"President Bill Clinton lifted the ban on CIA assassinations in 1998"

[ProSense]

<...>

President Bill Clinton lifted the ban on CIA assassinations in 1998, but limited their use to specific targets, such as Osama bin Laden, and only if capture was not “feasible.” George W. Bush dropped the “feasible” limitation and eliminated the need for a specified list of targets. The first CIA drone killing took place in Yemen on November 5, 2002, and included the death of an American citizen, Buffalo-born Kamal Derwish.

http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/Obamas_Secret_Assassination_Program_111229

There is the root of the problem.

[frazzled]

1. I remember it

It was controversial at the time, but not for Bush, apparently. Only again for Obama, even though both Clinton and Obama had a more constrained outlook on it.

[DURHAM D]

2. Nonsense.

In practice there has never been a ban on CIA sponsored assassinations.

[ProSense]

3. Facts:

"In practice there has never been a ban on CIA sponsored assassinations. "

....here:

<...>

The Church Committee was a special Senate investigation led by Idaho Senator Frank Church. It was formed in 1975. Their work took nine months and 150 staffers. They produced a two-foot-thick report in May 1976 that said, among other things, that we need Congress to oversee intelligence in this country.

The way we are overseeing it now is not working. And you know why we can tell that oversight is not working? Because the CIA keeps killing people, or trying to kill people in other countries that we are not at war with. The CIA at the time had taken it upon itself, it wasn`t clear if they were acting alone or at various presidents` direction, but they had taken on the job of assassinations in foreign countries, assassinations and attempted assassinations.

And the Senate said that was not cool.

This from the Church report: "The evidence establishes that the United States was implicated in several assassination plots. The committee believes that short of war, assassination is incompatible with American principles, international order, and morality. It should be rejected as a tool of foreign policy."

The Church Committee report came out, said that. Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. The select committees on intelligence were formed in the House and the Senate to exert oversight over the CIA. Since the Armed Services Committees who had been supposedly overseeing them had fallen down on the job -- actually, they`d never seen all that interested in that part of the job in the first place.

- more -

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50771795/ns/msnbc-rachel_maddow_show/

[leveymg]

6. Please see Reply #4 in response to your "Facts." They don't reflect the reality of assassinations

during that period.

[ProSense]

7. ?

"Please see Reply #2 in response to your 'Facts.' They don't reflect the reality of assassinations"

Are you suggesting that the facts presented aren't "reality"? I never suggested that people weren't doing illegal or bad things.

The statement was that Clinton lifted a ban that did in fact exist.

[leveymg]

8. #4

The fact was, the assassinations ban never really existed, so Clinton didn't really lift it other than as a statement of official policy.

[ProSense]

9. That makes no sense.

"The fact was, the assassinations ban never really existed, so Clinton didn't really lift it other than as a statement of official policy."

It did exist, and Clinton did lift it as "a statement of official policy."

By that logic, because there was torture before Bush it wasn't illegal, and he really didn't sanction it except in an official capacity.

[leveymg]

10. Only months after Ford's Exec Order "banning" assassinations, Letelier's car was bombed in DC.

Proxy assassinations and targeted political killing of perceived U.S. enemies continued around the world. After the Vietnam War the focus shifted from Southeast Asia to Latin America and the Mideast. That is a reality.

The assassinations ban didn't really exist under Ford, and political killings by U.S. supported death squads and paramilitaries proliferated in El Salvador and Guatemala for the next 4 years:

Rutilio Grande García, S.J. (1977), Roman Catholic priest
Alfonso Navarro Oviedo (1977), Roman Catholic priest
Ernesto Barrera (1978), Roman Catholic priest
Octavio Ortiz Luna (1979), Roman Catholic priest
Rafael Palacios (1979), Roman Catholic priest
Alirio Napoleón Macías (1979), Roman Catholic priest
Óscar Arnulfo Romero (1980), Archbishop of San Salvador, by right-wing death squad
Enrique Álvarez Córdova (1980) and five other leaders of the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Front ("FDR," for its Spanish initials), captured and killed by government aligned security forces.
Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan (1980), Roman Catholic nuns, by the National Guard of El Salvador

Then, during the Reagan and Bush, 41 Administrations covert operations spread to feeding the endless rounds of wars, assassinations and retribution killings in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Palestine and Saudi Arabia. Also, before Clinton there were the host of smaller civil wars, coups, and land grabs in which the CIA called many of the shots and provided a lot of the guns -- along with lists of names -- from Jamaica to Nigeria to the Horn of Africa.

How did the the assassinations ban ever exist?

"The fact was, the assassinations ban never really existed, so Clinton didn't really lift it other than as a statement of official policy."

[leveymg]

4. There was a ban on paper. So they didn't paper the wet ops during that period.

Last edited Mon Feb 25, 2013, 08:36 PM - Edit history (7)

Most of that stuff got contracted out and offshored, anyway. Google: Safari Club Bush Turki; and do a 2nd search: Bush Condor Chile

A Chron on the official, acknowledged USG policy is here: http://www.mbc.edu/faculty/gbowen/AssassinationPolicy.htm

Ford's order was signed Feb. 18, 1976 but the order didn't apply to officers and agents of "friendly" intelligence services, such as the Chilean DINA. Orlando Letelier was assassinated in Washington, DC at Sheridan Circle in September by a former CIA contract agent and several members of the Pinochet Junta's secret police. Wiki:

Letelier was killed by a car bomb explosion on September 21, 1976, in Sheridan Circle, along with his US assistant, Ronni Moffitt.[1][dead link][2] Her husband Michael Moffitt was injured but survived. Several people were prosecuted and convicted for the murder. Among them were Michael Townley, a DINA U.S. expatriate who had once worked for the CIA; General Manuel Contreras, former head of the DINA; and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, also formerly of DINA. Townley was convicted in the United States in 1978 and served 62 months in prison for the murder;[3] he is now free as a participant in the United States Federal Witness Protection Program. Contreras and Espinoza were convicted in Chile in 1993. General Augusto Pinochet, who died on December 10, 2006, was never brought to trial for the murders, although Townley implicated him as being responsible for them.

Townley and his confederates were allowed to enter the US after Ford's Order even though their names appeared on the Visas Viper list of suspected terrorists and the Ambassador had tried to deny them visas. Their murderous intentions were known to the State Dept. and the CIA before they traveled to the U.S. The Ambassador was overrruled by National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and then CIA Director George H.W. Bush. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKtownleyM.htm It came out years later that Bush had made false statements after the bombing and CIA didn't release all of its files to the FBI investigators. See, http://consortiumnews.com/2011/10/14/the-tale-of-two-assassination-plots/

[AnotherMcIntosh]

5. So 26 years after Clinton drove Hale Boggs to the airport, he lifted the ban. Interesting.

I wonder what Hale Boggs would have thought about it.

[NCTraveler]

11. I don't get how this is the root of the problem.

The ban was lifted, therefore all Presidents must use the tactic. That makes no sense.

If that is the root of the problem, what is currently being done to fix the problem?