Targeted Assassinations

Abstract

TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS

Assassination has been a tool of terrorists and governments for millennia. It has been an act of terrorists and nation states in warfare since the formal “state” was invented. The term “assassin” probably comes from a group of Islamic enthusiasts formed in 1090 CE (the Nizari Ismalilis) that specialized in targeted killings of opponents. Assassinations differ from ordinary murders or killings on battlefields by the implication that the target has some special political importance. One famous assassination was when a 19 year-old Serbian named Gavrilo Pincip killed Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, leading to World War I which killed almost a tenth of all males in Central Europe.

In theory, the USA is prohibited from assassinations by an Executive Order (#12333, “United States Intelligence Activities”) signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981. This did not prevent hundreds of attempts to kill political people like Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in October 14, 2011, or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq on June 7, 2006, using Hellfire missiles. The US also tried to assassinate Cuba’s President Fidel Castro at least 8 times (CIA records) to as many as 28 times (Cuba’s estimate) during the Cold War. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 raised questions about the wisdom of targeting national leaders. Some suspected the Cubans.

The Russian government refined assassination to high art. It was connected to the murders of Georgi Markov in London September 11, 1978, using the biological poison ricin, and of Alexander Litvinenko using polonium 210 on November 23, 2006. Russia is also alleged to have poisoned Sergie Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a very sophisticated “novichok” nerve agent on March 4, 2018.

But no state has a more diversified record of assassinations than Israel. Its MOSSAD intelligence agency decided to use this as a common tool in their long-running covert war against Palestinian organizations, a host of Islamic terrorist groups, and other declared enemies like Iran. MOSSAD killed many Iranian nuclear scientists, for example, using ordinary pistols and limpet mines attached to cars to slow down nuclear weapons development in Iran. Years before, MOSSAD set out to avenge the murders of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics by killing most of the Palestinians who had been involved in those assassinations.

This history is described in riveting detail by our first “suggested reading,” Ronan Bergman’s “Rise and Kill First” (2018). That book is noteworthy because it was informed and endorsed by many of MOSSAD’s former Directors. A comprehensive view of targeted assassinations requires recognition that thousands of “targeted killings” have also been committed by various Arab mukhabarat (secret police and intelligence groups) in their countries and against enemies abroad. This business of spies killing spies (or generals or presidents of enemy entities) has a long and very complex history, obscured by the secrecy that attends such events.

Therefore, this section ends with downsides of such tactics revealed by this history. Sometimes innocent people are killed because they are near the bomb, or are incorrectly identified as targets like Chico Bouchikhi, killed by MOSSAD in Lillehammer, Norway on July 21, 1973. Killing innocents has terrible public relations consequences. Second, if you kill able leaders of enemy groups, they may be replaced by less intelligent but more brutal others who push hatred harder and make peace negotiations impossible. Third, if one country adopts assassination as a tool of statecraft, its enemies may reply in kind, and your own political leaders may be killed.

So prudent leaders are warned about the perils of assassination, and all need special protection today from terrorists and many other rivals.

Michael Andregg

[Word count excluding “Further Readings” is 604]

Further Reading

Bergman, Ronan, 2018. Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. New York: Random House.

Perliger, Arie, 2015. The Causes and Impact of Political Assassinations. In Vol. 8, Issue 1 of the CTC Sentinel (Counter Terrorism Center) at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York. Accessible at: https://ctc.usma.edu/the-causes-and-impact-of-political-assassinations/

Assassinations in History – Chronologically, 2018. At Emerson Kent.com, accessible at: http://www.emersonkent.com/assassinations_in_history_chronologically.htm

Kahana, Ephraim, 2006. Historical Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.

Cockburn, Alexander, July 24, 2009. The CIA and a Long History of Assassinations. In The Week, London, UK, accessible at: http://www.theweek.co.uk/politics/21051/cia-and-long-history-assassinations .