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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08062009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08062009.html<br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">August 6,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Assassinations
and Coups <br><br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Keeping Track of the Empire's Crimes
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By WILLIAM
BLUM <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">I</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>f you catch the CIA with its hand in the
cookie jar and the Agency admits the obvious what your eyes can plainly
see that its hand is indeed in the cookie jar, it means one of two
things: <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>a) the CIA's hand is in several other cookie jars at the same time
which you don't know about and they hope that by confessing to the one
instance they can keep the others covered up; or <br><br>
<dd>b) its hand is not really in the cookie jar it's an illusion to
throw you off the right scent but they want you to believe it.<br><br>
</dl>There have been numerous news stories in recent months about secret
CIA programs, hidden from Congress, inspired by former vice-president
Dick Cheney, in operation since the September 11 terrorist attacks,
involving assassination of al Qaeda operatives or other
non-believers-in-the-Empire abroad without the knowledge of their
governments. The Agency admits to some sort of program having existed,
but insists that it was canceled; and if it was an assassination program
it was canceled before anyone was actually assassinated. Another report
has the US military, not the CIA, putting the plan or was it a
different plan? into operation, carrying out several assassinations
including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and
helped lead to the quashing of the program. (The Guardian,</i> July 13,
2009.)<br><br>
All of this can be confusing to those following the news. And rather
irrelevant. We already know that the United States has been assassinating
non-believers, or suspected non-believers, with regularity, and impunity,
in recent years, using unmanned planes (drones) firing missiles, in
Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia, if not elsewhere. (Even more
victims have been produced from amongst those who happened to be in the
same house, car, wedding party, or funeral as the non-believer.) These
murders apparently don't qualify as "assassinations", for
somehow killing "terrorists" from 2000 feet is morally and
legally superior to doing so from two feet away.<br><br>
But whatever the real story is behind the current rash of speculation, we
should not fall into the media's practice of at times intimating that
multiple or routine CIA assassination attempts would be something
shocking or at least very unusual.<br><br>
I've compiled a list of CIA assassination attempts, successful and
unsuccessful, against prominent foreign political figures, from 1949
through 2003, which, depending on how you count it, can run into the
hundreds (targeting Fidel Castro alone totals 634 according to Cuban
intelligence)2; the list can be updated by adding the allegedly al Qaeda
leaders among the drone attack victims of recent years. Assassination and
torture are the two things governments are most loath to admit to, and
try their best to cover up. It's thus rare to find a government document
or recorded statement mentioning a particular plan to assassinate
someone. There is, however, an abundance of compelling circumstantial
evidence to work with. The following list does not include several
assassinations in various parts of the world carried out by anti-Castro
Cubans employed by the CIA and headquartered in the United
States.<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>1949 - Kim Koo, Korean opposition leader<br><br>
<dd>1950s - CIA/Neo-Nazi hit list of more than 200 political figures in
West Germany <br>
<dd>to be "put out of the way" in the event of a Soviet
invasion<br><br>
<dd>1950s - Chou En-lai, Prime minister of China, several attempts on his
life<br><br>
<dd>1950s, 1962 - Sukarno, President of Indonesia<br><br>
<dd>1951 - Kim Il Sung, Premier of North Korea<br><br>
<dd>1953 - Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran<br><br>
<dd>1950s (mid) - Claro M. Recto, Philippines opposition leader<br><br>
<dd>1955 - Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India<br><br>
<dd>1957 - Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt<br><br>
<dd>1959, 1963, 1969 - Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia<br><br>
<dd>1960 - Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, leader of Iraq<br><br>
<dd>1950s-70s - José Figueres, President of Costa Rica, two attempts on
his life<br><br>
<dd>1961 - Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, leader of
Haiti<br><br>
<dd>1961 - Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo (Zaire)<br><br>
<dd>1961 - Gen. Rafael Trujillo, leader of Dominican Republic<br><br>
<dd>1963 - Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam<br><br>
<dd>1960s-70s - Fidel Castro, President of Cuba, many attempts on his
life<br><br>
<dd>1960s - Raúl Castro, high official in government of Cuba<br><br>
<dd>1965 - Francisco Caamaño, Dominican Republic opposition
leader<br><br>
<dd>1965-6 - Charles de Gaulle, President of France<br><br>
<dd>1967 - Che Guevara, Cuban leader<br><br>
<dd>1970 - Salvador Allende, President of Chile<br><br>
<dd>1970 - Gen. Rene Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of Army,
Chile<br><br>
<dd>1970s, 1981 - General Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama<br><br>
<dd>1972 - General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Panama Intelligence<br><br>
<dd>1975 - Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire<br><br>
<dd>1976 - Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica<br><br>
<dd>1980-1986 - Muammar Qaddafi, leader of Libya, several plots and
attempts upon his life<br><br>
<dd>1982 - Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of Iran<br><br>
<dd>1983 - Gen. Ahmed Dlimi, Moroccan Army commander<br><br>
<dd>1983 - Miguel d'Escoto, Foreign Minister of Nicaragua<br><br>
<dd>1984 - The nine comandantes of the Sandinista National
Directorate<br><br>
<dd>1985 - Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanese Shiite leader (80
people killed in the attempt)<br><br>
<dd>1991 - Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq<br><br>
<dd>1993 - Mohamed Farah Aideed, prominent clan leader of
Somalia<br><br>
<dd>1998, 2001-2 - Osama bin Laden, leading Islamic militant<br><br>
<dd>1999 - Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia<br><br>
<dd>2002 - Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Afghan Islamic leader and
warlord<br><br>
<dd>2003 - Saddam Hussein and his two sons<br><br>
</dl>For those of you who collect lists about splendid US foreign policy
post-World War II, here are a few more that, lacking anything better to
do, I've put together: Attempts to overthrow more than 50 foreign
governments, most of which had been democratically-elected. (* =
successful ouster of a government.) <br><br>
<dl>
<dd>Albania 1949-53<br>
<dd>East Germany 1950s<br>
<dd>Iran 1953 *<br>
<dd>Guatemala 1954 *<br>
<dd>Costa Rica mid-1950s<br>
<dd>Syria 1956-7<br>
<dd>Egypt 1957<br>
<dd>Indonesia 1957-8<br>
<dd>British Guiana 1953-64 *<br>
<dd>Iraq 1963 *<br>
<dd>North Vietnam 1945-73<br>
<dd>Cambodia 1955-70 *<br>
<dd>Laos 1958-60 *<br>
<dd>Ecuador 1960-63 *<br>
<dd>Congo 1960 *<br>
<dd>France 1965<br>
<dd>Brazil 1962-64 *<br>
<dd>Dominican Republic 1963 *<br>
<dd>Cuba 1959 to present<br>
<dd>Bolivia 1964 *<br>
<dd>Indonesia 1965 *<br>
<dd>Ghana 1966 *<br>
<dd>Chile 1964-73 *<br>
<dd>Greece 1967 *<br>
<dd>Costa Rica 1970-71<br>
<dd>Bolivia 1971 *<br>
<dd>Australia 1973-75 *<br>
<dd>Angola 1975, 1980s<br>
<dd>Zaire 1975<br>
<dd>Portugal 1974-76 * <br>
<dd>Jamaica 1976-80 *<br>
<dd>Seychelles 1979-81<br>
<dd>Chad 1981-82 *<br>
<dd>Grenada 1983 *<br>
<dd>South Yemen 1982-84<br>
<dd>Suriname 1982-84<br>
<dd>Fiji 1987 *<br>
<dd>Libya 1980s<br>
<dd>Nicaragua 1981-90 *<br>
<dd>Panama 1989 *<br>
<dd>Bulgaria 1990 *<br>
<dd>Albania 1991 *<br>
<dd>Iraq 1991<br>
<dd>Afghanistan 1980s *<br>
<dd>Somalia 1993<br>
<dd>Yugoslavia 1999<br>
<dd>Ecuador 2000 *<br>
<dd>Afghanistan 2001 *<br>
<dd>Venezuela 2002 *<br>
<dd>Iraq 2003 *<br><br>
</dl>After his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama was much praised for
mentioning the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed
Mossadegh. But in his talk in Ghana on July 11 he failed to mention the
CIA coup that ousted Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, referring
to him only as a "giant" among African leaders. The Mossadegh
coup is one of the most well-known CIA covert actions. Obama could not
easily get away without mentioning it in a talk in the Middle East
looking to mend fences. But the Nkrumah ouster is one of the least known;
indeed, not a single print or broadcast news report in the American
mainstream media saw fit to mention it at the time of the president's
talk. Like it never happened.<br><br>
And the next time you hear that Africa can't produce good leaders, people
who are committed to the welfare of the masses of their people, think of
Nkrumah and his fate. And think of Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the
Congo 1960-61 with the help of the United States; Agostinho Neto of
Angola, against whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it
impossible for him to institute progressive changes; Samora Machel of
Mozambique against whom the CIA supported a counter-revolution in the
1970s-80s period; and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (now married to
Machel's widow), who spent 28 years in prison thanks to the CIA.<br><br>
William Blum</b> is the author of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512526/counterpunchmaga">
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II</a>,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511945/counterpunchmaga">
Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power</a>. and
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1887128727/counterpunchmaga">
West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political
Memoir</a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511945/counterpunchmaga">
.</a><br><br>
He can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:BBlum6@aol.com">BBlum6@aol.com</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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