CIA Calls In Cruise Missile Airstrike On The Chinese Embassy In Belgrade (May 7, 1999)

CIA deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.
According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's forces.

The story is confirmed in detail by three other Nato officers - a flight controller operating in Naples, an intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio traffic from Macedonia and a senior headquarters officer in Brussels. They all confirm that they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a 'rebro' [rebroadcast] station for the Yugoslav army (VJ) after alliance jets had successfully silenced Milosevic's own transmitters.

The Chinese were also suspected of monitoring the cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing effective counter-measures against US missiles.

One CIA officer was sacked and six others reprimanded yesterday as the American intelligence agency finally took the rap for the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade last year at the height of the Nato conflict with Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
George Tenet, the CIA director, acted against the seven employees last week after two internal agency reviews on the bombing, on May 7, which killed three Chinese citizens and injured more than 20 others. The attack plunged US-China relations into deep freeze and renewed doubts about the Nato campaign in several European nations.

Mr Tenet's decision, which was announced in an unusual public statement from the agency, follows 11 months of public and private Chinese government pressure for "severe punishment" of those responsible for the bombing.

The action has immediately sparked allegations in the US that President Bill Clinton's administration has used the agents as scapegoats in an effort to smooth relations between Beijing and Washington after Chinese officials refused to let the matter die.

The agents against whom action has been taken have not been identified. However, reports in the US yesterday said that the sacked agent was a mid-level career officer whose targeting error was blamed for the incident.

The others, said to include one senior official and four supervisors, received punishments varying from spoken admonitions to suspended promotions and pay awards.

The US has already apologised to Beijing and agreed to pay $28m (£17.5m) in compensation to the Chinese government, as well as $4.5m (£2.8m) to families of those who were killed and injured.

The CIA confirmed yesterday that its internal inquiries had concluded that the intelligence officers had intended to target the Yugoslav military supply headquarters, but wrongly identified the building housing the embassy.
Although Chinese - and, from time to time, some western sources - have claimed that the American attack was a deliberate act, the official Washington version of events which emerged within days of the attack has not substantially changed in the ensuing months.

The CIA says the bombing was caused when the now sacked officer mistakenly identified the military supply HQ on a street map on the basis of its address, 2 Bulevar Umetnosti, which was in fact several hundred yards away from the building housing the Chinese embassy.

The map on which the target was identified was a 1997 map that showed the Chinese embassy located at its earlier address in the centre of Belgrade.

After the location was wrongly fixed, it was discussed during three meetings among CIA officials, none of whom questioned the targeting procedure that had been used. The target details were then passed to the Pentagon and Nato, but were not queried there either.

The whole saga is particularly embarrassing for the CIA because this was the only one of 900 targets struck by Nato planes during the 78-day campaign that was wholly selected by the agency.

"The CIA lacked formal procedures for preparing and forwarding target nomination packages to the US military," Mr Harlow admitted.

However, as reported in the Guardian last year, in the week preceding the embassy bombing another mid-level CIA officer did voice doubts and objections to the identification of the target.

This agent called colleagues at the US military mapping agency in Washington with his doubts and also discussed the matter with the Nato taskforce in Naples, Italy, which was responsible for issuing instructions to B-2 stealth bomber crews about their night missions. No senior official intervened, however, and the strike went ahead. The officer who raised the concerns was officially praised - though not identified - by Mr Tenet in his official statement.

A lawyer for one of the reprimanded officers said yesterday that it was "manifestly unjust" to blame individual CIA officers when "the failure was systematic".

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[shyamranger]

The biggest terrorist of the whole world...........USA.

[aviomaster]

THIS is CHINESE territory in Serbia. SO USA bombed CHINA.

[pobesnelizmaj]

Kako Kinezi ovo pamte , ni sami nemamo pojma.

[aviomaster]

@KoSoVaAnGeL - IF Serbs are root of all EVIL in Yugoslavia , WHY Albanians in Kosovo wanted independence in 1948 in big uprising they had in 1981 you have videos on YOUTUBE. There was no Slobodan Milosevic back in 1948 or 1981. WHY did not you respect the country you live in, WHICH national minority in USA has University in their own language ??? SAY it as it is. Serbs are not root of ALL EVIL.

[aviomaster]

@KoSoVaAnGeL - YOUR story on Yugoslavian events is pile of made up stories who have nothing to do with reality of what happened.

IF Croats have a right on their own country why is it forbidden for Serbs in Croatia the same thing. They want state for themselves. In Bosnia and H. too. IF you are so smart can you explain why Bosnia and H. is divided country and will soon disintegrate, IF Serbs are root of all EVIL , WHY Croats and Muslims fought against each other ?????

[aviomaster]

@KoSoVaAnGeL - WHY are you posting nonsense, You are Albanian girl who was born in England or USA By reading your comments I can say you are clueless on Yugoslav civil war. YUGOSLAVIA died on December 23 1991 when Germany recognized Slovenian and Croatian independence and they knew war is going to start cause Serbs in Croatia did not want to live in New Croatia and Croatian parliament voted to kick Serbs out of Croatian constitution and make them a minority.

[aviomaster]

@Hperman09 - "Serbian military intelligence units were hiding inside the Chinese embassy" USA said they had old maps. They never mentioned Serbian military hiding. WHY would they hide in Chinese embassy. YOU are clueless making shit up like CNN and other USA gov. controlled media. CHINESE were giving important information about bombings to Serbian army , NO Serbian army ever entered Chinese embassy. THEY had million other places to hide.

[koleng2011]

@aviomaster USA=the biggest terrorist! fuck USA

[Hperman09]

On May 7 1999, USAF B-2 warplanes dropped five JDAM bombs on a Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese reporters and injuring 20.

I think it was all downed to communications. Even in February 2011, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin admitted in an unpublished memoir that Serbian military intelligence units were hiding inside the Chinese embassy in Belgrade when it was bombed.

[KoSoVaAnGeL]

@publicmario17 Serbia wanted to kill as many of us as it could. Type in google Greater Serbia and you'll see how much land they want from other countries that exist today. Around 250.00 people died in the ward from 1990 till 1999 when Serbia was bombed from USA and NATO. That's why Montenegro got out without a war. The west told Serbia that using force will take you deeper into the truble. In 2006 Montenegro left Yugoslavia and that's where Yugoslavia died.

[KoSoVaAnGeL]

@publicmario17 No, no, Tito did not obey Soviet rules at all. Tito did not allow Soviet Union to touch Yugoslavia because he knew that being under Soviet Union would mean work for them like a dog. Life was alright under Tito because he really wanted a united Yugoslavia by giving all of us the rights we should have. Tito was a Croat. He killed many Serb killers who soon after world war 2 ended tried to kill many Croats, Bosnians and Albanians.