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Anchor Lisa Mullins remembers Kenneth Bacon, head of the advocacy group Refugees International. Bacon died over the weekend at the age of 64

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LISA MULLINS: Before we break we’d like to take a moment to remember a man who took an unusual path. Kenneth Bacon was a long-time reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He then became a Pentagon spokesman in the Clinton administration. It was in that Pentagon job that he took a different course. Bacon became convinced during the 1999 war in Kosovo that more needed to be done to stop human rights abuses and to help people who are displaced by manmade and natural disasters. Here’s Kenneth Bacon speaking to the BBC about the Serbian offensive against the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

KENNETH BACON: They’re moving people out of villages, burning houses, destroying parts of villages, and killing people if they fail to move. It’s been a rather sharp increase in the violence in the last several days and it’s completely unacceptable. This is something that Slobodan Milosevic is orchestrating we believe and it is at a time when we want restraint he’s going in an exactly the opposite direction.

MULLINS: Kenneth Bacon went on to become a voice for millions of refugees uprooted by violence and conflict. He served as head of Refugees International – that’s a Washington-based advocacy group. In that role he advocated for increased protection and assistance for displaced people in such places as Iraq and Sudan’s Darfur region. Bacon spoke to this program in January of 2007 about a camp in Darfur.

KENNETH BACON: The part I visited was the most heartbreaking, depressing scene you can imagine because it’s the area where new refugees are arriving. And many of these people have walked for several days, generally at night because the roads are so unsafe during the day. And even though they fled their homes and have virtually nothing they’re still subject to robbery. Sometimes the women are subject to rape. So they travel at night. They arrive with their children exhausted. There’s no official shelter when they first arrive.

MULLINS: That was Kenneth Bacon in 2007. Today Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said in a statement most Americans remember Ken as the unflappable, civilian voice of the Defense Department but for millions of the world’s most vulnerable people, refugees and other victims of conflict, Ken was an invaluable source, inspiration, and support. Kenneth Bacon died Saturday of cancer. He was 64 years old.

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