Assassination, the law and politics
CIA assassins have it easier in the movies.
So now we are told that shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency began planning to unleash assassination teams on al-Qaida’s leadership, but for almost eight years, the agency never actually put the plans into operation.
Further, we are told the point is moot, because the program has been canceled. But everything is not OK politically because the CIA did not bother to inform Congress about the plans that never were put into effect, ostensibly on the orders of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Finally, we are told that some Democratic members of Congress are furious about not having been informed about a program that was never put into effect and that they have renewed their calls for an investigation into how the Bush administration handled the war on terror.
We have tried several times, but we just can’t make all this add up.
Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times quoted members of Congress and former intelligence sources who said the assassination program was put into active consideration in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Still, there was a lot of enthusiasm for the program, at least at first. “It was straight out of the movies. It was like ‘Let’s kill them all,’” one former intelligence official told The Journal.
But life is not like the movies. To insert an assassination team into another nation assumes (a) intelligence sources on the ground in that nation with (b) operative intelligence about the whereabouts of targets.
As to (a), we’ve known since 9/11 that the CIA’s stable of foreign assets is very small, one reason why 9/11 came as such a surprise. As to (b), every time the United States military got a clue about the whereabouts of an al-Qaida leader, it tried to kill him, often successfully.
President Bill Clinton ordered the military to try to kill Osama bin Laden in 1998. President George W. Bush ordered the bombing of the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in December 2001, trying to kill bin Laden. Bombs dropped by Predator drone aircraft have killed an estimated 14 terrorist leaders, along with hundreds of civilians.
When the CIA finally did get its hands on the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it was courtesy of the Pakistani military, who captured him in 2003. He subsequently was waterboarded and subjected to other forms of “enhanced interrogation,” whereupon — according to Mr. Cheney in 2008 — he “provided us with a wealth of information.”
So now we have the guy who allegedly oversaw planning for CIA death squads defending the CIA’s non-assassination of the biggest fish who ever swam into their nets.
The issue with killing terrorist leaders apparently is not so much that it’s done, but who does it. Three presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — have approved military decapitation attacks. The issue is whether a civilian agency should do it.
President Gerald R. Ford issued an executive order forbidding it in 1976. Mr. Cheney has argued consistently that in time of war — especially a war against a stateless enemy — the commander-in-chief has almost unlimited powers.
The revelation about the assassination teams will increase pressure on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate how far the Bush-Cheney administration went in using, or abusing, executive authority.
Absent further bombshells, there are too many other critical matters on the nation’s agenda to get into a new exercise in partisan recrimination.
We know that what’s behind is ugly. It’s time to look forward.
“The issue is whether a civilian agency should do it”
Only in P-DWorld would the CIA be thought of as “civilian”
Seems clear the order was legally initiated:
“It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn’t become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.” ~ WSJ
This latest “revelation” was spread by the Congressional Democrats hoping to provide cover for Pelosi, extending her “the CIA lied” theme. Too bad for her as it will bounce back upon her like a ton of bricks.
Good news for the American public … it’ll stymie Obama-Pelosi statist policies