US Strike on PRC Embassy Was "Decapitation
Attempt"
Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. Alexandria: Nov/Dec 2005.Vol.33, Iss.
11/12; pg. 3, 1 pgs
Highly-placed NATO sources have confirmed the reason behind the US air strike -
with three Tomahawk cruise missiles - against the Embassy of the People's
Republic of China (PRC) in Belgrade, (then) Yugoslavia, on May 7, 1999. The
then-Clinton Government of the United States said at the time that the strike
was accidental, due to faulty maps and intelligence, but this has been disproven
by the NATO sources.
The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on
intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was to have been in the
Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as
a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milosevic.
The London Observer, on October 19, 1999, had said that the attack had been
deliberate, noting: "... Politiken newspaper in Denmark and Ed Vulliamy cites
senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US stating that the
embassy was bombed after its NATO electronic intelligence (ELINT) discovered it
was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.
"Supportive evidence is provided 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.
"All three say they knew in April that the Chinese embassy was acting as a "rebro"
(rebroadcast) station for the Yugoslav army. The embassy was also suspected of
monitoring NATO's cruise missile attacks on Belgrade, with a view to developing
effective countermeasures."
The Clinton Administration blamed the attack on inaccurate intelligence
information provided by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), alleging that
the three missiles, which landed in one corner of the PRC embassy block, had
been meant to target the Yugoslav Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement
(FDSP). US Defence secretary William Cohen said at the time: "One of our planes
attacked the wrong target because the bombing instructions were based on an
outdated map." Sources within the US National Imagery and Mapping Agency reacted
with anger at the allegation that their mapping had been at fault.
Moreover, it was clear that Clinton appointee George Tenet, the CIA Director at
the time, was involved in the deception operation built around the failed
assassination attack.
There was widespread disbelief of the US Clinton Administration claim that the
attack was "accidental", but no accurate background information as to why the
attack against the Embassy was scheduled. The rationale cited by The Observer
was not the true cause of the targeting.
In July 1999, then-CIA Director Tenet testified in Congress that out of the 900
targets struck by NATO during the three-month bombing campaign, only one was
developed by the CIA: the PRC Embassy.
Copyright International Strategic Studies
Association Nov/Dec 2005
Reprinted with Permission.