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<div class="entry-date">July 19, 2012</div>
<div class="subheadlinestyle">Fifty Years of US Targeted ‘Kill Lists’:
>From the Phoenix Program to Predator Drones<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/19/assassination-nation/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/19/assassination-nation/</a><br>
</div>
<h1 class="article-title">Assassination Nation</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by DOUG NOBLE</div>
<div class="main-text">
<div>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center"> <em>“</em>A broad-gauged
program of targeted assassination has now displaced counterinsurgency
as the prevailing expression of the American way of war.”</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;"><em>–Andrew Bacevich [1]</em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.commondreams.org/author/jimmy-carter"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.commondreams.org']);">Jimmy
Carter</a> insisted, in a recent editorial in <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.nytimes.com']);">The
New York Times</a>, “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]</p>
<p>Really?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>The Phoenix Program </strong></p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p><strong>Kill Lists from Phoenix to Latin America</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p><strong>US KILL LISTS AND ASSASSINATION IN LATIN AMERICA</strong></p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>Honduran death squads were active through the 1980s, the most
infamous of which was <a title="Battalion 3-16 (Honduras)"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_3-16_%28Honduras%29"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">Battalion
3–16</a>, 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 <a
title="Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">School
of the Americas</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>US Assassination Programs Exported to Other Countries</strong></p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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]</p>
<div>
<p><strong>A “global Phoenix Program”: drone targets worldwide</strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong></strong>“A global Phoenix program … would provide a
useful start point” for “a new strategic approach to the Global War on
Terrorism.”</p>
<p>–David Kilcullen [32]</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div>
<p><strong>IRAQ </strong></p>
<p>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 <em>Black Hawk Down,</em>
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]</p>
</div>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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 <a
title="2003 invasion of Iraq"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">2003
invasion of Iraq</a>, the U.S. military notoriously developed a set of <a
title="Playing card" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_card"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">playing
cards</a> to help troops identify the <a
title="U.S. list of most-wanted Iraqis"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._list_of_most-wanted_Iraqis"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">most-wanted
members</a> of <a title="Saddam Hussein"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">Saddam
Hussein</a>‘s government, mostly high-ranking <a title="Baath Party"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baath_Party"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://en.wikipedia.org']);">Baath
Party</a> members. Less well-known was the secret targeted killing of
thousands of Baathist civilians by US Special Forces.</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p><strong>Global Phoenix </strong></p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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 <em>Charlie
Wilson’s War</em> 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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<div>
<p>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] <em>“I just want to kill those
guys.”</em> [51] A 2011 Such is the megalomaniacal mission underlying
the US global war on terror, its kill lists and worldwide program of
targeted assassination.<em></em></p>
</div>
<p><strong>Killer Drones Revisited</strong></p>
<div>
<blockquote>
<p><em>“</em>Engaging in <em>any</em> assassination blurs the line
between the good guys and the bad.” It is also “a proclamation of
weakness and an admission of failure.”</p>
<p><em></em>–John Jacob Nutter<em>, The CIA’s Black Ops</em> [52]<em></em></p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<div>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em><strong>Doug Noble</strong> is an activist with Occupy Rochester
NY and Rochester Against War.</em></p>
<p><strong>NOTES</strong></p>
<p>1 Andrew Bacevich, “Uncle Sam, Global Gangster” Feb 19, 2012 <a
href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/dialogs/print/?id=175505"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.tomdispatch.com']);">www.tomdispatch.com/dialogs/print/?id=175505</a></p>
</div>
<p>2 Eric Holder, speech at Northwestern University March 1, 2012</p>
<p>3 John Brennan, speech at Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, May 1,
2012</p>
<div>
<p>4 Jo Becker and Scott Shane New York Times 5/29/12 “Secret ‘Kill
List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will”</p>
<p>5 Chris Woods, interview with Democracy Now! June 5, 2012
democracynow.org</p>
</div>
<p>6 Michael Gerson, “America’s Remote-controlled War on Terror,” <em>The</em>
<em>Washington Post</em> May 3, 2012</p>
<div>
<p>7 Becker and Shane, Secret Kill List”</p>
<p>8 <em><a href="http://www.commondreams.org/author/jimmy-carter"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.commondreams.org']);">Jimmy
Carter</a></em> “A Cruel and Unusual Record,”<em><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.nytimes.com']);">The
New York Times</a>, June 25, 2012</em></p>
</div>
<p>9 John Jacob Nutter,<em>The CIA’s Black Ops</em>, Prometheus Books
2000, p152</p>
<p>10 Nutter,<em>The CIA’s Black Ops, p.145</em><em> </em></p>
<p>11 John Prados, <em>Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director
William Colby</em>, Oxford University Press, 2003, p235ff<em> </em></p>
<p><em>12 </em>Douglas Valentine<em>, The Phoenix Program. </em>William
Morrow & Co., 1990, p313<em> </em></p>
<p><em>13 </em>Valentine, p 315</p>
<p>14 Prados<em>, p 224</em><em> </em></p>
<p><em>15 </em>Valentine, p309</p>
<p>16 Valentine, p13</p>
<p>17 Prados<em>, p 235</em><em> </em></p>
<div>
<p>18 Jane Mayer, The Black Sites: A Rare look inside the CIA’s Secret
Interrogation Program,” <em>The New Yorker</em> August 13, 2007</p>
</div>
<p>19 Valentine, p13ff</p>
<div>
<p>20 Valentine, p346</p>
<p>21 Dale Andrade, <em>Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the
Vietnam War</em>. Lexington Books, 1990, p.175</p>
<p>22 Valentine, p 310</p>
</div>
<p>23 Alfred W. McCoy, <em>A Question of Torture</em> Metropolitan
Books, 2006, p 86</p>
<p>24 McCoy, p 71</p>
<p>25 Unless otherwise noted, the following information comes from the
comprehensive “CIA Death Squad Timeline” by Ralph McGehee, <a
href="http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/166983.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.totse.com']);">http://www.totse.com/en/politics/central_intelligence_agency/166983.html</a></p>
<p>26 Mary Turck, “School of Assassins,” Common Dreams Nov 18, 2003</p>
<p>27 Michael Smith, <em>Killer Elite, </em>St Martin’s Press, 2006,
p 49</p>
<p>28 Prados, p 155-157</p>
<p>29 McCoy 74</p>
<p>30 Maria Ryan, “’War in Countries We Are Not at War With’: The War
on Terror on the Periphery from Bush to Obama” <em>International
Politics</em>, v.48 (2011)</p>
<p>31 Deadly Drone Strike on Muslims in the Southern Philippines March
5, 2012 <a
href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/03/05-drones-philippines-ahmed"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.brookings.edu']);">www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/03/05-drones-philippines-ahmed</a></p>
<p>32 David Kilcullen, “Countering Global Insurgency” <em>Journal of
Strategic Studies, 2004</em></p>
<p>33 Mayer, “Black Sites”</p>
<p>34 Smith, p230-232</p>
<p>35 William Rosenau & Austin Long, “The Phoenix Program and
Contemporary Counterinsurgency,” National Defense Research Institute,
RAND Corp, 2009</p>
<p>36 Smith, p 273</p>
<div>
<p>37 McGehee, “CIA Death Squad Timeline”</p>
</div>
<p>38 Seymour Hersh, “Moving Targets: Will the counter-insurgency plan
in Iraq repeat the mistakes of Vietnam?” The New Yorker Dec. 15, 2003</p>
<div>
<p>39 Hersh, “Moving Targets”</p>
</div>
<p>40 Hersh, “Moving Targets”</p>
<p>41 Rosenau and Long</p>
<p>42 Rosenau and Long</p>
<p>43 Profile of Michael G. Vickers, <em>Washington Post</em> <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-g-vickers/gIQAm3DRAP_topic.html"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.washingtonpost.com']);">www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-g-vickers/gIQAm3DRAP_topic.html</a></p>
<p>44 Kilcullen, 2004</p>
<p>45 Ann Scott Tyson, “Sorry Charlie, This is Michael Vickers’s War,” <em>Washington
Post </em></p>
<p>Dec 28, 2007 <em></em></p>
<p>46 Profile of Michael G. Vickers</p>
<p>47 Tyson, 2007</p>
<p>48 Elisabeth Bumiller, “Soldier, Thinker, Hunter, Spy: Drawing a
Bead on Al Qaeda” <em>New York Times</em>, Sept 4, 2011</p>
<p>49 Bumiller</p>
<p>50 Bumiller</p>
<p>51 Bumiller</p>
<p>52 Nutter, p 149</p>
<p>53 David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum “Death from Above,
Outrage Down Below.” <em>New York Times</em> May 17, 2009</p>
<p>54 Ryan, 2011</p>
</div>
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