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U.S. target, not an accident
By Gary Wilson
NATO deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during its war on Kosovo, the Observer newspaper in London reported Oct. 17.
The Observer says that this was confirmed in detail by "senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the U.S." This includes three NATO officers--"a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia, and a senior headquarters officer in Brussles."
U.S. officials, including President Bill Clinton and CIA director George Tenet, all gave smarmy excuses as to why the May 7 bombing had happened. Old maps were blamed, among other things. The Pentagon had claimed that because the embassy had moved in 1996, its maps had not been properly updated.
The Observer reported, "The CIA and other NATO intelligence agencies, such as Britain's MI6 and the code-breakers at GCHQ, would have listened in to communication traffic from the Chinese embassy as a matter of course since it moved to the site in 1996."
The Observer says that a "source in the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the `wrong map' story was `a damned lie.'" The newspaper reports that a NATO flight controller confirmed that the map of "non-targets" that was being used clearly included the Chinese embassy at the correct site.
At the time, the Chinese news accounts charged that the bombing was intentional. Demonstrations spread across China and around the world because of this obvious act of war against China.
To this day, the U.S. government has made only the mildest of apologies and continues to insist publicly that the bombing was an accident. This is an open insult to the people of China and their government. It comes from the imperialist arrogance of the U.S. government, in particular the Pentagon, and its open hostility to socialist China.
The bombing at the time was really aimed at breaking up U.S.-China relations and at heating up the U.S. Cold War against socialist China.
WW reported it accurately
At the time of the bombing, Workers World reported accurately what the London Observer has only now confirmed. Workers World's Fred Goldstein wrote in the May 20 issue:
"There is an old saying that two excuses are worse than one. The Pentagon's blundering explanations prove that rule. First they said they targeted the wrong building in an unfortunate accident. Then they came up with the story that the CIA accidentally targeted the embassy using maps made three or four years ago, when the Chinese Embassy was three miles away from its present location.
"Old maps aside, if any agency in the entire U.S. government should know where the Chinese Embassy is, it is the CIA. Of course, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Army Intelligence, the National Security Council, and all the other spy agencies that checked and approved the target also know where the Chinese Embassy is. But the CIA's job is to spy on every embassy, and especially the Chinese Embassy, 24 hours a day.
"The CIA is supremely interested in China's relations with every government, but at this particular moment it is most interested in Chinese-Yugoslav relations. Given the weight of China in world politics and in the United Nations Security Council, nothing could be more important to the CIA than to be able to feed information to Washington about the political, trade and military relations between China and Yugoslavia.
"The CIA not only knows where the embassy is, but undoubtedly carries out both photographic and electronic eavesdropping, as well as satellite surveillance, on the embassy around the clock. The agency undoubtedly has compiled massive amounts of information about the staff and the activities of the embassy.
"Any agent assigned to surveillance of Belgrade, whether from Langley, Va., Brussels or any other place, who did not know where the Chinese Embassy is would be fired or demoted for incompetence.
"The CIA hardly needs to look at a map to know where the embassy is--let alone a three-year-old map. In fact, the way in which this matter was explained borders on a flagrantly callous and brazen boast of having done the deed. ...
"It is now clear that there are two main tendencies within NATO, the Clinton administration and the U.S. ruling class establishment over how to proceed with the war at present. Both are implacably hostile to the Yugoslav government and its just and heroic struggle to fend off imperialist occupation.
"Both tendencies want to use the criminal bombing campaign as their primary instrument at present. Both are for military occupation.
"But one tendency wants to bring the war to an end sooner than the other, through some form of negotiated limited victory for the U.S. and NATO. It has hoped to involve the UN Security Council to get compromises on the role of NATO, the Pentagon, Russia, etc.
"The other tendency aims to carry the war all the way to victory--meaning total capitulation of Yugoslavia--no matter how long and how much of an escalation that may take. This tendency has escalation plans in the works. ...
"The war-to-capitulation tendency is most openly represented by Gen. Wesley Clark, Supreme Commander of NATO, together with his spokesperson in the Clinton administration, Secretary of State Made leine Albright, plus British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This tendency fears that early negotiations could lead to a bombing pause, which in turn could lead to an early end of the war short of total surrender.
"For this tendency, bringing the issue to the UN Security Council is anathema for now. It would mean bringing the People's Republic of China into a position of leverage in the negotiations, as well as Russia.
"The arch-militarist tendency in the Pentagon fears that once the Security Council process starts, the dominance of the U.S. high command and its junior partners in London will be compromised, threatening their plans to escalate the war. ...
"This adventurist faction of the ruling class has the bit in its teeth at the moment and is ready to ride roughshod over anything that gets in the way of U.S. global military domination.
"But with the bombing of the Chinese Embassy, the adventurers in the Pentagon and their counterparts in the U.S. ruling class and its political establishment have risked bringing to an end the relationship between the U.S. and China begun in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon.
"That relationship, which survived U.S. support for the counter-revolution at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and U.S. military provocations around Taiwan in 1996, will inevitably have to undergo a fundamental reevaluation in light of the attack upon the embassy.
"Above all, it shows the deep and irreconcilable hostility of U.S. imperialism towards socialist China that lurks beneath the surface in the summit meetings, the diplomacy and the trade relations."
The full Workers World report, "Bombing of Chinese embassy was not an accident: Two imperialist tendencies in the war," can be found on the Web at www. workers.org/ww/1999/yugo0520.html.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Workers World Oct. 28, 1999: U.S. deliberately bombed Chinese Embassy in Belgrade
By Gary Wilson
NATO deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during its war on Kosovo, the Observer newspaper in London reported Oct. 17.
The Observer says that this was confirmed in detail by "senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the U.S." This includes three NATO officers--"a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia, and a senior headquarters officer in Brussles."
U.S. officials, including President Bill Clinton and CIA director George Tenet, all gave smarmy excuses as to why the May 7 bombing had happened. Old maps were blamed, among other things. The Pentagon had claimed that because the embassy had moved in 1996, its maps had not been properly updated.
The Observer reported, "The CIA and other NATO intelligence agencies, such as Britain's MI6 and the code-breakers at GCHQ, would have listened in to communication traffic from the Chinese embassy as a matter of course since it moved to the site in 1996."
The Observer says that a "source in the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency said that the `wrong map' story was `a damned lie.'" The newspaper reports that a NATO flight controller confirmed that the map of "non-targets" that was being used clearly included the Chinese embassy at the correct site.
At the time, the Chinese news accounts charged that the bombing was intentional. Demonstrations spread across China and around the world because of this obvious act of war against China.
To this day, the U.S. government has made only the mildest of apologies and continues to insist publicly that the bombing was an accident. This is an open insult to the people of China and their government. It comes from the imperialist arrogance of the U.S. government, in particular the Pentagon, and its open hostility to socialist China.
The bombing at the time was really aimed at breaking up U.S.-China relations and at heating up the U.S. Cold War against socialist China.
WW reported it accurately
At the time of the bombing, Workers World reported accurately what the London Observer has only now confirmed. Workers World's Fred Goldstein wrote in the May 20 issue:
"There is an old saying that two excuses are worse than one. The Pentagon's blundering explanations prove that rule. First they said they targeted the wrong building in an unfortunate accident. Then they came up with the story that the CIA accidentally targeted the embassy using maps made three or four years ago, when the Chinese Embassy was three miles away from its present location.
"Old maps aside, if any agency in the entire U.S. government should know where the Chinese Embassy is, it is the CIA. Of course, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Army Intelligence, the National Security Council, and all the other spy agencies that checked and approved the target also know where the Chinese Embassy is. But the CIA's job is to spy on every embassy, and especially the Chinese Embassy, 24 hours a day.
"The CIA is supremely interested in China's relations with every government, but at this particular moment it is most interested in Chinese-Yugoslav relations. Given the weight of China in world politics and in the United Nations Security Council, nothing could be more important to the CIA than to be able to feed information to Washington about the political, trade and military relations between China and Yugoslavia.
"The CIA not only knows where the embassy is, but undoubtedly carries out both photographic and electronic eavesdropping, as well as satellite surveillance, on the embassy around the clock. The agency undoubtedly has compiled massive amounts of information about the staff and the activities of the embassy.
"Any agent assigned to surveillance of Belgrade, whether from Langley, Va., Brussels or any other place, who did not know where the Chinese Embassy is would be fired or demoted for incompetence.
"The CIA hardly needs to look at a map to know where the embassy is--let alone a three-year-old map. In fact, the way in which this matter was explained borders on a flagrantly callous and brazen boast of having done the deed. ...
"It is now clear that there are two main tendencies within NATO, the Clinton administration and the U.S. ruling class establishment over how to proceed with the war at present. Both are implacably hostile to the Yugoslav government and its just and heroic struggle to fend off imperialist occupation.
"Both tendencies want to use the criminal bombing campaign as their primary instrument at present. Both are for military occupation.
"But one tendency wants to bring the war to an end sooner than the other, through some form of negotiated limited victory for the U.S. and NATO. It has hoped to involve the UN Security Council to get compromises on the role of NATO, the Pentagon, Russia, etc.
"The other tendency aims to carry the war all the way to victory--meaning total capitulation of Yugoslavia--no matter how long and how much of an escalation that may take. This tendency has escalation plans in the works. ...
"The war-to-capitulation tendency is most openly represented by Gen. Wesley Clark, Supreme Commander of NATO, together with his spokesperson in the Clinton administration, Secretary of State Made leine Albright, plus British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This tendency fears that early negotiations could lead to a bombing pause, which in turn could lead to an early end of the war short of total surrender.
"For this tendency, bringing the issue to the UN Security Council is anathema for now. It would mean bringing the People's Republic of China into a position of leverage in the negotiations, as well as Russia.
"The arch-militarist tendency in the Pentagon fears that once the Security Council process starts, the dominance of the U.S. high command and its junior partners in London will be compromised, threatening their plans to escalate the war. ...
"This adventurist faction of the ruling class has the bit in its teeth at the moment and is ready to ride roughshod over anything that gets in the way of U.S. global military domination.
"But with the bombing of the Chinese Embassy, the adventurers in the Pentagon and their counterparts in the U.S. ruling class and its political establishment have risked bringing to an end the relationship between the U.S. and China begun in 1972 with the visit of President Richard Nixon.
"That relationship, which survived U.S. support for the counter-revolution at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and U.S. military provocations around Taiwan in 1996, will inevitably have to undergo a fundamental reevaluation in light of the attack upon the embassy.
"Above all, it shows the deep and irreconcilable hostility of U.S. imperialism towards socialist China that lurks beneath the surface in the summit meetings, the diplomacy and the trade relations."
The full Workers World report, "Bombing of Chinese embassy was not an accident: Two imperialist tendencies in the war," can be found on the Web at www. workers.org/ww/1999/yugo0520.html.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Workers World Oct. 28, 1999: U.S. deliberately bombed Chinese Embassy in Belgrade
