Some Call for Lifting of Assassination Ban

For the last 25 years, the United States has officially forbidden the carrying out of assassinations abroad, a policy that may not survive this week’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

The policy, first adopted by President Ford in 1976, followed revelations that the CIA had tried and failed to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro. There also were fears the botched assassinations might have led to the slaying of President Kennedy.

Though controversial, the assassination ban has lasted through five administrations and a succession of military operations. The U.S. has dropped bombs on Libya and Iraq and fired cruise missiles at Afghanistan and Sudan, all with the hope that certain tyrants or terrorists would perish in the destruction.

But officials have stopped short of using killing squads--or hiring them--to assassinate those who are behind terrorist plots.

This week, some lawmakers have been calling for the repeal of the assassination ban as outdated in a world of international terrorism.

“This is a different type of war,” said Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “They are going to assassinate our people and blow up our buildings unless we eradicate them first.”

Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) had urged President Clinton to repeal the ban after the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Saudi exile Osama bin Laden was believed to be behind those attacks, and he survived the retaliatory cruise missile strikes ordered by Clinton.

Barr said U.S. policy should not “tie the hands” of the CIA by forbidding targeted assassinations. Rather, the authority to carry out such killings means the masterminds “can be eliminated in cases where it is simply impossible to capture them by ordinary means.”

Because the assassination ban is an executive order, not a law, it can be repealed by the president. Clinton refused, however, choosing to maintain the more nuanced U.S. policy on terrorism. It allows the use of military force against recognized threats, including terrorists. And whenever possible, the U.S. policy seeks to “bring terrorists to justice for their crimes,” rather than kill them on the spot.

Before Tuesday’s attacks, the Bush administration had placed more hard-liners in key posts in the Defense Department. And after the deadly assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they are talking about an entirely new approach to combating terrorism.

“It’s a different ballgame now,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said Thursday. From the start, President Bush also spoke of “hunting down” those who are behind the terror campaign.

On Thursday, Barr called for the House and Senate to declare war on terrorists. If adopted, the resolution would give the president full authority to attack and even occupy countries that sponsored terrorism.

Barr also sent the president a letter urging him to repeal the ban on targeted assassinations.

Terrorists must be fought by “all means necessary,” Barr said.

Not surprisingly, administration officials have not said just what they might do to retaliate against this week’s terrorism. And the issue of government-sponsored assassinations remains a sensitive one, even in the wake of the most deadly attack on America.

Just a few weeks ago, State Department officials were critical of Israeli efforts to assassinate Palestinian officials who were suspected of perpetrating car bombings.

Experts in international law were divided on whether the U.S. should undertake an effort to kill Bin Laden. Some said such a move would be justified as retaliation for an act of war. Others said it would violate the principles of international law, and even the rules of war.

“The idea of targeting people for assassination is legally impermissible under international law,” said M. Cherif Bassiouni, an international law expert at DePaul University in Chicago and the former chairman of the United Nations commission that investigated the war crimes in Yugoslavia.

“I think it is a wise policy to not have the intelligence agencies be judge, jury and executioner all wrapped into one. The potential for abuse is too big and the symbolism is too harmful,” Bassiouni said.

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said there have been periodic moves to repeal the assassination ban, but cooler heads have prevailed.

“After all, assassinations are antithetical to our values. We pride ourselves on being a nation of the rule of law.” And as a practical matter, “we’ve never been good at assassinations,” Hamilton added.

Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh said Bush’s team can use force against the terrorists without lifting the assassination ban.

“What the Bush administration would argue is this situation is closer to the use of force against Iraq in 1991 than the assassination scenarios that triggered the Ford executive order,” said Koh, who served in the Clinton administration. “An act of terrorism is an offense against the law of nations,” he said, and would justify the use of force in retaliation.

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Times staff writer Maura Dolan contributed to this story.