We inadvertently bombed the Chinese Embassy. But Clinton now is working very hard. He has sent a letter of apology to the Chinese. And, he’s also given them a gift certificate for future nuclear secrets.

Letterman’s joke fuses two late-1990s controversies into a single punchline: the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War (May 1999), officially described as accidental, and contemporaneous U.S. anxieties about Chinese acquisition of American nuclear weapons information. By framing an apology as a “gift certificate for future nuclear secrets,” he satirizes the inadequacy of diplomatic contrition after lethal error and mocks the idea that U.S. security lapses could be treated as casual, transactional giveaways. The humor depends on incongruity—state violence and espionage recast in the language of customer service—while also expressing skepticism about government competence and accountability.