[News] Assassination Nation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

July 19, 2012
Fifty Years of US Targeted 'Kill Lists': From the Phoenix Program to 
Predator Drones

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/19/assassination-nation/


  Assassination Nation

by DOUG NOBLE

    /"/A broad-gauged program of targeted assassination has now
    displaced counterinsurgency as the prevailing expression of the
    American way of war."

    /--Andrew Bacevich [1]/

This spring the US drone killing program has come out of the closet. 
Attorney General Eric Holder publicly defended the drone killing of an 
American citizen [2], while Obama's counter terrorism czar John Brennan 
publicly explained and justified the target killing program [3]. And a 
New York Times article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane chronicled Obama's 
personal role in vetting a secret "Kill List." [4]

This striking new transparency, the official acknowledgment for the 
first time of a broad-based US assassination and targeted killing 
program, has resulted from the unprecedented and controversial 
visibility of drone warfare. Drones now make news every day, and those 
of us who have been protesting their use for years have heightened their 
visibility in the public eye, forcing official acknowledgment and 
fostering worldwide scrutiny.  This new scrutiny focuses not only on 
drone use but also, and perhaps more importantly, on the targeted 
killing itself -- and the "kill lists" that make them possible.

This new exposure has set off a firestorm of reaction around the globe. 
Chris Woods of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism told Democracy 
Now! "The kill list got really heavy coverage ... newspapers have all 
expressed significant concern about the existence of the kill list, the 
idea of this level of executive power."  [5] A Washington Post editorial 
noted that "No president has ever relied so extensively on the secret 
killing of individuals to advance the nation's security goals." [6] 
Becker and Shane of the Times pronounced Obama's role "without precedent 
in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war ..." 
[7]  And former president Jimmy Carter 
<http://www.commondreams.org/author/jimmy-carter> insisted,  in a recent 
editorial in The New York Times 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html>, 
"We don't know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed 
in these [drone] attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities 
in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times." [8]

Really?

In fact, US assassination and targeted killing, with presidential 
approval, has been going on covertly for at least half a century. 
Ironically, all this drone killing now offers us a  new opportunity: to 
pry open the Pandora's box hiding long-held secrets of covert US 
assassination and targeted killing, and to expose them to the light of 
day. What we would find is that the only things new in the latest, more 
publicized revelations about kill lists and assassinations are the use 
of drones, the president's hands-on approach in vetting targets, and the 
global scope of the drone killing.

Those of us in the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones, Code Pink and 
other groups protesting US drones for years have correctly focused on 
the use of drones as illegal, immoral and strategically 
counterproductive. We have abhorred the schizophrenic ease of remote 
killing, the uniquely frightening horror of a drone strike, and the 
unavoidable (even intentional) killing of countless civilian "terrorist 
suspects" in "signature strikes." We have also warned of the 
proliferation of drones in countries around the globe and of their 
procurement by US police forces and border patrols, for surveillance and 
"non-lethal" targeting.

But drones are not the only, or even the most important, concern. It's 
the targeted killing itself, past and present. In this article I start 
to unravel what the latest demands for transparency should lead us to 
investigate fully: the fifty year history of US assassination and 
targeted killing that has resulted, quite directly, in the present 
moment. Those who are mortified by the latest revelations of Obama's 
kill list have much to learn from a more comprehensive, historical 
perspective on US killing around the globe.  Who knows: Perhaps someone 
in Congress might even be prodded to do what Senators Fulbright and 
Church did in years past: hold hearings on this continuing execration 
taking place in our name. Until then, what follows is an introduction to 
this ongoing horror story.

Section 1 of this article briefly reviews the lethal history of the US 
Phoenix Program in Vietnam, the original source of subsequent US counter 
terrorist tactics and strategies.  Section 2 revisits briefly the 
well-worn history of US kill lists and assassinations in Latin American 
countries, followed by the somewhat less-well-known history of US kill 
lists and assassinations in countries on other continents. Section 3 
traces the direct legacy of Phoenix, even its explicit resurrection by 
the key architects of the US targeted killing programs in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, and in a growing number of "countries we are not at war with."

One point of clarification and definition. It is well known that in 
recent history the US has orchestrated assassination attempts, both 
successful and unsuccessful, on major world leaders. Examples include: 
Lumumba under Eisenhower, Castro and Diem under Kennedy, Gaddhafi under 
Reagan, Saddam Hussein under Bush, and Allende under Nixon. [9]  The 
term "assassination" is typically restricted to such killings of 
political leaders, and President Ford's executive order banning 
assassination applies only to the assassination of foreign heads of 
state. [10] The focus of this article is different. Here we discuss the 
US-generated kill lists used over the last half century, under direct 
presidential authority, for the targeted killing of thousands of 
civilians suspected of being or harboring terrorists/ insurgents, from 
Vietnam to Guatemala, from Indonesia to Iraq, right up to the present day.

*The Phoenix Program *

The US Phoenix Program was a secret, large scale counter terrorist 
effort in Vietnam. Developed in 1967 by the CIA, the Phoenix Program, 
called Phung Hoang by the Vietnamese, aimed a concerted effort to 
"neutralize" the Vietcong Infrastructure (VCI) consisting of South 
Vietnamese civilians suspected of supporting North Vietnamese or Viet 
Cong soldiers. The euphemism "neutralize" meant to kill or detain 
indefinitely. Then CIA Director William Colby, while insisting in 1971 
Congressional hearings that "the Phoenix program is not a program of 
assassination," nonetheless conceded that Phoenix operations killed over 
20,000 people between 1967 and 1972. [11]

Phoenix targeted civilians, not soldiers. Operations were carried out by 
"hunter-killer teams" consisting both of US Green Berets and Navy Seals 
and by South Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), units of 
mercenaries set up for assassination and "counter terror." A Newsweek 
article in January 1970 described Phoenix as "a highly secret and 
unconventional operation that counters VC terror with terror of its 
own." [12]  Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post reported Phoenix being 
called "an instrument of mass political murder...sort of Vietnamese 
Murder Inc.," designed to terrorize the civilian population into 
submission." [13]

Until 1970 the computerized VCI blacklist was a unilateral American 
operation. After the devastating 1968 Tet offensive, South Vietnamese 
President Thieu declared: "The VCI must be eliminated...and will be 
defeated by the Phoenix program." [14] Phoenix became a ruthless "bounty 
hunting" program to eliminate the opposition. [15] The US and South 
Vietnamese created a list of tens of thousands of suspects for 
assassination. These names were centralized and distributed to Phoenix 
coordinators. From 1965-68 U.S. and Saigon intelligence services 
maintained an active list of Viet Cong cadre marked for assassination. 
The program for 1969 called for "neutralizing" 1800 a month.

The VCI blacklist became corrupted by officers inserting their personal 
enemies' names to get even. Due process was nonexistent.  Names supplied 
by anonymous informers showed up on blacklists. [16] CIA Director Colby 
admitted in 1971 that the blacklists had been "inaccurate." [17] Few 
senior VCI leaders were caught in the Phoenix net. Instead its victims 
were typically innocent civilians. A Pentagon-contract study found that, 
between 1970 and 1971, ninety-seven per cent of the Vietcong targeted by 
the Phoenix Program were of negligible importance. [18] By 1973, Phoenix 
generated 300,000 political prisoners in South Vietnam. Military 
operations such as My Lai used Phoenix intelligence; in fact, the My Lai 
massacre, hardly an isolated incident, was itself a Phoenix operation. [19]

Apologists  have offered rationales for Phoenix that sound eerily 
similar to those used to defend current drone attacks. Phoenix was 
typically referred to as a "scalpel" replacing the "bludgeon" of search 
and destroy, aerial bombardment or artillery barrages. Alternatively, it 
was called a precision "rifle shot rather than a shotgun approach to 
target key political leaders ... and activists in VCI." [20] Military 
historian Dale Andrade explains, "Both SEALS and PRUs killed many VCI 
guerrillas -- that was war. They also inevitably killed innocent 
civilians -- that was regrettable....but [Phoenix] operations were much 
more discerning than the massive affairs launched by conventional 
...forces. That fact was often lost in the rhetoric of assassination and 
murder ..."[21]

Phoenix was created, organized, and funded by the CIA. Quotas were set 
by Americans. Informers were paid with US funds. The national system of 
identifying suspects, the elaboration of numerical goals and their use 
as measures of merit, was designed and funded by Americans. One former 
US Phoenix soldier conceded, "It was "heinous," far worse than the 
things attributed to it." [22]

*Kill Lists from Phoenix to Latin America*

The US intelligence community formalized the lessons of the Phoenix 
Program in Vietnam by commissioning Project X, the Army's top-secret 
program for transmitting Vietnam's lessons to South America. [23] By the 
mid-1970s, the Project X materials were going to armies all over the 
world. These were textbooks for global counterinsurgency and terror 
warfare. These included a murder manual, "Psychological Operations in 
Guerrilla Warfare," which openly instructed in the assassination of 
public officials, and was distributed to the Nicaraguan Contras. Another 
manual, "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual," was used widely 
in Honduran counterrorism efforts.

Use of the Project X material was temporarily suspended by Congress and 
the Carter administration for probable human rights violations, but the 
program was restored by the Reagan administration in 1982. By the 
mid-1980s, according to one detailed history, "counterguerrilla 
operations in Colombia and Central America would thus bear an eerie but 
explicable resemblance to South Vietnam." [24]

What follows is a brief sketch of the widespread application of  
US-promulgated Phoenix-derived  reigns of terror, kill lists, and death 
squads throughout Latin America and beyond. Much of this is familiar 
territory to many activists and scholars, and is merely the tip of the 
iceberg, but it merits review as a backdrop for the current context of 
kill lists and targeted assassination. [25]

*US KILL LISTS AND ASSASSINATION IN LATIN AMERICA*

The U.S. Army's School of Americas (SOA), started in 1946, trained mass 
murderers and orchestrated coups in Peru, Panama, Argentina, Ecuador, 
Bolivia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mexico. The SOA trained more than 
61,000 Latin American officers implicated in widespread slaughter of 
civilian populations across Latin America. From 1966-1976 the SOA 
trained hundreds of Latin American officers in Phoenix-derived methods. 
Between 1989-1991 the SOA issued almost 700 copies of Project X 
handbooks to at least ten Latin American countries, including Bolivia, 
Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras. In 2001, SOA was 
renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), 
but peace activists know it as School of Assassins. [26]

The CIA trained assassination groups such as Halcones in Mexico, the 
Mano Blanca in Guatemala, and the Escuadron de la Muerte in Brazil. In 
South America, in 1970-79, Operation Condor, the code-name for 
collection, exchange and storage of intelligence, was established among 
intelligence services in South America to eradicate Marxist activities. 
Operation Condor promoted joint operations including assassination 
against targets in member countries. In Central America, the 
CIA-supported death toll under the Reagan presidency alone exceeded 
150,000. The CIA set up Ansesal and other networks of terror in El 
Salvador, Guatemala (Ansegat) and pre-Sandinista Nicaragua (Ansenic).

Honduran death squads were active through the 1980s, the most infamous 
of which was Battalion 3--16 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_3-16_%28Honduras%29>, which 
assassinated hundreds of people, including teachers, politicians, and 
union leaders. Battalion 316 received substantial CIA support and 
training, and at least 19 members graduated from the School of the 
Americas 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation>.

In Colombia, about 20,000 people were killed since 1986 and much of U.S. 
aid for counternarcotics was diverted to what Amnesty International 
labeled "one of the worst killing fields." The US State Department also 
supported the Colombian army in creating a database of subversives, 
terrorists and drug dealers.

In Bolivia, Amnesty International reported that from 1966-68 between 
3,000 and 8,000 people were killed by death squads. The CIA supplied 
names of U.S. and other foreign missionaries and progressive priests.

In Ecuador, the CIA maintained what was called the lynx list, aka the 
subversive control watch list of the most important left-wing activists 
to arrest. In Uruguay. Every CIA station maintained a subversive control 
watch list of most important left wing activists. From 1970-72 the CIA 
helped set up the Department of Information and Intelligence (DII), 
which served as a cover for death squads, and also co-ordinated meetings 
between Brazilian and Uruguayan death squads.

In Nicaragua, the US provided illegal funds to the Contras, and Marine 
intelligence helped maintain a list of civilians marked for 
assassination when Contra forces entered the country.

In Chile, 1970-73, CIA-created unions organized CIA-financed strikes 
leading to Allende's overthrow and subsequent suicide. By late 1971 the 
CIA was involved in the preparation of lists of nearly 20,000 
middle-level leaders of people's organizations, scheduled to be 
assassinated after the Pinochet coup.

In Haiti, U.S. officials with CIA backgrounds in Phoenix-like program 
activities coordinated with the Ton-Ton Macoute, "Baby Doc" Duvalier's 
private death squad, responsible for killing at least 3,000 people.

For over thirty years the US military and the CIA  helped organize, 
train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador. From 1980-93, at 
least 63,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed, mostly by the government 
directly supported by the U.S. The CIA routinely supplied ANSESAL, the 
security forces, and the general staff with electronic, photographic, 
and personal surveillance of suspected dissidents and Salvadorans abroad 
who were later assassinated by death squads. US militray involvement in 
El Salvador allowed "the lessons learned in Vietnam to be put into 
practice ... assisting an allied country in counterinsurgency 
operations." [27]

In Guatemala, as early as 1954, the U.S. Ambassador, after the 
CIA-orchestrated  overthrow of the Arbenz government, gave to the new 
Armas government lists of radical opponents to be assassinated. Years 
later, throughout Guatemala's 36-year civil war, Washington continuously 
to supported the Guatemalan military's excesses against civilians, which 
killed 200,000 people.

*US Assassination Programs Exported to Other Countries*

In Indonesia, 1965-66, the US embassy and the CIA provided the 
Indonesian military with lists of the names of PKI militants, which were 
used by Suharto to crush the PKI regime.  This resulted in "one of the 
worst episodes of mass murder of the twentieth century," with estimates 
as high as one million deaths. [28]

In Thailand, in 1976, the new junta used CIA-trained forces to crush 
student demonstrators during coup; two right-wing terrorist squads 
suspected for assassinations tied directly to CIA operations.

In Iran, the CIA launched a coup installing the shah in power and helped 
establish the lethal secret police unit SAVAK. [29] The CIA and SAVAK 
then exchanged intelligence, including information and arrest lists on 
the communist Tudeh party. Years later, in 1983, the CIA gave the 
Khomeni government a list of USSR KGB agents and collaborators operating 
in Iran, which the Khomeni regime used to execute 200 suspects and close 
down the communist Tudeh party.

In the Philippines, in 1986, Reagan increased CIA involvement in 
Philippine counterinsurgency operations, carried out by more than 50 
death squads. In 2001, before 9/11, the Bush administration sent a unit 
of SOF to the Philippines "to help train Philippine counter terrorist 
forces fighting against Muslim separatists" within groups like Abu 
Sayyaf. After 9/11 US-Filipino cooperation was stepped up and the 
ongoing separatist conflict was cast, to the benefit of both sides, as 
"the second front in the war on terror."[30] In Feb, 2012, a US drone 
strike targeting leaders of Abu Sayyaf and other separatist groups 
killed 15 people, the first use of killer drones in Southeast Asia. [31]

*A "global Phoenix Program": drone targets worldwide*

    **"A global Phoenix program ... would provide a useful start point"
    for "a new strategic approach to the Global War on Terrorism."

    --David Kilcullen [32]

*IRAQ *

Despite the US-perpetrated counter terrorist slaughter in Latin America 
and elsewhere in the 1970s-1990s, the US Special Forces debacle in 
Mogadishu in 1993, popularized in the film /Black Hawk Down,/ severely 
impacted US willingness to use Special Forces in counter terrorist 
missions for the next decade. But then, after 9/11, things changed 
drastically. On September 17, 2001, President Bush signed a secret 
Presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to create paramilitary teams 
to hunt, capture, detain, or kill designated terrorists almost anywhere 
in the world. The pressure from the White House, in particular from 
Vice-President Dick Cheney, was intense, and in the scramble, a search 
of the C.I.A.'s archives turned up -- the Phoenix Program. [33]

In July , 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent an order for a 
plan to make sure that special forces  could be authorized to use lethal 
force 'in minutes and hours, not days and weeks.'" [34] Rumsfeld 
prompted Bush to authorize the military to "find and finish" terrorist 
targets. Here he was referring to "the F3EA targeting cycle" used in 
anti-infrastructure operations by Special Operations Forces. F3EA, an 
abbreviation of find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze, utilizes 
comprehensive intelligence to "find a target amidst civilian clutter and 
fix his exact location . . . . enabling surgical finish operations ... 
to catch a fleeting target." [35]

Lt General William (Jerry) Boykin, Delta commander in Mogadishu, deputy 
undersecretary for Defense for Intelligence and a key planner of the 
Special Forces offensive in Iraq, announced, "We're going after these 
people. Killing or capturing them ... doing what the Phoenix program was 
designed to do, without all the secrecy." [36]

Back in 1963, the CIA had supplied lists of communists to the Baath 
party coup so that communists could be rounded up and eliminated. [37] 
Now, forty years later, it was the Baathists' turn to be rounded up by 
Special Forces and CIA and executed. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq>, the U.S. military 
notoriously developed a set of playing cards 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_card> to help troops identify the 
most-wanted members 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._list_of_most-wanted_Iraqis> of Saddam 
Hussein <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein>'s government, 
mostly high-ranking Baath Party 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baath_Party> members. Less well-known was 
the secret targeted killing of thousands of Baathist civilians by US 
Special Forces.

Seymour Hersh wrote in 2003 that "The Bush Administration authorized a 
major escalation of the Special Forces covert war in Iraq. ... Its 
highest priority [being] the neutralization of the Baathist insurgents, 
by capture or assassination. [38] A former C.I.A. station chief 
described the strategy: "The only way we can win is to go 
unconventional. We're going to have to play their game. Guerrilla versus 
guerrilla. Terrorism versus terrorism. We've got to scare the Iraqis 
into submission." [39] The US even hired thousands of contract killers 
previously responsible for US-sponsored extra-judicial killings and 
death squad activity in Latin America.  The operation---called 
"preëmptive manhunting" by one Pentagon adviser---had, according to 
Hersh, "the potential to turn into another Phoenix Program." [40]

*Global Phoenix *

In 2009, the Office of the Secretary of Defense sponsored a paper by the 
National Defense Research Institute entitled "The Phoenix Program and 
Contemporary Counterinsurgency." The paper notes, "The persistent 
insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have generated fresh interest among 
military officers, policymakers, and civilian analysts in the history of 
counterinsurgency. The Phoenix Program in Vietnam---the U.S. effort to 
improve intelligence coordination and operations aimed at identifying 
and dismantling the communist underground---is the subject of much 
renewed attention." [41]

The paper continues, "As the United States and its allies shift their 
focus to Afghanistan and weigh counterinsurgency alternatives for that 
country, decisionmakers would be wise to consider how Phoenix-style 
approaches might serve to pry open Taliban and Al-Qaeda black boxes." [42]

Two key architects of the current Phoenix-style global counterinsurgency 
efforts by the US are David Kilcullen and Michael Vickers.  David 
Kilcullen has been counterinsurgency advisor to two former Middle East 
commanders, General Stanley McChrystal (formerly head of Special 
Operations) and General David Petraeus, now CIA Director. Michael G. 
Vickers, made famous in the book and film /Charlie Wilson's War/ about 
the CIA's anti-Soviet Afghan campaign of the 1980s, is currently Under 
Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, wielding such vast authority over 
the US war on terror that, according to a Washington Post profile, 
Pentagon colleagues refer to as his "take-over-the-world-plan." [43]

Kilcullen wrote in a much-quoted 2004 paper entitled "Countering Global 
Insurgency" that "Counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq 
have reawakened official and analytical interest in the Phoenix 
Program." He proposed that "a global Phoenix program ... would provide a 
useful start point" for "a new strategic approach to the Global War on 
Terrorism," one which would focus on "interdicting links ... between 
jihad theatres, denying sanctuary areas, ... isolating Islamists from 
local populations and ... disrupting inputs" from others. [44]

Vickers issued a Phoenix-style directive in December 2008 to "develop 
capabilities for extending U.S. reach into denied areas and uncertain 
environments by operating with and through indigenous foreign forces or 
by conducting low visibility operations." "It's not just the Middle 
East. It's not just the developing world. It's not just non-democratic 
countries -- it's a global problem. Threats can emanate from Denmark, 
the United Kingdom, you name it." [45] According to a Washington Post 
profile, "the most critical aspect of Vicker's plan targeting 
al-Qaeda-affiliated networks around the world involves US Special Forces 
working through foreign partners to uproot and fight terrorism." [46] US 
military and Special Operations forces would "pay indigenous fighters 
and paramilitaries who work with them in gathering intelligence, hunting 
terrorists, fomenting guerrilla warfare or putting down an insurgency." [47]

Pentagon colleagues have said of Vickers, "he tends to think like a 
gangster." [48] Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell revealed that 
getting Bin Laden in Pakistan was Vicker's "baby," and "more than anyone 
else in the department, he drove the issue." [49] 2011 New York Times 
Vickers summarizes his strategy this: "You make a deal with the devil to 
defeat another devil."[50] /"I just want to kill those guys."/  [51] A 
2011 Such is the megalomaniacal mission underlying the US global war on 
terror, its kill lists and worldwide program of targeted assassination.//

*Killer Drones Revisited*

    /"/Engaging in /any/ assassination blurs the line between the good
    guys and the bad." It is also "a proclamation of weakness and an
    admission of failure."

    //--John Jacob Nutter/, The CIA's Black Ops/ [52]//

The purpose of this article is to reframe the current attention on 
killer drones and Obama's "kill list" within an historical perspective. 
The goal here is not to discourage the escalating protest against killer 
drones or against Obama's targeted assassination program around the 
globe. As stated at the outset, the unprecedented visibility of these 
nefarious activities and of the outraged public response to them  is 
precisely what is needed at this time. This heightened awareness also 
affords a perfect opportunity to revisit the extraordinary history of US 
assassination and targeted killing that has led directly and explicitly 
to these activities.

Focus on the drones alone will not be sufficient. For even the major 
counter terrorist mastermind David Kilcullen himself, an avid proponent 
of the global targeted killing program, has argued against the use of 
drones. In a 2009 New York Times editorial he argues that "The goal 
should be to isolate extremists from their communities; [they] must be 
defeated by indigenous forces...Drone strikes make this harder, not 
easier." He adds, "The use of drones displays every characteristic of a 
tactic -- or, more accurately, a piece of technology -- substituting for 
a strategy, [with minimal understanding] of the tribal dynamics of the 
local population. This creates public outrage and a desire for revenge." 
[53]

Scholar Maria Ryan, in a 2011 article entitled "War in Countries We Are 
Not at War With," writes: "In 2006 the Pentagon announced that it had 
sent small teams of Special Operations troops to US embassies to gather 
intelligence on terrorism in  Africa, South East Asia and South 
America...There is, then, a covert side to the Global War on Terrorism  
that is not visible and not currently knowable in the absence of 
whistleblowers, leaks, or things gone wrong." [54]

The heightened public attention paid to drone killing might very well, 
in time, lead to some welcome success in curtailing their use. But too 
narrow a focus on the US deployment of Predator and Reaper drones might 
also distract us from other forms of Phoenix-derived targeted killing 
still being perpetrated globally -- and covertly -- by our Assassination 
Nation.

/*Doug Noble* is an activist with Occupy Rochester NY and Rochester 
Against War./

*NOTES*

1 Andrew Bacevich, "Uncle Sam, Global Gangster" Feb 19, 2012 
www.tomdispatch.com/dialogs/print/?id=175505 
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/dialogs/print/?id=175505>

2 Eric Holder, speech at Northwestern University March 1, 2012

3 John Brennan, speech at Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, May 1, 2012

4 Jo Becker and Scott Shane New York Times 5/29/12 "Secret 'Kill List' 
Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will"

5 Chris Woods, interview with Democracy Now! June 5, 2012 democracynow.org

6 Michael Gerson, "America's Remote-controlled War on Terror," /The/ 
/Washington Post/ May 3, 2012

7 Becker and Shane, Secret Kill List"

8 /Jimmy Carter <http://www.commondreams.org/author/jimmy-carter>/ "A 
Cruel and Unusual Record,"/The New York Times 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html>, 
June 25, 2012/

9 John Jacob Nutter,/The CIA's Black Ops/, Prometheus Books 2000, p152

10 Nutter,/The CIA's Black Ops, p.145// /

11 John Prados, /Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William 
Colby/,  Oxford University Press, 2003, p235ff/ /

/12 /Douglas Valentine/, The Phoenix Program. /William Morrow & Co., 
1990, p313/ /

/13 /Valentine, p 315

14 Prados/, p 224// /

/15 /Valentine,  p309

16 Valentine,  p13

17 Prados/, p 235// /

18 Jane Mayer, The Black Sites: A Rare look inside the CIA's Secret 
Interrogation Program," /The New Yorker/ August 13, 2007

19 Valentine, p13ff

20 Valentine, p346

21 Dale Andrade, /Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam 
War/. Lexington Books, 1990, p.175

22 Valentine, p 310

23 Alfred W. McCoy, /A Question of Torture/ Metropolitan Books, 2006, p 86

24 McCoy, p 71

25 Unless otherwise noted, the following information comes from the 
comprehensive "CIA Death Squad Timeline" by Ralph McGehee, 
http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/166983.html

26 Mary Turck, "School of Assassins," Common Dreams Nov 18, 2003

27 Michael Smith, /Killer Elite, /St Martin's Press, 2006, p 49

28 Prados, p 155-157

29 McCoy 74

30 Maria Ryan, "'War in Countries We Are Not at War With': The War on 
Terror on the Periphery from Bush to Obama" /International Politics/, 
v.48 (2011)

31 Deadly Drone Strike on Muslims in the Southern Philippines March 5, 
2012 
www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/03/05-drones-philippines-ahmed 
<http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/03/05-drones-philippines-ahmed>

32 David Kilcullen, "Countering Global Insurgency" /Journal of Strategic 
Studies, 2004/

33 Mayer, "Black Sites"

34 Smith, p230-232

35 William Rosenau & Austin Long, "The Phoenix Program and Contemporary 
Counterinsurgency," National Defense Research Institute, RAND Corp, 2009

36 Smith, p 273

37 McGehee, "CIA Death Squad Timeline"

38 Seymour Hersh, "Moving Targets: Will the counter-insurgency plan in 
Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?" The New Yorker Dec. 15, 2003

39 Hersh, "Moving Targets"

40 Hersh, "Moving Targets"

41 Rosenau and Long

42 Rosenau and Long

43 Profile of Michael G. Vickers, /Washington Post/ 
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-g-vickers/gIQAm3DRAP_topic.html 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-g-vickers/gIQAm3DRAP_topic.html>

44 Kilcullen, 2004

45 Ann Scott Tyson, "Sorry Charlie, This is Michael Vickers's War," 
/Washington Post /

Dec 28, 2007 //

46 Profile of Michael G. Vickers

47 Tyson, 2007

48 Elisabeth Bumiller, "Soldier, Thinker, Hunter, Spy: Drawing a Bead on 
Al Qaeda" /New York Times/, Sept 4, 2011

49 Bumiller

50 Bumiller

51 Bumiller

52 Nutter, p 149

53 David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum "Death from Above, Outrage 
Down Below." /New York Times/  May 17, 2009

54 Ryan, 2011

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