members of the “Independent International Commission for Investigating the Suffering of All Peoples in the Srebrenica Region from 1992 to 1995”, established in 2019 by the Government of Republika Srpska. The commission’s report, from 2020, denied that the genocide took place in Srebrenica and made numerous claims contradicting the findings of international courts.
As BIRN noted in its analysis of the mentioned report from July 29, 2021: “The main conclusion of the report is that no genocide occurred in Srebrenica and that the actual number of victims is half of what is established in ICTY verdicts.”
Even in Meyer’s biography posted on the commission’s website, there is no mention of him ever being a “CIA chief.” It states: “He worked for many years in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in various roles, generally related those in Europe and Russia. During the Yugoslav wars of succession in the 1990s, he served as deputy chief of the Interagency Balkan Task Force, headquartered at the CIA but composed of representatives of multiple U.S. government agencies and departments.”In conclusion, Steven Meyer took part in a project that denied the Srebrenica genocide. However, he never held the position of the CIA chief. The crimes in Srebrenica have been classified as genocide by the relevant courts. Since it is unclear where the claim that he was the CIA chief originated, all posts asserting that “CIA chief Steven Meyer said there was no genocide in Srebrenica” are rated as spreading fake news.
