Obama, Eisenhower and CIA Assassins

Dear Mr. President,

An article in this week’s New Yorker by Steve Coll, called “Remote Control: Our Drone Delusion,” lays out the background and history of targeted assassinations by the CIA. Eisenhower saw political assassinations as a precise and efficient way to defeat Communism, more humane than military intervention. Coll points out that Eisenhower is the model for your own targeted assassinations. But the use of assassinations was long ago shown to be not only morally repugnant but counterproductive to America’s interests and national security. “Great nations achieve lasting influence and security,” Coll writes, “not by bloody gambits but through economic growth, scientific innovation, military deterrence, and power of ideas.” The history of CIA assassinations is long and sordid: Iran, Guatemala, Chile and South Vietnam are just a few. In the 1970s when Congress uncovered the extent of the CIA’s assassination program, Gerald Ford issued an executive order stopping it and every president since then strengthened the sanctions against assassinations. Until 9/11. On September 17, George W. Bush signed a still- secret directive authorizing the CIA to kill members of Al Qaeda anywhere in the world. You’ve extended Bush’s order in unimaginable ways. You built the CIA into a killing machine and expanded Special Forces into an army of 60,000 trained assassins. The CIA now has their own air force of armed drones controlled by operators in Langley, Virginia to kill suspected terrorists (and often innocent civilians) in countries far from any battlefield. Teams of Special Forces break down doors in the dead of night and carry off or kill more suspected terrorists (and often civilians). Every Tuesday you choose the names of those who will die this week. You have even ordered the assassination of U.S. citizens without a trial—judge, jury, executioner. We cannot kill our way to security; drones and violence create more enemies than we can possibly kill. You have learned nothing. You ignore laws, treaties, the Constitution and basic human rights, everything you were trained in and taught. Why is Eisenhower your role model when assassinations work no better now than they did then? Eisenhower was a military man trained to kill. He saw nothing morally wrong with killing. You were not trained in war, you were trained in law, to use it to bring justice. You have made a mockery of the law. You were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and made a mockery of it. Who are you, anyway?