When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy
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Unlike current efforts, these plots were wrapped in deepest secrecy and vigorously denied until the facts were finally exhumed by a Senate investigation under Senator Frank Church in 1976. The difference now is that the administration has quit arguing the rights and wrongs of killing enemies, and makes plain its determination to kill Mr. Hussein if he can be found.
Killing him appears to be the primary task of a secretive military organization known as Task Force 20. Loosely attached to the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, Task Force 20 can and does draw on the resources of the entire American military and intelligence community. On June 18 it conducted a combined air and ground attack on what has been described as a convoy of S.U.V.'s in western Iraq as it allegedly made a dash for the Syrian border. Five Syrian border guards were wounded and briefly detained, but the Pentagon has declined to say how and especially where — inside Iraq, or inside Syria?
"Removing Saddam" has been the stated goal of the administration for more than a year, and last fall Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said war with Iraq could be avoided at "the cost of one bullet." This open discussion of killing Mr. Hussein marks a profound retreat from the longstanding insistence that the United States did not and would not use assassination as a tool of state. The revelations by the Church committee in 1976 that the C.I.A. had plotted to kill several foreign opponents including Mr. Castro was described as an aberration; supporters of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy insisted they had authorized nothing of the kind, and official efforts to pinpoint responsibility never went further than the words of Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who told a Senate investigating committee, "I just can't understand how it could have happened."
Executive orders banning assassination issued by Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan, prompted by public dismay over the poisoned cigars and exploding seashells intended for Mr. Castro, have never been formally revoked. Mr. Reagan's order flatly states that "no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination."
Taking this order literally, President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Anthony Lake, asked the F.B.I. in 1995 to investigate possible criminal charges (later dropped) against the C.I.A. officer Robert Baer for his efforts to organize a coup that might have ended with the killing of Mr. Hussein. President Bush, in contrast, personally approved the attempt to kill him, without feeling the need to explain why Mr. Hussein was no longer protected by President Reagan's prohibition and without being asked to do so by Congress.
Can it still be called assassination if it is carried out in wartime? Does a White House decision to attack Iraq make it "a war," and thereby turn Mr. Hussein into a legitimate target? Old hands in the intelligence business say that legal questions raised by the deliberate killing of named individuals, the core definition of assassination, are less important than practical matters.
In moments of heat during the cold war, many enemies of the United States were suggested as targets of assassination. Wise heads often urged second thoughts because an assassin, once the deed had been committed, would be in a position to extort blackmail — or worse, suffer an attack of conscience and go to the newspapers.
Two arguments were regularly cited by those who counseled restraint. The first was implicit in the unwritten cold war rule against killing intelligence officers or political leaders: two can play that game, and once started it is hard to control, as Americans learned in the Lockerbie bombing. Mr. Hussein is not the only figure in danger of sudden death in Iraq at the moment, and it is a tossup who is in greater danger — Mr. Hussein or Paul Bremer?
But the final argument against assassination, often noted by American intelligence officers, was the most practical — you might get rid of public enemy No. 1, but who would take his place? Mr. Bremer has cited the survival of Mr. Hussein as a kind of psychological barrier, scaring off some Iraqis who might be willing to work with the Americans, and inspiring others to go on fighting.
But how can Washington be sure that killing Mr. Hussein will be a change for the better? Success might only clear the path for another Iraqi leader, just as intransigent but free of Mr. Hussein's terrible burden of decades of crime against his own people.
Like most questions in wartime, this one is impossible to answer in advance. The administration clearly thinks there is more to be gained than lost, and the public, so far, appears content to wait and see.
Thomas Powers writes frequently about intelligence issues. His most recent book is "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda."
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