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Original Articles

When Kindness Fails: Assassination as a National Security Option

Pages 243-274 | Published online: 10 Nov 2010

References

  • Boyd M. Johnson III, "Executive Order 12,333: The Permissibility of an American Assassination of a Foreign Leader," Cornell International Law Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2, Spring 1992, pp. 401-436.
  • J. Gregory Keyes, Babylon 5: The Final Reckoning--The Fate of Bester (New York: Ballantine, 1999). For a discussion of revenge see Susan Jacoby, Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge (New York: Harper and Row, 1983).
  • Roger Pineau, "A Code Break and the Death of Admiral Yamamoto," Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly, Summer 1989, p. 3; "Files Show Britain Made Plans to Kill Rommel During World War II," www.abc.news.go.com, accessed 27 October 1999; Operation Foxley: The British Plan to Kill Hitler (London: Public Record Office, 1998).
  • W. Averell Harriman, Personal and Secret, Memorandum for My Files Only, 7 October 1966; The memo which contained the instructions "No One Else to See," and "Not Under Any Circumstances Is This Memorandum to Be Used by Anyone, At Least Until All Those Involved Are Dead," noted that when Harriman "reminded [Rusk] of this ... he said he didn't recall it."
  • F. H. Hinsley, E. E. Thomas, C. F. G. Ransom, and R. C. Knight, British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volume 2, Part I (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 382; R. V. Jones, The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geohagen, 1978), p. 346; Constance Babington-Smith, Air-Spy: The Story of Photo Intelligence in World War II (New York: Harper, 1957), p. 212.
  • Nicholas Dawidoff, The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (New York: Pantheon, 1994), pp. 199-207.
  • Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), p. 334.
  • P. L. Thyraud de Vosjoli, Lamia (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 254; Stephen Dorril, The Silent Conspiracy, pp. 371-372.
  • Donald Hamilton, The Wrecking Crew (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1960). Helm is not the only assassin to occupy the pages of spy fiction, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to James Bond and his "license to kill," there were the John Craig novels written by James Munro (e.g., The Man Who Sold Death), as well as Andrew York's Jonas Wilde novels (e.g., The Eliminator).
  • Donald Hamilton, The Betrayers (Greenwich, Q.: Fawcett, 1966).
  • RonaId E. Doel and Allan A. Needell, "Science, Scientists, and the CIA: Balancing International Ideals, National Needs, and Professional Opportunities," Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 12, No. 1, January 1997, pp. 59-81, at pp. 70-71; Donald Hamilton, Murderer's Row (Greenwich, Q.: Fawcett, 1962).
  • "British agents looked at Rommel assassination plot," abcnews.com, 26 October 1999. A more optimistic view of the chances of killing Saddam can be found in William Cowan, "How to Kill Saddam," The Washington Post, 10 February 1991, p. C2.
  • Steven Mufson, "U.S. Denounces Targeted Killing," The Washington Post, 16 October 2001, p. A18.
  • Yossi Melman, "Israel's Darkest Secrets," The New York Times, 25 March 1998, p. A27; Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel's Secret Wars, pp. 275-276; Barton Gellman, "Botched Assassination by Israel Gives New Life to Hamas," The Washington Post, 6 October 1997, pp. A1, A14.
  • Alex Roslin, "When the State Turns Assassin," Montreal Gazette, 20 October 2001.
  • Donald Hamilton, The Wrecking Crew, p. 58.
  • Ralph Peters, "A Revolution in Military Ethics?," p. 104
  • W. Hays Parks, "Memorandum of Law: Executive Order 12333 and Assassination," p. 6.
  • Louis René Beres, "The Permissibility of State-Sponsored Assassination ...," pp. 233-238; Michael N. Schmitt, "State-Sponsored Assassination in International and Domestic Law," Yale Journal of International Law, No. 17, 1992, pp. 609-685, at p. 633, 678; Chris A. Anderson, "Assassination, Lawful Homicide, and the Butcher of Baghdad," Hamline Journal of Public Law and Policy Vol. 13, No. 2, Summer 1992, pp. 291-322, at pp. 306-314; Bert Brandenburg, "The Legality of Assassination as an Aspect of Foreign Policy," pp. 655-698.
  • Michael N. Schmitt, "State-Sponsored Assassination in International and Domestic Law," p. 646; Boyd M. Johnson, "Executive Order 12,333," p. 420. Articles cited by Schmitt that argue that Article 51 becomes operative only once an attack commences are: Gamal M. Badr, "The Exculpatory Effect of Self-Defense in State Responsibility," Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law No. 1, 1980, pp. 21-25; Joseph L. Kunz, "Individual and Collective Self-Defense in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations," American Journal of International Law, No. 41, 1947. Chris A. Anderson argues that "an armed attack does not begin only when actual bullets fly or bombs explode" but when an irreversible course of inevitable action has commenced. See Anderson, "Assassination, Lawful Homicide, and the Butcher of Baghdad," p. 298.
  • Patricia Zengel, "Assassination and the Law of Armed Conflict," p. 628.
  • Michael N. Schmitt, "State-Sponsored Assassination in International and Domestic Law," pp. 647-648.
  • Michael N. Schmitt, "State-Sponsored Assassination in International and Domestic Law," p. 650.
  • Daniel Schorr, "Hypocrisy About Assassination," The Washington Post, 3 February 1991, p. C7.
  • James Risen, with Stephen Engelberg, "Signs of Change in Terror Goals Went Unheeded," The New York Times, 14 October 2001, pp. A1, B8; James Risen, "U.S. Pursued Secret Efforts to Catch or Kill bin Laden," The New York Times, 30 September 2001, pp. A1, B3.
  • Joseph Farah, "Ex-NSA Op Asks Congress to Probe Arafat Murders," 17 April 2001, www.wnd.com.
  • Khidhir Hamza, with Jeff Stein, Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda (New York: Scribner, 2000); Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 144-145, 183-185; Josh Tryangiel, "What Does Saddam Have?," www.time.com, 22 October 2001; Fred Guterl, "What Can Iraq Do?," www.msnbc.com /news/648872.asp.
  • Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001), pp. 59, 80-81, 203-249; "U.S. Studies Use of Hit Squads in Drug War," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9 June 1989, p. 2B.
  • Jim Hoagland, "What About Iraq?," The Washington Post, 12 October 2001, p. A33; Bill Gertz, "Iraq Suspected of Sponsoring Terrorist Attacks," The Washington Times, 21 September 2001, pp. A1, A21; Peter Finn, "Libyan Convicted of Lockerbie Bombing," The Washington Post, 1 February 2001, pp. A1, A16; James Risen and Jane Perlez, "Terror, Iran and the U.S.," The New York Times 23 June 2001, pp. A1, A6; Patrick E. Tyler with John Tagliabue, "Czechs Confirm Iraqi Agent Met With Terror Ringleader," The New York Times, 27 October 2001, pp. A1, B5.
  • Bob Woodward, "CIA Told to Do 'Whatever Necessary' to Kill Bin Laden," The Washington Post, 21 October 2001, p. A1; Barton Gellman, "CIA Weighs 'Targeted Killing' Missions," The Washington Post, 28 October 2001, pp. A1, A19.
  • See William E. Burrows, By Any Means Necessary: America's Secret Air War in the Cold War (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001); Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew with Annette Lawrence Drew, Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (New York: PublicAffairs, 1998).
  • Chris A. Anderson, "Assassination, Lawful Homicide, and the Butcher of Baghdad," p. 292; Abraham D. Sofaer, Terrorism, the Law and the National Defense, Waldemar A. SoIf Lecture, Department of the Army, Judge Advocate General's School, 4 May 1989, pp. 42-50; Robert F. Turner, "Killing Saddam: Would It Be a Crime?" The Washington Post, 7 October 1990, pp. D1-D2.
  • Ben Barber, "Security Council Endorses Annan's Baghdad Pact," The Washington Times, 3 March 1998, p. A17; Justin Bhim, "Altering Assassination Ban Might Increase Pressure on Saddam Hussein, Robb Says," The Washington Post, 19 February 1998, p. A22; Louis René Beres, "Assassinating Saddam: A Post-War View from International Law," Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, Vol. 19, No. 3, 1991, pp. 613-623; Vincent Canistraro, "Assassination is Wrong-and Dumb," The Washington Post, 30 August 2001, p. A29.
  • Tim Weiner, "Making Rules in the World Between War and Peace," The New York Times, 19 August 2001, Sec. 4, pp. 1, 4.
  • Hugh R. Overholt, U.S. Army Judge Advocate General, Memorandum of Law, Subject: Assassination, 1989; Jacob Sullum, "License to Take Out the Foe?"; W. Hays Parks, "Memorandum of Law: Executive Order 12333 and Assassination," The Army Lawyer, December 1989, pp. 4-9.
  • Jacob Sullum, "License to Take Out the Foe?"
  • Michael N. Schmitt, "State-Sponsored Assassination in International and Domestic Law," p. 682.
  • Jonathan Turley, "Assassination Considered," The Washington Times, 17 September 2001, p. A19. William Glaberson, "U.S. Faces Tough Choices if Bin Laden is Captured," The New York Times, 22 October 2001, p. B5. One terrorist the U.S. did apprehend overseas and bring to trial was Fawaz Yunis. See Duane R. Clarridge with Digby Diehl, A Spy for all Seasons: My Life in the CIA (New York: Scribner, 1997), pp. 347-359. One report noted that capturing bin Laden alive would result in unprecedented security problems during a murder trial and while he was in custody, while a trial could risk jeopardizing sources and methods of intelligence. See Rowan Scarborough, "Officials Prefer Bin Laden Killed Instead of Captured," The Washington Times, 26 October 2001, pp. A1, A14.
  • Callum MacDonald, The Killing of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich (New York: The Free Press, 1989); Joseph B. Kelly, "Assassination in War Time," Military Law Review, No. 30, October 1965, pp. 101-111 at 104; Patricia Zengel, "Assassination and the Law of Armed Conflict," Mercer Law Review, XLIII, 1992, pp. 616-638, at pp. 623-624.
  • Daniel Schorr, "Hypocrisy About Assassination"; Seymour M. Hersh, "Target Qaddafi," The New York Times Magazine, 22 February 1987, pp. 17ff; Bob Woodward and Patrick Tyler, "U.S. Targeted Qaddafi Compound After Tracing Terror Message," The Washington Post, 16 April 1986, p. A24; Paul Richter, "Congress Ponders Whether the U.S. Should Have Ban on Assassination."
  • Tim Weiner, "Rethinking the Ban on Political Assassination," The New York Times, 30 August 1998, p. C3; Doyle McManus, "Assassination Ban May Not Apply in Anti-Terror Raids," Los Angeles Times, 13 July 1985, pp. A1, A14.
  • James Risen, "FBI Probed Alleged CIA Plot to Kill Hussein," Los Angeles Times, 15 February 1998, pp. A1, A14; Edward Shirley, "The Etiquette of Killing Bin Laden."
  • Seymour Hersh, "King's Ransom," The New Yorker, 22 October 2001, pp. 35-39. According to another report, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld characterized the report as "just not true." He contended that the green light to fire at Omar was given within five minutes, and that there was no veto by a military lawyer. See Robert D. Novak, "Targeting the Mullah," The Washington Post, 18 October 2001, p. A39.
  • Ben Barber, "2 Suspected Assassins Grabbed; Others Die," The Washington Times, 25 October 2001, p. A17; Barton Gellman, "CIA Weighs Targeted Killing' Missions."
  • R. Jeffrey Smith, "Serb Leaders Hand Over Milosevic for Trial by War Crimes Tribunal," The Washington Post, 29 June 2001, pp. A1, A26. Khidhir Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, pp. 271-332; Bruce A. Ross, "Targeting Leadership in War," p. 86.
  • Barton Gellman, "CIA Weighs Targeted Killing' Missions."
  • Ibid.
  • Boyd M. Johnson, "Executive Order 12,333," p. 427; Bert Brandenburg, "The Legality of Assassination as an Aspect of Foreign Policy," p. 687.
  • Johanna McGeary, "Time to Off Saddam?," Time, 16 February 1998, p. C2. A 1938 proposal by the British military attaché to have Hitler assassinated was rejected as "unsportmanlike." See Ward Thomas, "Norms and Security: The Case of International Assassination," International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1, Summer 2000, pp. 105-133, at p. 113.
  • Warren Hoge, "Britain Reveals Elaborate Plots to Kill Hitler as War Neared End," The New York Times, 24 July 1998, p. A10; Stephen Dorril, MK: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (New York: The Free Press, 2000), p. 602; As Hoge's article notes, Vice Marshal A. P. Ritchie, the SOE's air adviser felt differently-that Hitler had a "mystical hold" on the German people: "Remove Hitler and there is nothing left."
  • Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Covert Action and Democracy, The Need to Know (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1992), p. 14; John M. Broder, "Hussein Directed Plot to Kill Bush, U.S. Says," Los Angeles Times, 29 June 1998, pp. A1, A6.
  • Ralph Peters, "A Revolution in Military Ethics?," Parameters, Vol. 26, No. 2, 1996, pp. 102-108 at p. 107.
  • Louis René Beres. "The Permissibility of State-Sponsored Assassination ...," p. 248; Michael N. Schmitt, "State-Sponsored Assassination in International and Domestic Law," pp. 645-649; Hugh R. Overholt, Memorandum of Law, Subject: Assassination.
  • Ibid., p. 648. Also see Robert J. Beck and Anthony Clark Arend, '"Don't Tread on US': International Law and Forcible State Response to Terrorism," Wisconsin International Law Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2, Spring 1994, pp. 153-219, at 202-206.
  • Jacob Sullum,"License to Take Out the Foe?".
  • William Burrows and Robert Windrem, Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 159-160.
  • David Wise, The Spy Who Got Away: The Inside Story of Edward Lee Howard, the CIA Agent Who Betrayed His Country's Secrets and Escaped to Moscow (New York: Random House, 1988); Joseph Goulden, The Death Merchant: The Rise and Fall of Edwin P. Wilson (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).
  • Bill Gertz, "Nuclear emigres work in Libya," The Washington Times, 24 February 1992, pp. A1, A6: David S. Cloud, Marilyn Chase, and John J. Fialka, "Soviet Germ Program Is a Worry Once Again Amid Anthrax Scare," The Wall Street Journal, 15 October 2001, pp. A1, A18; Valentin Tikhonov, Russia's Nuclear and Missile Complex: The Human Factor in Proliferation (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001), p. viii.
  • For example, Bert Brandenburg, "The Legality of Assassination as an Aspect of Foreign Policy," p. 694.
  • David L. Marcus, "A Case for Assassination?"
  • Louis René Beres, "The Permissibility of State-Sponsored Assassination...", pp. 238-242.
  • David L. Marcus, "A Case for Assassination?," Boston Globe, 30 August 1998, pp. E1, E2; George Stephanopoulos, "Why We Should Kill Saddam," Newsweek, 1 December 1997, p. 34.
  • Letter, Jonathan Fanton and Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch to President George W. Bush, 20 September 2001, www.hrw.org; Boyd M. Johnson, "Executive Order 12, 333," p. 434; Bert Brandenburg, "The Legality of Assassination as an Aspect of Foreign Policy," Virginia Journal of International Law, Vol. 27, No. 3, Spring 1987, at p. 693.
  • Michael Kelly, "...Pacifist Claptrap," Washington Post, 26 September 2001, p. A25.
  • Bruce A. Ross, "The Case for Targeting Leadership in War," Naval War College Review, Vol. 46, No. 1, 1993, pp. 73-93, at 82; Louis René Beres, "The Permissibility of State-Sponsored Assassination During Wartime Peace and War," Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1991, pp. 231-250.

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