Luca Trenta's book covers numerous instances in which US. policymakers relied on targeted violence against political enemies during the Cold War. According to Trenta, this history reflects an unsettling but unavoidable aspect of U.S. foreign policy after 1945. Successive U.S. administrations regarded assassinations abroad as a viable option for policy. According to Trenta, assassinations were both the “third rail” of U.S. politics and a mainstay of foreign policy—they were an option often considered but seldom, if ever, openly condoned. They were also frequently discussed insensitively using euphemisms and half-truths.Assassinations became, in effect, a standard part of U.S. policy as the government increasingly insisted that it did not carry out the practice. The President's Kill List begins during the early Cold War, when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) saw itself as the vanguard of a covert war against Communist influence (p. 25).According to Trenta, the narrative is primarily distinguished by coherence instead of discontinuities. The bipolar conflict of the Cold War served as a major vehicle for the early plots, which included Patrice Lumumba in the Congo (ch. 2), Fidel (and Raul) Castro in Cuba (ch. 3), Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic (ch. 4), and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam (ch. 6). The killings in each of these instances were a component of larger initiatives to overthrow the government. U.S. involvement varied, ranging from indirect involvement through money transfers, arms supplies, and political backing to direct planning in rare instances (Lumumba, some of the Castro schemes). At the other extreme, the CIA and the U.S. government decided to permit the coup to occur even though they knew it would probably end in the deaths of its targets, as in the case of General René Schneider's assassination during the attempted coup against Salvador Allende in Chile (ch. 6).Trenta illuminates the relationship between the CIA and political authorities with these designs. The connection was far from straightforward, much like the functions of other government organizations. Although Trenta contends that there were definite benefits to be gained from covert operations, political and intelligence officials continued to engage in heated legal and policy discussions. Trenta refutes any idea of political ignorance: he shows beyond doubt that presidents and their closest advisers were always aware of assassination plots, even if they did not initiate them. Although presidential administrations varied in their support for covert action, he rejects the notion that ignorance was a big factor (see ch. 2 on Patrice Lumumba). The State Department and the Defense Department had differing views at times, sometimes supporting regime change and at other times serving as a check on unbridled attacks.A sequence of three presidential orders (Gerald Ford 11905, Jimmy Carter 12036, and Ronald Reagan 12333) outlawing assassinations, a damning report on assassinations, and the 1975 Senate Church Committee inquiry into unlawful operations of the CIA (ch. 7) are the central elements of the narrative. Trenta traces the dynamics between law, policy, and, less frequently, morality that influenced the conversations. He also traces the layers of euphemism and plausible or implausible deniability that allowed assassination to remain a viable policy choice. He observes how subsequent administrations, with the exception of Jimmy Carter, engaged in successive reinterpretations of the prohibition to legalize political assassinations within the framework of counterterrorism and counternarcotics operations after the enactment of the first executive order prohibiting political assassinations in 1976. With assassinations formally outlawed, foreign policy experts went to work creating legal alternatives for political killings that did not violate the rule. Ultimately, what emerges is a recurrent game of plausible deniability of murderous purpose (e.g., ch. 8 discusses Muhammar Qaddafi and Afghanistan) and different forms of direct and indirect backing for internal coups (chs. 9 and 10 deal with Panama and Iraq, respectively). The primary effect of the assassination ban, however, was the vast legal framework that was gradually constructed starting in the Reagan years to allow operations to be conducted while refuting the notion that they were assassinations in the first place.Not all of these activities were carried out in public, although some were. Both Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein, five years apart, were the targets of airstrikes. The legal rationales behind political assassinations were shrouded in mystery as they became more public. Trenta points out that a patchwork of statements made in public, counterterrorism strategy papers, secret intelligence results, notification notes, and Office of Legal Counsel memoranda provided the legal rationale for these assassination attempts. No matter how well-kept the secrets were, they always left behind some clues, an elusive presence that suggests what is hidden. (as Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman have observed). Trenta reconstructs the contours of the arguments, debates, and positions that shaped the policy of legitimate assassination through an impressive array of sources, including memoirs, public documents, historical records, and high-level interviews with CIA and White House officials. He notes the contradictions, revelations, and uncertainties that inevitably permeate the study of covert operations.According to Trenta, the simplest way to understand the reemergence of legalized killing after 1975 is as a process of contesting norms, which he categorizes into three main categories: contesting validity, application, and meaning (p. 357). The basic ambiguity of political killing—what it is what counts as complicity in killing—is addressed by the contestation of meaning. By denying that killing was the true goal of any operation, U.S. officials could tacitly approve killing without really doing so. When necessary, they could rely on denial, concealment of intent, and strategic ignorance. Meanwhile, the contestation of application deals with the prohibition's authority: by restricting its scope and eliminating operations related to counterterrorism and self-defense against an immediate (long-term or continuous) threat, legal counsel effectively created a class of political killing that was not actually killing at all.The last type of disagreement, known as the validity issue, centers on the propriety of the prohibition itself. Should assassinations be outlawed completely? According to Trenta, there is still a basic consensus in U.S. foreign policy circles on this point: occasionally it is necessary, possible, or even beneficial to murder one's enemy. Trenta essentially contends that assassination has always been an option for U.S. presidents in terms of policy, along with different degrees of clandestine, military, and diplomatic action, a “magic bullet” (pp. 276, 350) for quickly and affordably resolving crises. Trenta's work is one of three outstanding books the other two being Christopher Fuller's See It/Shoot It and Marcus Gunneflo's Targeted Killing: A Legal and Political History that have been released in the 21st century about U.S. covert assassinations. Trenta, however, takes a more comprehensive approach by covering the whole Cold War (as opposed to just the Reagan years) and by purposefully crafting a political history.
Aldi Binaya Alqadry (Thu,) studied this question.