North Korea's ministry of state security accused the CIA of an alleged recent assassination attempt on Kim Jong-un. (photo: Wong Maye-E/AP)
The
CIA Has a Long History of Helping to Kill Leaders Around the World
By Ewen MacAskill, Guardian
UK
05 May 17
US intelligence agency has since 1945 succeeded in deposing or
killing a string of leaders, but was forced to cut back after a Senate
investigation in the 1970s
Some
of the most notorious of the CIA’s operations to kill world leaders were those
targeting the late Cuban president, Fidel Castro. Attempts ranged from snipers
to imaginative plots worthy of spy movie fantasies, such as the famous exploding cigars
and a poison-lined scuba-diving suit.
But
although the CIA attempts proved fruitless in the case of Castro, the US
intelligence agency has since 1945 succeeded in deposing or killing a string of
leaders elsewhere around the world – either directly or, more often, using
sympathetic local military, locally hired criminals or pliant dissidents.
According
to North Korea’s ministry of state security, the CIA has not abandoned its old
ways. In a statement on Friday, it accused that the CIA and South Korea’s
intelligence service of being behind an alleged recent an
assassination attempt on its leader Kim Jong-un.
The
attempt, according to the ministry, involved “the use of biochemical substances
including radioactive substance and nano poisonous substance” and the advantage
of this was it “does not require access to the target (as) their lethal results
will appear after six or 12 months”.
The
person directly responsible was allegedly a North Korean working for the
foreign intelligence agencies.
A CIA
spokesman refused to comment on the allegations.
But
although such a claim cannot be dismissed as totally outlandish – given the
long list of US involvement in coups and assassinations worldwide – the agency
was forced to cut back on such killings after a US Senate investigation in the
1970s exposed the scale of its operations.
Following
the investigation, then president Gerald Ford signed in 1976 an executive order
stating: “No employee of the United States government shall engage in, or
conspire in, political assassination.”
The
executive order was partly out of embarrassment at the role of the CIA being
publicly exposed – but also an acceptance by the federal government that
US-inspired coups and assassinations often turned out to be counterproductive.
In
spite of this, the US never totally abandoned the strategy, simply changing the
terminology from assassination to targeted killings, from aerial bombing of
presidents to drone attacks on alleged terrorist leaders. Aerial bomb attempts
on leaders included Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in 1986, Serbia’s Slobodan
Milosevic in 1999 and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Earlier
well-documented episodes include Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba
of Congo, judged by the US to be too close to close to Russia. In 1960, the CIA
sent a scientist to kill him with a lethal virus, though this became
unnecessary when he was removed from office in 1960 by other means. Other
leaders targeted for assassination in the 1960s included the Dominican dictator
Rafael Trujillo, president Sukarno of Indonesia and president Ngo Dinh Diem of
South Vietnam.
In
1973, the CIA helped organise the overthrow of Chile’s president, Salvador
Allende, deemed to be too left wing: he died on the day of the coup.
The
alleged North Korean plot sounds crude. But intelligence agencies still resort
to crude methods. The alleged North Korean plot recalls the assassination of the Russian
dissident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. A British inquest concluded
he had been killed by the Russian intelligence agency using polonium hidden in
a teapot.
The US
has developed much more sophisticated methods than polonium in a tea pot,
especially in the fields of electronic and cyber warfare. A leaked document
obtained by WikiLeaks and released earlier this year showed the CIA in October
2014 looking at hacking into car control systems. That ability could
potentially allow an agent to stage a car crash.
Recent
failed North Korean missile attempts – as well as major setbacks in Iran’s
nuclear programme – have been blamed on direct or indirect planting of viruses
in their computer systems.
It is
a long way from the crude, albeit imaginative and eventually doomed, methods
employed against Castro. The US admitted to eight assassination attempts on
Castro, though the Cuban put the figure much higher, with one estimate in the
hundreds. Castro said: “If surviving assassinations were an Olympic event, I
would win the gold medal.”
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