Assassinations of foreign and domestic leaders has long been a popular method of regime change used by the US. William Blum in his 2003 book Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II estimates that since the end of the Second World War the CIA have carried out more than 50 attempts to assassinate political party leaders through bombings and other more clandestine efforts to kill.

Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II is a history book on covert CIA operations and United States military interventions during the second half of the 20th century. It was written by former State Department employee William Blum. The book takes a strongly critical view of American foreign policy.

Whilst researching an entirely different topic the other day I came across this Top Secret CIA document on Wikileaks and was rather taken back by the brazen and outspoken way it talks about assassinations. The document is essentially a case study that looks into and analyzes previous assassination attempts. It's looks at both successful and unsuccessful attempts and gives guidance on when, and when isn't a good time to engage in one. It details the pros and cons of assassination and also gives examples of when and why they have gone wrong, and the type of impact they had.

Of course, the document doesn't refer to the strategic killing of an enemy as an assassination, instead they prefer to call it High Value Targeting (HVT).

The document, which is the third in the series and marked internal use only for obvious reasons, provides a detailed report and analysis on a number of different assassination attempts carried out by the US and other countries from the 1950's to 2009 when the document was published. The document assesses attacks on various insurgent groups within Afghanistan, Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Israel, Peru, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand, and reviews both the positive and negative implications of targeted assassinations, including the impact they have on the groups post attack.

3 pages of the document is dedicated to explaining the impact an assassination might have on an insurgent group. These impacts include:

• Eroding Insurgent Effectiveness
• Weakening Insurgent Will
• Changing the Level of Insurgent Support
• Fragmenting or Splitting the Insurgent Group
• Altering Insurgent Strategy or Organization

In the Appendix (page 13) they list a whole host of examples they call Selected High-Value Targeting Cases that details assassination attempts, and the people and countries that were invloved.

• Afghanistan—Taliban, 2001-Present
• Algeria—FLN, 1954-62
• Colombia—FARC, 2002-Present
• Iraq—AQI, 2004-Present
• Israel—Hizballah and HAMAS, Mid-1990s-Present
• Israel—PLO and Secular Rejectionist Groups, 1972–Mid-1990s
• Northern Ireland—IRA, 1969-98
• Peru—Shining Path, 1980-99
• Sri Lanka—LTTE, 1983-May 2009

They've even provided charts to help guide CIA officials on assessing the effectiveness and strategic utility of future HVT and assassination operations and methods.

The publication of this pro-assassination document coincided with Obama's fist year in office, and Leon Panetta's directorship at the CIA. According to Wikileaks, during that time the United States significantly increased its CIA assassination program at the expense of capture operations.

This document doesn't surprise or shock me, but it does make me feel sick knowing that the CIA have methodically thought about assassinations enough to actually spent time and money producing and disseminate this information. The CIA needs to end NOW.

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