Dear Scotty,
Let's begin with failed CIA assassinations. Not once, not twice, but
not less than 638 times has the CIA conspired to terminate the life of
Fidel Castro:
"It has been estimated that there have been over 600 attempts on
Castro's life committed by the CIA. Fabian Escalante, who was long
tasked with protecting the life of Castro has calculated the exact
number of assassination attempts by the CIA to be 638. Some such
attempts have included an exploding cigar, a fungal-infected
scuba-diving suit, and a mafia-style shooting. Some of these plots are
depicted in a documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro."
(Wikipedia, Fidel Castro, <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro#Assassination_Attempts>) .
But back to the early beginning, in the 1950s. Between the 1950s and
1976, the CIA operated what they euphemistically called ?Executive
Action?: the assassination of people considered risk to U.S.
interests. Why until 1976? In 1976, at least officially, the policy of
using CIA to assassinate individuals perceived as compromising US
policies was banned by President Gerald Ford, in ?Executive Order
12333?, which was affirmed by President Reagan in 1981.
Wikipedia, Executive Order 12333
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12333>
Here?s a partial list of such ?Executive Actions? carried out since WWII:
1955 ? ?The CIA was most likely behind the attempt to kill Chou En-Lai
of China in 1955. An Air India flight that took off from Hong Kong
crashed under mysterious circumstances on its way to the Bandung
Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. Press reports indicated that a
clockwork mechanism was found in the wreckage of the airliner, and
that the cause of the crash was two time-bombs that had been planted
on the airplane. John Discoe Smith, who was employed at the US Embassy
in India from 1954 to 1959, later wrote about having delivered a
package to a Chinese nationalist which he later discovered contained
the two time-bombs.? (SOURCE: William Blum, ?Making Heads Roll?,
excerpted from "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Intervention Since
World War II.", Third World Traveller, <
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/MakingHeadsRoll.html>)
1959 ? ?The CIA and the opposition forces of the Khmer Serei attempted
to assassinate Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia in 1959. The assassin was
spotted in a crowd minutes before he was planning to take Sihanouk's
life.? (ibid)
1961 ? Patrice Lumumba, Congolese leader: ?In September of 1960 the
CIA sent the late Dr. Sidney Gottlieb to the Congo with a virus
intended for use in an assassination attempt against Lumumba. A CIA
cable in November of that year revealed that the CIA had been aiding
Mobutu Sese Seko's search for Lumumba, who was captured by Mobutu on
December 1, 1961. Lumumba was then handed over to his bitter enemy,
Moise Tshombe, in Katanga province. Lumumba was assassinated the same
day.? (ibid; also see: CNN,. ?Target: Patrice Lumumba?, <
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/spies/spy.files/assassination/lumumba.html>)
1973 ? CIA allegedly involved in the coup in Chile, including the
authorisation of the killing of American citizens opposed to the coup
against Allende (SOURCE: Duncan Campbell, ?Pinochet may have had CIA
go-ahead to kill two Americans, documents show?, Guardian, February
14, 2000, http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,230846,00.html).
I don?t know if you have seen it or not, but if you haven?t, I
recommend the following (feature) film, based on such a story:
Missing (1982, dir. Costa Gavras)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084335/
1976 - The CIA was directly involved in a failed plot to assassinate
Jamaican President Michael Manley in 1976.(Blum, Op Cit)
The abovementioned source contains many more such details, not all of
which are quoted here, of copyright reasons. Also see:
William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since
World War II, Common Courage Press: 1995.
In addition to ?Executive Action?, the U.S. government has also
operated covert assassinations of Vietcong personnel and top
sympathisers during the Vietnam conflict. In 1971, the New York Times
claimed that 26,843 people have been executed as part of ?Phoenix
Program?, a program to destabilise the Vietcong/Northern Vietnamese by
assassinating civilians opposing the South Vietnamese government.
Wikipedia - Phoenix Program
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Program>
Since the 1950s, it was involved in Latin America and trained local
security forces, or was directly involved in the repression of
movements and politicians, which were deemed ?socialist?. One of the
first of these interventions was the intervention to overthrow the
democratically elected Guatemalan President, Guzman, in favour of
instating a pro-American dictator, Castillo Armas. This was largely
known as Operation PBFORTUNE, and later as Operation PBSUCCESS.
Operation PBSUCCESS
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBSUCCESS>
Operation PBFORTUNE
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PBFORTUNE>
Similarly, as mentioned before, the CIA was involved in overthrowing
the democratically elected Chilean president, Salvador Allende, in
favour of the dictator Pinochet. Thousands have died at the hands of
Pinochet regime. These were not insulated incidents. The CIA was
allegedly involved in many coups (and attempts) to overthrow
democratically elected regimes that were not pro-American in favour of
friendly dictators:
Covert operations, coups, military advisors etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_history_events#Covert_operations.2C_coups.2C_military_advisors_etc.
CIA sponsored regime change
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_sponsored_regime_change
Also ?CIA Assassinations?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency#Assassinations
Further Sources:
Virtual Truth Commission
<http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/date.htm> - document claims of
U.S. human rights violations since 1776. Please note, that among the
horrible crimes mentioned on this website, it states:
?1941 U. S. Military Interventions: WORLD WAR II/1941-45/Naval,troops,
bombing, nuclear/Hawaii bombed, fought Japan, Italy and Germany for 3
years; 1st nuclear war. S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real
Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing
Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe,
Maine: Common Courage Press, 1995?. Which, sorry to tell you, puts its
whole creditability down the drainpipe. Did the U.S. start the war? As
someone living in Berlin (Germany), I don?t even want to imagine what
would have happened hadn?t it been for the horrible Roosevelt
Administration, which ?ruthlessly? and while ?violating the human
rights? of those ?poor? Nazis, liberated my country from their evil
grip and saved the few remaining Jews. Again, in 1948, they mention
?GERMANY/1948/Nuclear threat/Atomic-capable bombers guard Berlin
Airlift.?. hmmm?. People were starving in Berlin after the Soviet
placed a blockade on the city. The American (and the other Western
Allies: France and UK) brought FOOD. Very disturbing, these Americans.
They shouldn?t have intervened, it?s much better when people starve,
right? This might be inappropriate to put in a Researched Google
Answer, but putting this on the page of the ?Virtual Truth Commission?
also presents other ?facts? on this website as a load of
lunatic-conspiracy-theory, which is sad, because actually they have
some accurate points and are well organised there.
Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (1975)
< http://history-matters.com/archive/church/reports/ir/contents.htm>
- ?The Church Committee investigated CIA plots to assassinate foreign
leaders. This Interim Report, published in 1975, discusses alleged
plots to kill:
? Patrice Lumumba (Congo)
? Fidel Castro (Cuba)
? Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic)
? Ngo Dinh Diem (Vietnam)
? Rene Schneider (Chile)?
Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh, CIA and Assassinations:
The Guatemala 1954 Documents http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/
A STUDY OF ASSASSINATION (a CIA declassified document)
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/ciaguat2.html
George Washington University maintains this amazing site (though I?m
diverging here):
National Security Archive
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
The CIA and allied intelligence agencies were apparently involved in
countless political events around the globe (however, one cannot be
too careful in examining claims like that, because of the number of
kooks mentioning every possible event as part of a wide conspiracy).
I hope this answers your question. Please contact me if you need any
clarification on this answer before you rate it. |
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