Chinese Embassy Bombing & CIA Policy Making

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From: Chalmers Johnson <chaljohnson@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: H-ASIA: Embassy Bombing

To the Editors and Members of H-ASIA:

        Mr. Carson Tavenner urges us to "Please, stop creating conspiracy
theories." I for one am not creating conspiracy theories. I am charging the
U.S. government's intellignece agencies, particularly the Central
Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, with being out of
control and making American national policy themselves, in opposition to
the policies of the elected administration. For further evidence on this
point, please see the following:

(1) My short article entitled "American Intelligence Agencies Lose
Credibility over East Asian Security Issues," at
<http://www.jpri.org/public/crit6.6.html>. I expand on this subject in my
forthcoming book BLOWBACK, THE COSTS OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE (Holt
Metropolitan Books).

(2) The new book by Bill Gertz, BETRAYAL (Henry Regenery), with an appendix
of 23 very highly classified documents, some dating from 1998, that were
passed to Mr. Gertz of the Washington Times (the major outlet for illegally
obtained and declassified American secret information), who then decided to
publish them. Also see John Diamond, "New Book Bares Top Secret U.S. Data,
Sparks Alarm," Associated Press, May 21, 1999. Mr. Gertz is an avowed and
devoted enemy of the President of the United States, regardless of the
results of two national elections.

(3) The report in today's New York Times of the inspection of the alleged
"underground atom bomb plant" in North Korea, first reported by the New
York Times and based on data passed to it by Lt. Gen. Patrick Hughes of the
Defense Intelligence Agency without proper authorization. There was nothing
in the hole in the ground, no sign of any atomic plant at all. For details
on Hughes's involvement, see the Washington Post, Nov. 22, 1998, and
Executive Intelligence Review, January 1, 1999, p. 46.

(4) The report of the Pentagon's spinning and altering data on the North
Korean satellite launch of August 31, 1998 (one of the Air Force's two
RC-135S Cobra Ball aircraft, both assigned to the 55th Wing at Offutt AFB,
Nebraska, was on station to observe the launch) to make the point that the
Air Force wanted made rather than conforming to American policy toward
North Korea, in Aviation Week and Space Technology, September 14, 1998, p.
58f.

(5) The well documented case of Mr. Richard Nuccio, formerly one of the
leading State Department authorities on Central America. His security
clearance was withdrawn on the orders of the CIA, although he worked for
the State Department, for revealing to then Congressman, now Senator
Torricelli that the CIA was making its own policy on Guatemala and was
preventing any knowledge of what it was doing from reaching the
Congressional Oversight Committees by claiming that it could not divulge
its methods (i.e., that it was still recruiting torturers, murderers, and
kidnappers in Guatemala as 'assets' even though the Congress had
specifically ordered it to stop doing so). Nuccio is now a fellow of the
Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

(6) the Cox Committee's report on alleged Chinese nuclear spying, released
four days ago, that is based entirely on worst case intelligence estimates
(Cox and his partisan comrades have made no investigation of their own on
Chinese nuclear weapons development nor did they seek information from a
broad range of China specialists) and that are kept secret so that their
veracity and even their existence cannot be established. We are asked to
trust "our authorities" as they make allegations that could lead to war
with China. These are the same authorities  who in the 1980s vastly
overstated the size and effectiveness of the Soviet Navy and who seemed
unable to detect any weaknesses in the Soviet economy until it collapsed.
What they were writing and calling 'intelligence' was in fact spurious
information intended to affect the American political process, which it
did.

        Mr. Tavenner, the Kwantung Army, General MacArthur's
insubordination, Senator McCarthy's use of the FBI to savage loyal American
officials, The Pentagon Papers revealing the lies and plots of the U.S.
government in waging the Vietnam War,  Watergate and the presidential
misuse of the CIA and the FBI, the North-Poindexter conspiracy to deceive
the U.S. Congress on their private war in Central America, and Bill
Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" all occurred in
this century and are not "conspiracy theories" of any sort. With the
exception of the case of the Japanese militarists, these incidents
constitute the very heart of American government in our time. They suggest
to me the need to see in full detail how the "outdated map" (Secretary
Cohen's explanation to the world for the bombing of the embassy of China in
Belgrade) actually took precedence over the CIA's ground target spotters in
Belgrade itself, over the routine intelligence about the moving of the
location of the Chinese Embassy (if the targeting officers were really
using an old map of Belgrade, then they actually aimed at an empty lot),
and over the fail-safe methods maintained in our military to ensure that
some crazy officer does not direct a B-2 bomber with nuclear warheads
against any country that he does not like.  We also need to have some high
officials of the U.S. government held accountable and then dismissed. One
of the oddest things about the current administration is its refusal to
fire insubordinate, incompetent, and perhaps treasonous officials who leak
intelligence to its political enemies. Whatever one may think of Republican
presidents, at least they do fire intelligence officials who pull the kinds
of things that have become routine in this administration. Do you really
believe that you have established that this was a genuine mistake when you
tell us that the National Imaging and Mapping Agency is "new"? It's not
that new. Anyone who uses the phrase 'mistaken bombing' without the word
allegedly attached to it is writing propaganda, as things stand at the
present time.

        Chinese outrage is utterly justified, and it should not stop until
China (and the rest of us) get some real answers from these people. I do
hope you teach your U.S. Air Force cadets something other than how to say
"oops, mistake" when they go on active duty.

                                                Chalmers Johnson
Japan Policy Research Institute
Tel: (760) 944-3950; Fax: (760) 944-9022
web: <http://www.jpri.org/>
email: <chaljohnson@jpri.org>
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