中情局的杀人许可

新华网消息:美国《洛杉矶时报》网站22日播发一篇署名文章披露，在冷战期间，中情局曾策划暗杀8名外国领导人，其中5人后来都暴毙。中情局在其中都扮演了不同角色。这篇题为《中情局得到杀人许可》的文章，要点如下:

素有杀人传统

1960年，中情局曾密谋暗杀帕特里斯卢蒙巴，方法就是让他的牙刷沾上一种致命病菌。这位刚果领导人如果用这把牙刷，几天或几周后就会一命呜呼。

大约在同一时间，中情局的健康紊乱委员会将一块上有交织字母纹样的毒手绢寄给伊拉克领导人阿卜杜勒卡里姆卡西姆。

中情局的这个执行行动部门曾多年密谋暗杀卡斯特罗。它雇用黑手党给卡斯特罗的食物下毒，并试图让他穿被足菌肿病菌污染的潜水服。足菌肿是一种罕见的热带疾病，该病从脚部发病后向上蔓延，直到损害整个身体。中情局考虑过的暗杀工具还包括会爆炸的雪茄、灌有毒液的钢笔和当卡斯特罗触碰时会在水下爆炸的贝壳。

这些阴谋都没有得逞。卢蒙巴和卡西姆被政敌处决，卡斯特罗现在还活得好好的。但这些阴谋表明，中情局几十年来一直有杀人的许可。

国会本月早些时候大为光火，因为有消息披露，中情局显然在时任副总统的切尼命令下向国会隐瞒一项计划达8年之久。该计划旨在刺杀基地组织领导人首当其冲的是本拉丹。但国会本不应对这样一项计划感到大惊小怪的。

手段令人发指

中情局参与策划刺杀行动至少可以追溯到1954年，当时它推出一本暗杀手册作为美国发起的针对危地马拉左翼政府的政变的一部分。这本19页的手册在1997年被公之于众，内容令人发指。它指出，尽管可以徒手杀人……但最简单的就地取材的工具通常是最有效的刺杀工具。锤子、斧子、扳手、螺丝刀、火钳、菜刀、灯座或任何又硬又重又顺手的东西都能派上用场。

这份手册建议说，人为事故是干掉某人的最好办法。效果最好的事故……就是从至少75英尺(约合23米)高的地方跌落到坚硬的表面。升降梯、楼梯井、开着的窗户和桥梁都可以利用。它还建议，抓住暗杀对象的脚踝，把暗杀对象掀下去……把暗杀对象推倒在火车或地铁列车前通常会奏效，但这需要算准时间。

手册还谈到了钝器，称几乎在任何地方都可以随手抄起一把锤子，棒球棒也是很棒的凶器。手册解说了刺入身体的最佳位置、如何把人的头骨敲得凹陷进去，以及步枪、手枪、冲锋枪和其他武器的优缺点。

屡次上演闹剧

在冷战期间，中情局曾策划暗杀8名外国领导人，其中5人后来都暴毙。中情局在其中都扮演了不同角色。

后来，这些计划被参议院的一个委员会披露，福特总统在1976年发布命令禁止政治刺杀行动。里根总统后来扩大了禁令的范围，去掉了其中的政治二字，并在禁止政府雇员行刺的同时也禁止雇用杀手行刺。

尽管禁令目前仍然有效，但它已基本被忽视。看看下面的例子。

1986年，里根下令轰炸利比亚，以报复恐怖分子袭击柏林一家迪斯科舞厅、造成包括两名美国军人在内的三人死亡以及200多人受伤的事件。在空袭中，袭击目标之一、利比亚领导人卡扎菲毫发未损，但他两岁大的养女丧生。

在1991年的海湾战争期间，老布什政府轰炸了巴格达。时任中情局局长、现任国防部长的罗伯特盖茨说，白宫官员希望萨达姆在掩体中被炸死。同年，在沙特一个空军基地，时任国防部长的切尼和鲍威尔将军签字同意向伊拉克发射一枚2000磅重的激光制导炸弹。

1998年，在美国驻非洲的两个使馆被炸后，克林顿下令对阿富汗的基地组织训练营进行巡航导弹打击。白宫显然对本拉丹没被炸死感到失望。据报道，他在袭击前不久刚刚离开其中一座营地。

一年后，在塞尔维亚强迫阿尔巴尼亚族人离开科索沃后，北约轰炸了贝尔格莱德。一枚巡航导弹直接命中塞尔维亚领导人米洛舍维奇的卧室，但他当时并没有睡在那里，毫发无伤地逃脱了。

暂且不论道德，暗杀的问题在于美国并不十分精于此道，就像中情局暗杀卡斯特罗的闹剧所显示的那样。而由国家策划的暗杀行动招致报复的可能性倒是真实存在的。肯尼迪说:我们不能卷进这种事情，否则我们都会成为袭击目标。或许当现任中情局长帕内塔取消该局在911事件后制定的海外刺杀计划时，他对这一点也是心知肚明的。



http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wise22-2009jul22,0,2126028.story

The CIA, licensed to kill

The agency has been involved in planning assassinations since at least 1954.

By David Wise
July 22, 2009

Back in 1960, the CIA hatched a plan to kill Patrice Lumumba by infecting his toothbrush with a deadly disease. The Congolese leader would brush his teeth and, presto, in a few days or weeks he would be gone.

Around the same time, the CIA's Health Alteration Committee -- who thought that name up? -- sent a monogrammed, poisoned handkerchief to Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, the leader of Iraq.

And the CIA's "executive action" unit plotted for years to murder Fidel Castro. It hired the Mafia to poison his food and tried to give him a diving suit contaminated with Madura foot, a rare tropical disease that starts in the foot and moves upward, slowly destroying the body. The CIA also considered offing the Cuban leader with an exploding cigar, a poison pen and a seashell that would blow up underwater when he touched it.

Not one of the plots was successful. Lumumba and Kassem were executed by their foes, and Castro is still alive. But the plots make clear that the CIA has been licensed to kill for decades.

Congress -- especially congressional Democrats -- was outraged earlier this month when it was disclosed that, apparently on orders from Vice President Dick Cheney, the CIA for eight years concealed from Congress a program to assassinate the leaders of Al Qaeda, starting with Osama bin Laden. But they shouldn't have been surprised that such a plan was being hatched.

The CIA's involvement in planning assassinations goes back at least to 1954, when it prepared a manual for killings as part of a U.S.-run coup against the leftist government of Guatemala. The 19-page manual, which was declassified in 1997, makes chilling reading. "The essential point of assassination is the death of the subject," it declares, noting that while it "is possible to kill a man with the bare hands ... the simplest local tools are often much the most efficient means of assassination. A hammer, ax, wrench, screwdriver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice."

The agency's manual recommends "the contrived accident" as the best way to dispose of someone. "The most efficient accident ... is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface. Elevator shafts, stairwells, unscreened windows and bridges will serve." The manual suggests grabbing the victim by the ankles and "tipping the subject over the edge. ... Falls before trains or subway cars are usually effective, but require exact timing."

The manual goes on to discuss "blunt weapons," noting that "a hammer can be picked up almost anywhere in the world" and that baseball bats are also excellent. The manual explains the best place in the body to stab people or how to bash their skulls in and the pros and cons of rifles, pistols, submachine guns and other weapons.

During the Cold War years, the CIA plotted against eight foreign leaders, five of whom died violently. The agency's role varied in each case.

After the plots were publicized by a Senate committee, President Ford issued an executive order in 1976 barring political assassination. President Reagan broadened the ban, dropping the word "political" and extending the prohibition to include contract killers as well as government employees.

Although the ban remains in effect, it has largely been ignored on the premise that it does not apply in a military setting. Consider the following:

In 1986, Reagan ordered the bombing of Libya in retaliation for a terrorist attack on a Berlin disco that killed three people, including two U.S. servicemen, and wounded more than 200 others. In the airstrike, Libya's leader, Moammar Kadafi, a target of the raid, escaped unharmed, but his 2-year-old adopted daughter was killed.

During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when the first Bush administration bombed Baghdad, Robert M. Gates, the former CIA director and current Defense secretary, said White House officials hoped that "Saddam Hussein would be killed in a bunker." At an air base in Saudi Arabia that year, Cheney, then secretary of Defense, and Gen. Colin L. Powell signed a 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb destined for Iraq. "To Saddam with affection," Cheney wrote.

In 1998, President Clinton ordered a cruise missile strike on Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan after the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa. The White House was clearly disappointed when the strike failed to kill Bin Laden, who reportedly left one of the camps shortly before the attack.

A year later, again during the Clinton administration, NATO bombed Belgrade after Serbia forced ethnic Albanians to flee from Kosovo. A cruise missile was lobbed right into the bedroom of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader and Yugoslav president, but he was not sleeping there and escaped injury.

In Yemen in 2002, a CIA Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile that destroyed a car in which a top Al Qaeda leader, Qaed Sinan Harithi, was riding.

The problem with assassination, morality aside, is that the U.S. is not very good at it, as the CIA's farcical efforts to murder Castro demonstrate. It seems unlikely that the CIA will kill Bin Laden with a baseball bat. And there is the real possibility of retaliation for a state-sponsored assassination. President Kennedy was quoted as saying, "We can't get into that kind of thing or we would all be targets." Perhaps CIA Director Leon Panetta had that in mind when he canceled the assassination program.

David Wise writes frequently about intelligence. He is the author of "Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million" and "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America."