According to the Freezer Truck Story, Yugoslav forces transported dozens of freezer trucks full of murdered Albanian civilians over hundreds of kilometers of roads, many of them partly bombed-out, and often over mountains, out of Kosovo and deep into upper Serbia.

This was done, we are told, in the midst of around-the-clock NATO bombing.

The idea of trying to hide bodies by transporting them hundreds of miles in freezer trucks (Mercedes Benz, no less!) is grotesquely absurd. But in addition we must factor in the risk, given what NATO was doing at that time to Serbia, including Kosovo.

This is described in text and pictures in the "White Book on NATO Aggression Against Yugoslavia." The White Book is based on evidence compiled by forensic technicians and magistrates and was published by the Yugoslav government. You may access it at
http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/kosovo_crisis/destruction/white_book2/

The White Book makes clear that NATO could bomb anything that moved in Kosovo. Anything.

Had Serbian forces attempted to drive dozens of slow-moving freezer trucks cross-country, some surely would have been bombed while others would have been ambushed by Kosovo Liberation Army terrorists. The KLA terrorists had excellent rapport with the Western media. Within hours the news would have been broadcast worldwide. Anybody attempting such a hair-brained cover-up could be certain that some of their trucks would be destroyed and others would end up illustrating a Carlotta Gall article in the New York Times.

To get an idea of what NATO was capable of, consider the case of the Albanian Refugee Column which was bombed in the vicinity of the Kosovo town of Djakovica on 13 April 1999, three weeks into NATO's war.

The Case of the Bombed Refugee Column
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The White Book includes photographs of the aftermath of the horrific attack on this column of Albanian refugees who, according to Yugoslav officials, were attempting to return to their homes when NATO incinerated them.

As you may recall, NATO first denied it had bombed the refugees, suggesting that the slaughter was the work of Yugoslav forces. In response, the Yugoslav government brought reporters to the scene. They examined pieces of missiles and identified US markings.

This was a bit embarrassing, but no problem: NATO simply changed the official story. According to the new story, yes, NATO pilots did bomb the refugees, but it was a mistake. They had attacked military vehicles responsible for burning an Albanian village and in the confusion they also bombed a refugee convoy. (Thus the Serbs, not NATO, were ultimately responsible...)

To back up the new story, NATO held a press conference in which they played a tape of a voice, supposedly that of the pilot, explaining the confusion that led up to bombing the refugee column. Here's how Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported the NATO press conference:

"In a tape recording played at the daily briefing at NATO headquarters, the unidentified NATO pilot made no mention of tractors or other signs of civilian life during the attack.

"He said he was convinced he was targeting Yugoslav forces responsible for the burning of villages."[1] (our emphasis)

Because of what NATO would say in their next story, it is important to determine whether the mass media (such as Deutsche Presse-Agentur) was correct in reporting that NATO had indeed claimed that the voice on the tape was the actual voice of the actual pilot involved in the attack.

Just to be clear on this, here is an excerpt from the press conference at which the tape was played. In the excerpt a reporter asks General Giuseppe Marani some questions about the supposed pilot's description of the attack. This part is irrelevant. The important things to notice are that:

a) by asking a question about what "the pilot said," the reporter showed he believed he had just heard a tape of the actual pilot who attacked the convoy and,

b) Note that in response to the reporter's question, General Giuseppe Marani did not say, "that was not the actual voice of the actual pilot." Instead he also spoke of what "the pilot said" thus confirming that the voice on the tape did indeed belong to the pilot who had dropped bombs on a column of refugees:

"QUESTION: I also note that the pilot said that he saw three dark green, two-and-a-half ton vehicles, which are obviously not tractors with trailers behind them or horses and carts. Is there some discrepancy here? Are we talking about two possible different incidents?

GEN. MARANI: The pilot said he saw the houses burning on a road north of the road that we are talking about.[1] (Our emphasis)

Unfortunately for NATO, the tape story also had problems. First, some of the Western reporters whom the Yugoslavs brought to the scene of attack actually reported that they saw no evidence of anything but a civilian convoy. Second, a few of the reporters interviewed Albanian survivors who said there were no military vehicles present. And Serbian TV (RTS) was broadcasting these facts around the world 24 hours a day. (RTS was bombed a few days later...)

So NATO did another flip-flop, claiming they had never meant to say this was the actual tape of the actual pilot. Rather, they had only presented the tape as an example of what such a pilot might have said about such an incident!

This remarkable claim was made by none other than General Giuseppe Marani, the very NATO spokesperson who, in the excerpt from the press conference, quoted above, referred to the tape as being what "the pilot said"!

Here's the tortured admission that the tape was fiction:

"Alliance officials admitted that a pilot's statement they released last week did not correspond to the specific incident for which NATO has accepted responsibility.

"This is contrary to what the world's media was given to believe on Thursday when NATO broadcast a recording of a pilot talking about how he had taken the decision to bomb what he believed to be a military vehicle.

"NATO spokesman Brigadier General Giuseppe Marani said the purpose of the broadcast was 'to clarify the process of a pilot involved in an action of that type.'

"The alliance had not meant to imply there was 'a relationship between that pilot and the narrative on the tape and specific events on the ground.'"[2]

In the popular image of the "free press," reporters are hell-bent on exposing wrongdoing by the powers-that-be. But note, in the real world, the strained gentleness of AFP's words. Phrases like,

"Alliance officials admitted that a pilot's statement they released last week did not correspond to the specific incident [!] for which NATO has accepted responsibility.

and

"contrary to what the world's media was given to believe..."

And consider the remarkable headline which AFP gave this piece. Please keep in mind that, with any news article, most people read only the headline, making it crucial. What would have been an accurate headline? How about:

"NATO Admits Pilot Tape a Hoax," or, "NATO Botches Pilot Tape Lie."

Perhaps you may think of a better headline but we doubt you can equal the one that AFP came up with. Here it is:

"NATO pilot was not responsible for bombing of refugee convoy."

Isn't that wondrous? It manages to be literally true - that is, since the tape was a hoax it follows that that particular NATO pilot (or whoever was the voice on the tape!) did not bomb the refugees - while at the same time communicating a lie - that NATO cannot be held responsible for bombing the refugees.

One might ask, why did NATO bomb these particular refugees?

Yugoslav officials stated that the refugees were attempting to return home.

According to Kosovo historian Cedomir Prlincevic, in the spring of 1999 the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fascist-terrorists were attempting to take control of the clans that exert an all-powerful influence over Albanians in Kosovo. He explains the special features of Albanian culture which rendered these centralized clans especially susceptible to violent coercion. The text of his interview, "Why Albanians Fled Kosovo During NATO Bombing," can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/interviews/keys.htm

According to Prlincevic, the KLA had ordered all Albanians out of Kosovo. The KLA, and its NATO handlers, filmed the exodus and, using carefully selected interviews, convinced the world that the Serbs were "cleansing" the province of Albanians, thus seeming to justify the NATO bombing.

The KLA served as bombing spotters for NATO air attacks. If indeed these Albanians had rejected KLA orders to vacate and were trying to return home, it is possible that the KLA called in a NATO air strike as an object lesson to other refugees who might also be thinking of returning home. This would explain why, on a perfectly clear day, NATO bombed what was obviously a refugee column. The bombing would serve as a warning to Albanians. The denial would mitigate bad publicity in the West.

To see the horrifying results of what was perhaps NATO's object lesson go to
http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/kosovo_crisis/destruction/white_book2/01.htm

-- Francisco Gil-White & Jared Israel

Note: In case the "White Book on NATO Aggression" should become unavailable at the url given above, try the following:
http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/yugoslavia/milosevic/bela/bela/00.htm

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Footnotes and Further Reading
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