http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/04/spooky_murder_in_loudon_county_va_connected_1999_chinese_embassy_bombing
Spooky murder in Loudoun County, VA Sat, 04/04/2009 - 8:39pm
Last month, former Army officer William Bennett was found murdered after being out with his wife on an early morning walk in a residential neighborhood in Lansdowne, Virginia. His wife Cynthia was badly injured but survived the March 22nd attack, which is being investigated by local and federal authorities.
In 1999, sources bring to our attention, Bennett was a retired Army lieutenant colonel working at the CIA on contract as a targeter during the 78-day NATO air war on Kosovo. He was one of the people, according to a former U.S. intelligence source, found responsible by the Agency for feeding the target into the system that resulted in the May 7, 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
CIA spokesman George Little told the Loudoun Independent that Bennett left his job at the Agency in 2000.
The former U.S. intelligence source says Bennett was fired as a consequence of the CIA investigation into how the Chinese embassy was targeted.
On April 8, 2000, the Los Angeles Timesreported that the CIA “has fired one employee and sanctioned six others, including a senior official, in the first official punishment of those involved in the deadly incident. …The State Department informed the Chinese Embassy in Washington on Saturday of the disciplinary actions by the CIA … The CIA declined to identify those who were disciplined for the bombing, which killed three Chinese civilians and wounded 27 others. But a U.S. official said the agent who was fired ‘was the one who selected the target . . . and essentially put the X on the map in the wrong place.’"
According to the former intelligence source, that one person fired by the CIA over the incident was Bennett.
The CIA would not confirm that. “When it comes to Bennett, the CIA has not commented on what his responsibilities were as a contractor, noting only that his service with the Agency ended in 2000,” CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told Foreign Policy Saturday.
Gimigliano would not comment on whether extra security precautions were being advised for the other CIA officials who were reported as having been sanctioned by the CIA for the incident.
The bombing of the Chinese embassy was immediately declared a terrible mistake by the U.S. government, but it caused severe diplomatic strain on U.S. relations with Beijing. The U.S. government said the bombing of the Chinese embassy was the result in part of targeting based on old maps, that did not note that the Chinese embassy had moved to nearby the targeted location, the headquarters of the Yugoslav Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement.
“According to administration, defense and intelligence officials, the bombing was caused by a fundamentally flawed process for trying to locate the directorate's headquarters in the New Belgrade section of the Yugoslav capital,” the New York Timesreported in 2000. “Armed with only an address, 2 Bulevar Umetnosti, the officer who was dismissed used an unclassified military map to try to pinpoint the building's location, based on a limited knowledge of addresses on a parallel street.”
“On the map, which the National Imagery and Mapping Agency produced in 1997, the building that turned out to be the embassy was not identified,” the Times report continued. “Instead, the map showed the embassy in its former location in central Belgrade. After a location was identified, the target was discussed during at least three meetings among C.I.A.officials, none of whom, evidently, questioned the identification process, the officials said. The target was then turned over to Pentagon officials, who, also without questioning it, put it on a list of targets to bomb in Belgrade.”
“It was the first and last target the C.I.A. selected during the war, Mr. Tenet testified last year,” the Times’ report said.
“China expressed strong dissatisfaction today with CIA disciplinary action taken against several employees in connection with the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and once again rejected U.S. conclusions that human error caused the attack,” the Washington Postreported days after the CIA announced the disciplinary action against the seven officers. “Beijing said it was not appeased by Saturday's announcement."
The FBI has reportedly joined the Loudon County Sheriff’s office in investigating Bennett’s murder.
