17. American weapons were used to massacre civilians by the partisans
When the shipment which was temporarily held up by Semenov reached Kolchak, four carloads of rifles were delivered by the latter to Cossacks, allegedly allied with the White cause. The Cossacks then conducted a pogrom in the region of Ekaterinburg, during which 3,000 Jews were murdered using the weaponry supplied by the United States. Spies working for General Graves reported the grisly massacre, and Graves questioned Kolchak regarding how the American weapons supplied to the Whites had been deployed. The response from Kolchak was a vague reference to events in the Ekaterinburg district, “that would give the Jews something to think about”. White propaganda was that the Jews were aligned with the Red partisans.
When the Allied Intervention in North Russia ended and the Red Army occupied most of the region, retreating White troops and partisans fled eastward, into Siberia. Many of them were ill, many were wounded, and Graves reported to his superiors that mob rule prevailed throughout Siberia. The chieftains aligned with the Japanese stopped many of the retreating trains, conducting wholesale slaughter against their supposed allies. Graves recognized that American interests in Siberia were no longer aligned with support of the White cause, and in late December, 1919 he formally recommended to the War Department that the American Siberian Expeditionary Force be removed from the civil war ravaged country.