AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said today it will fly its flags at half-mast in what diplomats call a “show of respect” for the three Chinese journalists killed in last Friday’s NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Meanwhile, protests continue outside the American Embassy in Beijing. U.S. Ambassador James Sasser is holed up in the building for a fourth day. NATO has said the bombing of the Chinese Embassy, a well-known building in Belgrade, was due to faulty intelligence information supplied to allies by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Well, in this last segment of the show, we’re going to hear some different theories from reporters at the NATO briefing this weekend, but first we’re going to Mike Levine, who is my colleague at Pacifica station WBAI in New York. And he is a former agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as many other divisions of the U.S. government for about 25 years, and he’s got some interesting theories about what happened this weekend.

First, a little more about your experience, Mike? Custom?

MICHAEL LEVINE: Yeah, Customs, Hard Narcotics Smuggling Division. I worked for the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division and Internal Revenue Intelligence. And all in all, it was a 25-year career. And I think what’s pertinent here is that I spent 17 of those years with the Drug Enforcement Administration, often working with Central Intelligence — or, I should say, trying to work with them, because we were often at cross-purposes.

And I’ve long criticized them on, you know, my own show here on WBAI, The Expert Witness, as being amazingly, amazingly inept at what they do. And that opinion, in the latest news, is just once more buttressed. We had Ralph McGehee, 25-year CIA veteran, on. We had four federal agents with a hundred years on this show talking about how if — unless Central Intelligence is harnessed and controlled, they’re going to drag us into World War III.

And basically, last night, or, I should say, within the last 24 hours, I was contacted by a government insider about this most recent development — that is, the quote-quote, “accidental” hitting — when I say “quote-unquote, 'accidental,'” it was really not that — hitting of the Chinese Embassy. And what this government insider told me was simply this: that, once again, Central Intelligence was outconned, this time by the Serbian intelligence people, who convinced them that there was a troop concentration at this particular location that would be moved quickly. And they bought the lie, hook, line and sinker, and sent the missile into the Chinese Embassy, which, once again, points out how really dangerously inept this agency is.

AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second, Mike. Can you just explain that again, that the person who you talked to, who is a government insider —

MICHAEL LEVINE: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — said that —

MICHAEL LEVINE: The true story.

AMY GOODMAN: Yeah.

MICHAEL LEVINE: The true story, what they’re now calling — what the news — I just noticed in today’s reports — were vague information from Central Intelligence taking responsibility. And every report I’ve read is very vague. But this pretty much answers what happened. And I think, if anything, what this really exclusive report should point out is that the media should not accept these vague answers, because this is much too important.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain how this person believes it happened.

MICHAEL LEVINE: How this person believes it happened was the following. A double agent, who the CIA believed was working for them, was in fact working for the Serbs. And his mission was to feed the Central Intelligence Agency false information about targets, where to hit. And as a matter of fact, the information went as far as to say, at this time, the double agent even gave them accurate information where they actually killed people to set this up, this very clever ruse. In other words, they sacrificed real troops so the Central Intelligence had some bona fide hits from this particular double agent, and then they bought the big lie, which was: “Hit right now. Don’t waste any time, because right at this particular moment there is a troop concentration at such-and-such coordinates.” And the CIA, believing that, “Well, since A and B were true, C should be true,” bought this classic con that’s existed in the world of espionage since the year 1, and they hit the Chinese Embassy, which was a monstrous coup for the Serbians.

AMY GOODMAN: Don’t they do a cross-reference?

MICHAEL LEVINE: Well, if they were professionals, they wouldn’t — you know, if they were really — let’s face it, I teach informant handling. And this is what this is all about: human intelligence. And their record is so demonstrably bad in the handling of human intelligence, we don’t have the time to go through just in the last couple of years indications that pretty much backed up the assessment by Admiral Jeremiah that they be revamped entirely. And he was hired to assess the CIA’s capabilities by the CIA, and he said they should be completely revamped and start all over again, just about. And they haven’t done that.

AMY GOODMAN: You don’t know that this person was a double agent or that they were fed false information, because somehow Serb authorities knew that they were — that this person was double-crossing them or feeding information to the West.

MICHAEL LEVINE: That could well — that could well have been. But by approaching it as professionals instead of, really, cowboys, which is what they did, they should have detected that. And this was a monstrous failure.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Mike, an interesting theory, and thanks for sharing information that a source gave you from inside the government. Mike Levine, former Drug Enforcement Administration agent, worked in intelligence for Internal Revenue and Customs and DEA for more than 25 years and does the show on Pacifica station WBAI here in New York called Expert Witness.

Right now we’re going to turn to some other theories that were put forward by reporters at the NATO briefing this weekend — it was actually Sunday — as they questioned NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea and Major General Walter Jertz, who is his military counterpart. We begin with Jamie Shea.

JAMIE SHEA: I don’t see anything, either in terms of the military campaign or in terms of the way in which the diplomatic activities are ongoing today, which suggest that this was a catastrophe. It was not. It was a mistake, but no more than that.

CNN REPORTER: A follow-up, please, Jamie. I wasn’t referring specifically and only to the hit on the Chinese Embassy. And the question was: Your thoughts on why, then, so many people in the world do not get your message, do not — prefer to see this differently to the way you insist it is?

JAMIE SHEA: Well, there are always going to be people in democracies who will see things differently. That is why, of course, we are fighting this particular conflict, to uphold the standards of people being able to dissent and have their view, even against our own air campaign, without being put in prison or without being murdered as a result. There, I believe, is where the fundamental difference is in this whole operation. And accidents, mistakes or no mistakes, will continue to lie until the very end. Doug?

DOUG: Does NATO have any information that there was, in fact, secret collaboration between China and Belgrade, that China was giving intelligence on the conflict to Belgrade and that Serbia had moved in equipment and people into the Chinese Embassy, making at least one part of that embassy a legitimate target?

MAJOR GEN. WALTER JERTZ: This is an intelligence matter. We still, and we will continue to, degrade Milosevic’s command-and-control facilities wherever they are, wherever we can find them. And we are in the process of finding and defining those targets. Collaboration, I could only speculate, as I already indicated yesterday.

JAMIE SHEA: Craig?

CRAIG WHITNEY: Thank you, Jamie. Craig Whitney from The New York Times. I have a question for both of you, which is whether the statement that was issued late last night by the Defense Department and the CIA constitutes the last word that we’re going to hear about the investigation, which I assume you’re saying is complete, because the statement says that “a review of our procedures has convinced us that this anomaly is unlikely to occur again.” Does this mean that SHAPE and whoever else was involved in the targeting have completed the review and that we won’t hear any more results than this? Because it leaves a lot of things vague. It doesn’t — it says “those involved in targeting.” If you read between the lines, you could say that’s the CIA and, by implication, also the Defense Department, including SHAPE. But it doesn’t say. That’s hanging in the air. And another thing hanging in the air, General Jertz, is: Did you really mean to say that if you discovered collaboration between the Chinese Embassy and the Serb authorities, that the Chinese Embassy or places like that could become targets? Because that was the implication in the answer you just gave.

MAJOR GEN. WALTER JERTZ: Well, I hope it was not just because my English is not as good as yours. No, there will be no — we will never target anybody except military targets that are directly related to Milosevic. So I am really thankful for the question just to clarify it. And we will continue the targeting process, which is very robust, which is very systematic, to identify targets which are valid to downgrade, to degrade all the capabilities Milosevic has. And these ones will be the only targets which we are going to attack also in the future. I thank you once again for the question so that I had a chance to clarify that.

JAMIE SHEA: Yes, Craig, we don’t consider embassies to be targets, as you well know. We made that abundantly clear yesterday. As to the question you addressed to me, well, we have ascertained, quickly, that the error was in the intelligence process, unlike when you have a pilot error or some technological or mechanical error. And as intelligence, particularly with targeting policy, Craig, is something that obviously has to be carefully guarded, for strict operational reasons. I’m certainly not going to give you any promise that we’ll have further information. The North Atlantic Council will be briefed on the circumstances, as ambassadors asked yesterday, but I’m not going to promise any more information at the present time. Nick, please.

NICK: General, Deutsche Welle. With the Apaches, OK, they’re deployed there at the moment. There’s a lot of training missions going on. But has the military got the go-ahead, the authority, to actually use these Apaches in a combat situation as opposed to training? Has it actually got the authority to use them? And regarding the Chinese Embassy, coming back to this again, I mean, with the investigations, what happens in military and intelligence circles? Is someone sort of held responsible, or are people held responsible? Does a commander walk? What actually happens here? Because this is actually, for most people, they consider it to be gross incompetence, knocking out someone’s embassy. It’s not just a mistake; it’s just incompetence. And surely someone’s going to walk for this?

MAJOR GEN. WALTER JERTZ: I’ll deal with Nick. The intentions first.

JAMIE SHEA: OK. Well, Nick, I think the most important thing is to try to find out why you made a mistake — and this is what has been happening — identify where it came from to see if it was because of some problem in the system, as it were, and then to take steps to make sure, by tracking back to first origins, that you ensure that that sort of mistake is not going to happen again. And that’s clearly what’s happened. And that is, of course, the priority.

Foster. Où est Foster? Foster est là.

FOSTER: I have a two-tier question for General Jertz. Some unconfirmed rumors coming from Belgrade are saying that the radio station belonging to a daughter or to the daughter of Milosevic which was bombed a few days ago started broadcasting again, and most of the broadcasts, as it was TV station, were Chinese programs. Is there a possibility that these programs would have been broadcast from the Chinese Embassy and that the missile would have been homing in on the broadcast? And that the second question is: In Washington, the sources commenting on the Chinese Embassy bombing said they had a problem with a local intelligence source; is there any possibility that a manipulation would have taken place to push the Americans toward bombing the Chinese Embassy?

MAJOR GEN. WALTER JERTZ: On the first question, I do have to elaborate it, because I’m not aware that this radio relay station is used to broadcast Chinese news, so I have to come —

FOSTER: I was talking about Chinese-made programs.

MAJOR GEN. WALTER JERTZ: Chinese-made programs.

FOSTER: Whatever they are.

MAJOR GEN. WALTER JERTZ: But using the relay stations. I would have to go into the military details, as this relay station is really already working again. I am not in the position at present time to give you an answer on that, but I will come to you later on, once I have found it out.

On the other question, I already mentioned that we cannot go into speculations. So, we really do not know so far if there’s any tricks or any traps or collaboration, as I already indicated. So, I also cannot elaborate on that, because that would be a speculation, and as I already promised you when I started my job here, I’m not going to do that before I don’t have evidence.

JAMIE SHEA: OK, let’s go to the gentleman there, please. Sir?

XINUA REPORTER: Xinhua News Agency. A question for Jamie: Today, Chinese vice president made a speech televised nationwide in China concerning the NATO attack of the Chinese Embassy and the violation of international law, and saying NATO must take full responsibility for that. How do you comment on the violation of international law? And what will be the further response to the Chinese doubts expressed for the only expression of apology and regrets?

JAMIE SHEA: Well, thank you very much for that question. And let me again, particularly to you here in the audience, express the regret of NATO for the attack upon the embassy of your country. Obviously, I listened to the vice premier today. I watched him on television. And we have taken the responsibility already for the attack, mistaken attack, on the embassy. So there’s no ambiguity about that.

Secondly, I was encouraged by the fact that he called for restraint and calm by the Chinese people, particularly in terms of the demonstrations around various U.S. and other NATO embassies. As you know, it is the responsibility of governments to ensure that embassies and diplomatic personnel are protected and that all demonstrations remain peaceful. Those demonstrations are totally legitimate, but obviously we would hope that they would remain peaceful. And I was encouraged that the government clearly shares that view and intends to keep those demonstrations calm and peaceful.

Third, Chancellor Schröder of Germany will be visiting Beijing this week. I know that he will convey on behalf of the alliance again the expression of our regrets. But he will also be making the point that this was a mistake and no more than a mistake — it has no political significance — and that the Chinese government, as a member of the Security Council, hopefully will work with us, with Russia, with the allies, towards the elaboration of a Security Council resolution which will stop the war. What I believe the Chinese government wants to do is exactly what the NATO governments want to do, which is to be able to resolve the crisis and to stop the fighting.

AMY GOODMAN: NATO press briefing this weekend after the bombing of the Chinese Embassy. And that does it for today’s program. Democracy Now! is produced by María Carrión and David Love. Errol Maitland is our technical director, Michael Ede our headlines editor. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!