WASHINGTON — The idea of the CIA going around assassinating people might seem like an outdated conspiracy theory or just the plot of an old James Bond movie. And although it is in fact illegal for U.S. intelligence agencies to carry out assassinations against foreign leaders, “targeted killings” is the post-9/11 term adopted to allow the government to take out suspected terrorists.
The U.S. government’s ability to kill individuals by implementing these “targeted killings” as part of its post-9/11 counterterrorism strategy. Current technology makes it possible for the government to carry out these killings remotely and covertly with ease. With these factors combined, intelligence agencies have the flexibility to operate with little to no oversight, according to intelligence experts.
Such regulations weren’t always so relaxed. The 1975 Church and Pike Committees enacted greater oversight on the intelligence community after discovering numerous abuses. They found that the intelligence community wasn’t just overstepping its boundaries when it came to spying on citizens or invading their privacy. The committees discovered the CIA’s attempts to kill various foreign leaders in countries like Vietnam, Chile and Cuba, and banned the intelligence community from carrying out political assassinations.
“It’s illegal for us [the U.S. government] to engage in assassination,” or the targeted killing of someone, often an opposition government leader, for political reasons, said Vince Houghton, a military and intelligence historian at the International Spy Museum.
Houghton is a former Armor Crewman for the U.S. Army and taught history at the University of Maryland before working at the museum. He has spent his career studying the impact of technology on intelligence agencies, particularly in the OSS and CIA. He has an interest in wartime covert operations and insurgencies.
“If you want to be a cynic, you can say we don’t assassinate anymore, we just call it something different. We call it ‘targeted killing.’ If you want to be a realist about it, it’s still assassination.”
Since the restrictions were lifted, America has witnessed the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and U.S.-born citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without trial or due process – actions the U.S. government has justified as “targeted killings.”
The U.S. government has steadily won back its right to kill as part of its efforts to combat terrorism. Officials say targeted killings are reserved only for individuals who present an immediate threat to U.S. national security, although even this standard is left up for interpretation.
“He [al-Awlaki] wasn’t holding a gun to somebody’s head. He wasn’t about to launch an attack on the United States,” Houghton said. “But somebody somewhere, the President or the Justice Department, decided that he was an immediate threat to the national security of the United States.”
Though the intelligence community has the authority to interpret these standards, all “targeted killing” missions must be approved by the President of the United States. Congress authorized the President to make these decisions shortly after 9/11, giving him the power to use whatever force he deems necessary on suspected terrorists. As more sophisticated methods of killing individuals emerge, such decisions will require greater contemplation from our leaders.
The U.S. government’s latest method of execution was demonstrated by the drone strike that killed al-Awlaki. The evolution of killing techniques can be seen throughout history, including those used to kill foreign leaders, identified in both the Church and Pike Committees. The KGB’s Bulgarian umbrella featured a poisoned tip filled with ricin used in the assassinations of people such as Georgi Markov, according to The International Spy Museum. Markov was a writer who criticized the Bulgarian Regime and was killed in 1978. The Church Committee uncovered poisoned darts the CIA had used in pistols to induce a heart attacks in individuals. According to the Center for Research on Globalization, victims were unsuspecting because the injection felt like a mosquito bite.
Such weapons were not only used for the purpose of killing. Houghton describes the U.S. government’s sneaking of thallium salts in Fidel Castro’s shoes as a tactic used to cause his hair to fall out over time and to make him appear less masculine. This had the potential to lessen Castro’s credibility in a society where the appearance of masculinity had so much weight.
Despite the latest advances in biotoxins, the success of a government assassination depends most on its methodology, according to Houghton.
“It’s not about the guns, it’s not about the umbrellas, it’s about the method of lethalization,” Houghton said. “Nobody realized he’d [Markov] been assassinated until a couple days later. That’s perfect! Now the even better way would be nobody realizing you were assassinated at all.”
Discreet killing tactics aren’t the only way for intelligence agencies to protect their secretive activities. Even with covert actions requiring Presidential approval, the government is able to classify these missions, if there is even documentation of them in the first place.
“Since we stopped ‘assassinating people’ after the Church and Pike Committee, you’re not going to have documents that talk about assassination because we ‘don’t do it anymore,’” Houghton said. “They’re creating these documents to either cover their asses in case they ever get subpoenaed or called before Congress, and maybe for historians to know in 50 years. But it’s not for us to know now. Because, by definition, these are covert activities.”
With technology making it easier to carry out killings in a confidential and even remote manner, along with the shield of document classification, there is no way for the public to know if the government is in fact abiding by the regulations set fourth by the Church and Pike Committees.
“I think within the next year or two, you’re going to have somebody drop dead because of a cyberattack,” he said. “Now we may not know about it – it may be something we don’t realize is a cyberattack right away. And if they’re [the intelligence agency] good, we won’t.”
It might be hard to imagine being able to kill someone from behind a computer, but Houghton gives examples of medical devices, such as pacemakers and insulin pumps, now being operated remotely by doctors.
“That’s a very effective way of killing somebody,” Houghton said. “And if it’s undetectable, meaning if you’re very good at hacking, the ‘natural cause of death’ may be all people are assuming, ‘Oh, his insulin pumps went wacky and killed him.’”
With American citizens desperate to prevent further terrorist attacks like 9/11, they have given the government greater discretion to carry out whatever actions it feels are necessary to protect the country. This delicate trust comes during a time when the government has more ways than ever to both kill and cover up intelligence activities. The level of accountability for these agencies remains constant. Although the U.S. government is no longer supposed to have the authority to carry out assassinations, its targeted killings seem to yield the same result: death.
