Below are snippets of a much longer article discussing the pros, cons, and legalities of political assassination followed by a few comments of my own about our current political situation. NATIONAL SECURITY: Is Assassination an Option? By Bruce Berkowitz Is assassination a legitimate tool of American foreign policy? If so, under what circumstances? By Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz. -------------------------------------------------- The U.S. government adopted such a ban (on assassination) in 1976, when President Ford—responding to the scandal that resulted when the press revealed CIA involvement in several assassinations—issued Executive Order 11905. This order prohibited what it called "political assassination" and essentially reaffirmed an often-overlooked ban that Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms had adopted for the CIA four years earlier. Jimmy Carter reaffirmed the ban in 1978 with his own Executive Order 12036. Ronald Reagan went even further in 1981; his Executive Order 12333 banned assassination in toto. This ban on assassination remains in effect today. Even so, there has been a disconnect between our policy and practice. The United States has tried to kill foreign leaders on several occasions since 1976, usually as part of a larger military operation. For example, in 1986, U.S. Air Force and Navy planes bombed Libya after a Libyan terrorist attack against a nightclub frequented by American soldiers in Berlin. One of the targets=2 0was Muammar Qaddafi’s tent. During Desert Storm in 1991, we bombed Saddam Hussein’s official residences and command bunkers. After the United States linked Osama bin Laden to terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, we launched a cruise missile attack at one of his bases in Afghanistan. In each case, U.S. officials insisted that our forces were merely aiming at "command and control" nodes or at a building linked to military operations or terrorist activities. In each case, however, the same officials admitted off the record that they would not have been upset if Qaddafi, Saddam, or bin Laden had been killed in the process. More recently, according to press reports, presidents have also approved so-called lethal covert operations—operations in which there is a good chance that an unfriendly foreign official might be killed. For example, the press reported a CIA-backed covert operation to topple Saddam in 1996 that probably would have killed him in the process, given the record of Iraqi leadership successions (no one has left office alive). After the September 11 terrorist strikes on New York and Washington, former Clinton officials leaked word to reporters that the CIA had trained Pakistani commandos in 1999 to snatch bin Laden. According to the Church Committee investigations of the 1970s, the CIA supported assassins who killed Patrice Lumumba of the Congo in201961 and repeatedly tried to assassinate Fidel Castro betw een 1961 and 1963. In addition, American officials were either privy to plots or encouraged coups that caused the death of a leader (Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic in 1961, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam in 1963, General René Schneider of Chile in 1970, and, later, President Salvador Allende in 1973). And, as noted, in recent years the United States has tried to do away with Qaddafi, Saddam, and bin Laden. The complete article above can be found on the web. It should also be noted that the CIA and British MI 6 orchestrated the coup of the newly democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 (google Operation Ajax) and that Christian preacher Pat Robertson recently called for the assassination of Bolivian leader Hugo Chavez, and that Israel, with US approval, systematically kills Arab political leaders. What is most interesting is the schizophrenic reaction to these activities by the US public and the media. On the one hand it is proclaimed that US foreign policy is all sweetness and light, and on the other hand the public glorifies James Bond-like heros in the movies played by Bruce Willis types; and Navy Seals, CIA special operations agents, and other shadowy government employees authorized to commit murder. A large part of the US public supports covert operations and double-talkers like Oliver North and Elliot Abrams who enable the most egregious of these operations while telling Congress, (wink, wink) that they do not exist. What has brought this to mind recently is the number of letters to newspapers saying that the Bush legacy is that "he kept us safe". These writers do not seem to care that his legacy could also be "he gave us disinformation". Not only did he provide us with disinformation about weapons in Iraq and the state of the US economy, but he and Condoleeeza Rice continue to state that Hamas orchestrated a coup in Palestine, while a simple web check will show that it won a convincing victory in democratic parliamentary elections there only three years ago. I am reminded of the joke where a lady finds her husband in bed with another woman and yells "You cheater!" and he says "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" The American public seems to be able to dissociate- George Washington didn't lie, American presidents don't lie. Politicians lie. George Bush doesn't lie, or if he does, he does it to keep us safe. Is it being cynical to say that the US doesn't have the same government that it's founding fathers created, or is this just realism? Or is it just that the game of Empire, where you kill those top generals and political leaders that you can't buy, has not really changed in centuries, and I've only just noticed that fact?
Israel has a government policy of assassination. It has not made them any safer. I would have sent an assassin to Saddam rather than overthrow the nation itself. The fact that we didn't means our military has another purpose in Iraq. x
Maybe I should be a Junior Minister of Misinformation, if not intentional disinformation--Evo Morales is President of Bolivia. Hugo Chavez is President of Venezuela. Rev. Pat Robertson would probably like to see them both murdered, but if attempts on their lives by US Special Ops failed, like they did with Castro, maybe they would have sent an Oswald to take out Bush. Gee, maybe assassinating foreign leaders isn't such a bad idea after all.
