http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wise22-2009jul22,0,2126028.story
The agency has been involved in planning assassinations since at least 1954.
By David Wise
July 22, 2009
Back in 1960, the CIA hatched a plan to kill Patrice Lumumba by
infecting his toothbrush with a deadly disease. The Congolese leader
would brush his teeth and, presto, in a few days or weeks he would be gone.
Around the same time, the CIA's Health Alteration Committee -- who
thought that name up? -- sent a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief to
Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, the leader of Iraq.
And the CIA's "executive action" unit plotted for years to murder
Fidel Castro. It hired the Mafia to poison his food and tried to give
him a diving suit contaminated with Madura foot, a rare tropical
disease that starts in the foot and moves upward, slowly destroying
the body. The CIA also considered offing the Cuban leader with an
exploding cigar, a poison pen and a seashell that would blow up
underwater when he touched it.
Not one of the plots was successful. Lumumba and Kassem were executed
by their foes, and Castro is still alive. But the plots make clear
that the CIA has been licensed to kill for decades.
Congress -- especially congressional Democrats -- was outraged
earlier this month when it was disclosed that, apparently on orders
from Vice President Dick Cheney, the CIA for eight years concealed
from Congress a program to assassinate the leaders of Al Qaeda,
starting with Osama bin Laden. But they shouldn't have been surprised
that such a plan was being hatched.
The CIA's involvement in planning assassinations goes back at least
to 1954, when it prepared a manual for killings as part of a U.S.-run
coup against the leftist government of Guatemala. The 19-page manual,
which was declassified in 1997, makes chilling reading. "The
essential point of assassination is the death of the subject," it
declares, noting that while it "is possible to kill a man with the
bare hands ... the simplest local tools are often much the most
efficient means of assassination. A hammer, ax, wrench, screwdriver,
fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand or anything hard, heavy and
handy will suffice."
The agency's manual recommends "the contrived accident" as the best
way to dispose of someone. "The most efficient accident ... is a fall
of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stairwells,
unscreened windows and bridges will serve." The manual suggests
grabbing the victim by the ankles and "tipping the subject over the
edge. ... Falls before trains or subway cars are usually effective,
but require exact timing."
The manual goes on to discuss "blunt weapons," noting that "a hammer
can be picked up almost anywhere in the world" and that baseball bats
are also excellent. The manual explains the best place in the body to
stab people or how to bash their skulls in and the pros and cons of
rifles, pistols, submachine guns and other weapons.
During the Cold War years, the CIA plotted against eight foreign
leaders, five of whom died violently. The agency's role varied in each case.
After the plots were publicized by a Senate committee, President Ford
issued an executive order in 1976 barring political assassination.
President Reagan broadened the ban, dropping the word "political" and
extending the prohibition to include contract killers as well as
government employees.
Although the ban remains in effect, it has largely been ignored on
the premise that it does not apply in a military setting. Consider
the following:
In 1986, Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya in retaliation for a
terrorist attack on a Berlin disco that killed three people,
including two U.S. servicemen, and wounded more than 200 others. In
the airstrike, Libya's leader, Moammar Kadafi, a target of the raid,
escaped unharmed, but his 2-year-old adopted daughter was killed.
During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when the first Bush
administration bombed Baghdad, Robert M. Gates, the former CIA
director and current Defense secretary, said White House officials
hoped that "Saddam Hussein would be killed in a bunker." At an air
base in Saudi Arabia that year, Cheney, then secretary of Defense,
and Gen. Colin L. Powell signed a 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb
destined for Iraq. "To Saddam with affection," Cheney wrote.
In 1998, President Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike on Al
Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan after the bombing of two U.S.
embassies in Africa. The White House was clearly disappointed when
the strike failed to kill Bin Laden, who reportedly left one of the
camps shortly before the attack.
A year later, again during the Clinton administration, NATO bombed
Belgrade after Serbia forced ethnic Albanians to flee from Kosovo. A
cruise missile was lobbed right into the bedroom of Slobodan
Milosevic, the Serbian leader and Yugoslav president, but he was not
sleeping there and escaped injury.
In Yemen in 2002, a CIA Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile that
destroyed a car in which a top Al Qaeda leader, Qaed Sinan Harithi, was riding.
The problem with assassination, morality aside, is that the U.S. is
not very good at it, as the CIA's farcical efforts to murder Castro
demonstrate. It seems unlikely that the CIA will kill Bin Laden with
a baseball bat. And there is the real possibility of retaliation for
a state-sponsored assassination. President Kennedy was quoted as
saying, "We can't get into that kind of thing or we would all be
targets." Perhaps CIA Director Leon Panetta had that in mind when he
canceled the assassination program.
--
David Wise writes frequently about intelligence. He is the author of
"Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6
Million" and "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen
Betrayed America."
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