Assassination Politics adopted by the US president..
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Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 03:27:16 +0100
From: Mario Profaca
Reply-To: spynews@yahoogroups.com
To: "[Spy News]"
Subject: [Spy News] Bush gives green light to CIA for assassination of named
terrorists
Bush gives green light to CIA for assassination of named terrorists
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,582507,00.html
'Covert killings to take in less important al-Qaida figures'
David Gow in New York
Monday October 29, 2001
The Guardian
President Bush has given the CIA an explicit go-ahead to carry out covert
missions to assassinate Osama bin Laden and his supporters around the world,
effectively lifting a 25-year ban on such activities.
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, confirmed reports of such a move
yesterday by telling CNN that the US would be acting in self-defence in
carrying out such missions.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that Mr Bush has decided that
executive orders banning assassinations since a series of botched attempts
in the 1960s and 1970s allow him to single out a named terrorist or
terrorists for death by covert action.
Mr Rumsfeld said: "It is not possible to defend yourself against terrorists
at every single location in the world and at every single moment.
"The only way to deal with terrorists is to take the battle to them and find
them and root them out and that's self-defence. We're going after these
people and their organisations and capabilities and to stop them killing
Americans."
The US president, according to senior government officials quoted by the
Post, signed an order last month known as an intelligence "finding", which
broadens the list of potential targets beyond Bin Laden and his immediate
circle of some 15 operational planners - and beyond Afghanistan.
The CIA, pilloried in some quarters along with the FBI last month for its
fatal failure to detect the movements and plans of the al-Qaida terrorist
network, is said to be willing and able to "take the lives of terrorists
designated by the president".
Mr Bush has apparently circumvented the legal constraints on clandestine
killing missions imposed since the Church committee found in 1975 that plots
against five foreign leaders under presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon
had been organised in terms "so ambiguous that it is difficult to be certain
at what levels assassination activity was known and authorised".
The new presidential order, drawing on one signed by President Clinton
against al-Qaida three years ago, apparently overcomes such problems by
making plain that responsibility and accountability rest with the president
and his senior colleagues.
"I would want the president's guidance to be as clear as it could be,
including the names of individuals. You have got to have the political
levels behind you so the intelligence officers are not left hanging," the
recently retired CIA deputy director, John Gannon, told the Post.
But history suggests that covert assassinations remain fraught with danger
and carry a high risk of failure.
Jeffrey Richelson, an intelligence historian and author of a new book on the
CIA, said of pre-1975 efforts: "They never succeeded in killing anyone. They
were the gang that couldn't shoot straight."
Agents carried out numerous inept missions to kill Fidel Castro, using among
other botched devices bacteria in his favourite type of cigar, an exploding
seashell, and a poisoned wet suit. Other botched missions were undertaken in
central America, the Congo and Iraq, though Mr Richelson has said the CIA
did significantly aid the assassins of Che Guevara, and, indirectly, the
overthrow of Chile's Salvador Allende in 1973.
Yesterday's report suggested that President Bush's order could extend well
beyond the al-Qaida network concentrated around Bin Laden and the FBI's 22
"most-wanted" terrorists, with the CIA debating how many of the 35 or more
countries identified as places where the terrorist network is active could
figure on the list.
Andrew Card, White House chief of staff, said yesterday on NBC's Meet the
Press: "It could take years but we are going to do everything we can to rout
the terrorists in Afghanistan and then get them all around the world."
Financiers of the al-Qaida - "the Gucci guys, the guys who write the
cheques", according to one unnamed CIA official - could also be targets but
the report said it was unclear whether Mr Bush had "signed orders that would
amount to individual death warrants".
---
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