A Damned Murder Inc.
by Alexander Cockburn
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Some time in early or mid-1949, a CIA officer named Bill (his surname is blacked out in the file, which was surfaced by John Kelly in the early 1990’s) asked an outside contractor for input on how to kill people. Requirements included the appearance of an accidental or purely fortuitous terminal experience suffered by the Agency’s victim.
Bill’s friend—internal evidence suggests he was a doctor—offered practical advice: “Tetraethyl lead, as you know, could be dropped on the skin in very small quantities, producing no local lesion, and after a quick death, no specific evidence would be present.” Another possibility was “the exposure of the entire individual to X-ray.” “There are two other techniques,” Bill’s friend concluded bluffly, which “require no special equipment beside a strong arm and the will to do such a job. These would be either to smother the victim with a pillow or to strangle him with a wide piece of cloth, such as a bath towel.”
As regular as congressmen being outed for adultery or taking cash bribes, every year or two the Central Intelligence Agency has go into damage-control mode to deal with embarrassing documents like the memo to Bill, and has to square up to the question—does it or did it ever have its in-house assassins, a Double O team?
It just happened. In mid-July, the news headlines were suddenly full of allegations that in the wake of the 9/11/2001 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney had ordered the formation of a CIA kill squad and expressly ordered the agency not to disclose the program even to congressional overseers with top security clearances, as required by law. As soon as CIA officials disclosed the program to CIA director Leon Panetta, he ordered it to be halted.
And regular as the congressmen taken in adultery seeking forgiveness from God and spouse, the CIA rolled out the familiar response that yes, such a program had been mooted, but there had been practical impediments. The CIA insisted it had never proposed a specific operation to the White House for approval.
Before irrefutable evidence of its vast kidnapping and interrogation program post-2001 surfaced, the CIA similarly used to claim, year after year, that it had never been in the torture business either. Torture manuals drafted by the agency would surface—a 128-page secret how-to-torture guide produced by the CIA in July 1963 called “Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation”; another 1983 manual, enthusiastically used by CIA clients in the “contra” war against Central American leftist nationalists in President Reagan’s years—and the agency would deny, waffle and evade until the moment came simply to dismiss the torture charge as “an old story.”
In fact, the agency took a practical interest in torture and assassination from its earliest days, studying Nazi interrogation techniques avidly and sheltering noted Nazi practitioners.
What about targets of assassination attempts by the CIA, acting on presidential orders? We could start with the bid on Chou En-lai’s life after the Bandung Conference in 1955; they blew up the plane scheduled to take him home, but fortunately—though not for the other passengers—he’d switched flights. Then we could move on to the efforts, ultimately successful in 1961, to kill the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, in which the CIA was intimately involved, dispatching among others the late Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the agency’s in-house killer chemist, with a hypodermic loaded with poison.
The Kennedy years saw deep U.S. implication in the murder of the Diem brothers in Vietnam and the first of many well-attested efforts by the agency to assassinate Fidel Castro. It was Lyndon Johnson who famously said shortly after he took office in 1963, “We had been operating a damned Murder, Inc., in the Caribbean.” Reagan’s first year in office saw the inconvenient Omar Torrijos of Panama downed in an air crash. Led by that man of darkness, William Casey, in 1985, the CIA tried to kill the Lebanese Shiite leader Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah by setting off a car bomb outside his mosque. He survived, though 80 others were blown to pieces.
In his Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Bill Blum has a long and interesting list starting in 1949 with Kim Koo, Korean opposition leader, going on to efforts to kill Sukarno, President of Indonesia; Kim Il Sung, premier of North Korea; Mohammed Mossadegh; Claro M. Recto, the Philippines opposition leader; Jawaharlal Nehru; Gamal Abdul Nasser; Norodom Sihanouk; Jose Figueres; Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier; Gen. Rafael Trujillo; Charles de Gaulle; Salvador Allende; Michael Manley; Ayatollah Khomeini; the nine comandantes of the Sandinista National Directorate; Mohamed Farah Aidid, prominent clan leader of Somalia; Slobodan Milosevic…
In sum, assassination has always been an arm of U.S. foreign policy, just as in periods of turbulence, as in the ’60’s, it has always been an arm of domestic repression as well.
One way to read the brouhaha of the past few days is as an effort at pre-emptive damage control by the CIA. The CIA’s former counterterrorism chief of operations, Vincent Cannistraro, recently remarked that “There were things the agency was involved with after 9/11 which were basically over the edge because of 9/11. There were some very unsavory things going on. Now they are a problem for the CIA,” he said. Just because Vice President Dick Cheney may have been supervising a Murder, Inc., doesn’t mean that CIA officers who became his operational accomplices won’t be legally vulnerable. At the moment, President Obama is trying to keep the lid on still-secret crimes committed by U.S. government agencies in the Global War on Terror in the Bush years. The CIA is clearly positioning itself for further disclosures. So is Dick Cheney.
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1 Comment by Ron Holt on 31 July 2009:
Too bad none of the CIA’s kill-stunts are ever effective in helping the country. We have a bunch of incompetent boobs running around halfheartedly trying to play movie-style killers. It would be comic if it weren’t so pathetic. Our imbeciles should take a page from General Paul Ausauresses in Algeria in the 1960s. But then they would not be who they are.
2 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 31 July 2009:
Lying and murder have always been the business of spies and assassins. What has changed in the last century or so is the creation of intelligence agencies so vast that they have become able to dominate states, including the ones they supposedly serve, and to create and sustain terrorist and revolutionary organizations. Operatives are loyal, not to their countries nor even in many cases to their organizations, but to their own interests (ideological or material) and careers. Thus the phenomenon of double and triple agents who at times neither know nor care which side they are on. Thus also the phenomenon of intelligence organizations often using and dominating ordinary mafia type criminal enterprises – especially in such areas as drug and arms dealing.
3 Comment by R. McCabe on 31 July 2009:
I have trouble questioning the role of our “spies and assassins” a priori[/span], and I wonder what people really know about what they do. I do think their motives, alliances, and effectiveness are under question.
4 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 31 July 2009:
#3 – “I wonder what people really know about what they do.”
Well, that’s the heart of the problem, isn’t it? You have a vast and powerful sub-culture dedicated to and quite skilled at making sure people don’t really know what they do. Of cdurse there are always leaks, but the informants may not be trustworthy themselves and at best don’t have the whole picture. FBI translator turned whistle blower Sybil Edmonds was reported today as stating that Al Qaeda and the Taliban were used by the CIA for covert ops in Central Asia outside Afghanistan right up to 9/11. Is that information accurate? I have no idea, but it is not intrinsically impossible or even implausible. The US government has certainly tried to shut Edmonds up, but in the “wilderness of mirror” of the world of intelligence, that might just be a way of giving her credibility. Truth quickly becomes the captive of its “bodyguard of lies” and rarely sees the light of day.
5 Comment by jack bailey on 31 July 2009:
#3. And why should they be under question? Either you have a squad of ninjas in your army or you do not. The rest of the world does not subscribe to the American Constitution and we have been in a worldwide struggle with the Marxists/fellow travellers for a long time now. All of the names that Mr. Blum lists are there for this reason only. As for whether the ninjas are effective, how are we to judge? As far as government is concerned, I would venture to say that they are a lot more effective than the Department of Education for instance.
6 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 1 August 2009:
And of course we’ll never get to the bottom of Air France flight 447 which “broke apart” over the Atlantic Ocean. Important people in the energy field were on board after a major natural gas find off Brazil’s coast.
Now that Brazil is a rising economic powerhouse, their energy independence could affect a lot of the powers that be.
7 Comment by R. McCabe on 2 August 2009:
I suppose I am trying to get at the idea that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with having our own “ninjas”. Often, the timbre of certain writings can complain so much about perceived actions or results being wrong, that one might conclude they are arguing against the purpose or raw use of spies and assassins.
Furthermore, the ability to argue circumstantially is hampered if not made impossible by the nature of the intelligence community. How many hands have we seen the real cards on?
I think Mr. Cockburn is lassoing a ghost here. Is he against intelligent interference or against Dick Cheney? The bulk of his article suggests that he is against anything secretive or violent at all. But I see no scandal or impropriety in secret ops; just problems with bad political leaders and convoluted bureaucracies that might engender a schizophrenic madness in what should otherwise be a subservient and loyal group operating only with utmost efficiency and necessity.
It’s similar to a problem I’ve had with many of my anti-war friends on the Left. Although they’ve been right more often than not in my lifetime, they have no idea why. They also seem to neglect the honor of soldiers in the process. There should be no difference in honor between a private and a spy.
It may be appealing to guess at what these people have or haven’t done, but it is a hollow battle cry.
8 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 2 August 2009:
#7 – There is nothing intrinsically wrong with intelligence gathering in the sense of data collection, simply observing carefully and inobtrusively and reporting back what you observe. It might be argued that the ability of the NSA to monitor all electronic communications throughout the world is too much power in the hands of one organization. But at least there is no deception involved – the world is warned and has the option of exercising discretion in its phone calls and e-mails.
This is not normally, however, what people are thinking of when they talk of spying. The professional spy routinely lies to friends, enemies and even his or her spouse, and suborns treason from his foreign contacts in order to accomplish the mission. The ninjas of feudal Japan and their modern counterparts are tasked with killing others by means of stealth. While killing may be justified in the very limited circumstances of a just war, ninjas are tasked with killing even when there is no war at all.
There is nothing honorable about being a deceiver and murderer even if one is loyal to one’s master, which many of these people are not. I guess it cannot be repeated too much that the end does not justify the means.
The US actually came rather late to the practice of having an intelligence organization capable of deception and murder on an international scale, lagging behind the British, French, Germans, and Soviets. The OSS was more or less an extension of wartime special ops. That’s not to say that all of its activities were moral, but even its immoralities paled by comparison to such atrocities as the mass bombing of civilians. It was only with the establishment of the CIA in the post war era that the US became fully engaged in the use of deception and murder as routine tools of foreign policy.
One of the more corrupting aspects of this has been the popular acceptance of the spy and assassin as exemplary patriots. The popularity of such fictional characters as serial seducer and murderer James Bond and torturer Jack Bauer are simply two among many examples of this in contemporary pop culture. But what is one to expect if one starts with the premise that honor should be given to spies and assassins?
9 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 2 August 2009:
@8 Kirt
The professional spy routinely lies to friends, enemies and even his or her spouse — you forgot children.
An acquaintance from years ago once took me on a ride-along. We got a call to Langley High High School where a student had broken in after hours. When asked where his father worked, the brat replied, “I don’t know.” The officer filled in “CIA.” It was and probably still is standard operating procedure for Fairfax County cops. Other parents tell their kids the work for the State Department – which is sort of true. Real espionage takes place at Fort Meade the DIA and the NSA.
Meanwhile, up the GW Parkway a few hundred yards is a homosexual pick-up spot where many spook employees go for extracurricular lunchtime and happy hour activity. Drive through with a camera and record the tags if you want some unwanted federal scrutiny.
10 Comment by R. McCabe on 2 August 2009:
@8, I am not saying that the ends justify the means. Of course, this is the problem when politicians declare wars on drugs or terror. As I constantly remind my friends, no war on inanimate objects or concepts, please! (poverty is another one)
Politicians create the expectations which grant some people license to do nasty things most people would condemn. However, when Mr. Cockburn opens his article with an insinuation that we should be horrified the CIA teaches people how to kill, I think he’s misdirecting.
“does it or did it ever have its in-house assassins, a Double O team?” Unless there is a very rich subtext I’m missing, I would sure hope they did. Honestly, I don’t really follow that whole scene too much because it always seems like gossip, heresay, or hollywood.
I’m with you in terms of reining in our cancerous foreign policy — all of its tools. However, when you hold deception and murder over their heads, well now you’re starting to sound like Mr. Cockburn. That’s like holding basic training over the head of a grunt who gets out of line or who loyally obeys an unjust order. The mistake is in the decision, not the tools or training.
11 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 3 August 2009:
#1 – We should not have the CIA training people how to kill (or sabotage or torture); Mr. Cockburn is absolutely right about that. In the rare instance of a just war (and when did the US last wage one of those?) members of the armed forces are trained and authorized to kill. Maintaining a group of killers to use in peacetime to clandestinely kill enemies of the government, or overthrow governments or sabotage economies is just plain immoral. Neo-con commentators like O’Reilly and his sometimes guest Vince Flynn, an author of spy novels featuring an American James Bond who merrily murders and tortures assorted bad guys, have expressed the fear that CIA agents who loyally obey orders to tortue might be prosecuted for it. They certainly should be, but the institutional problem is greater.
The CIA is an institution of the US world empire and both should be abolished. Necessary intelligence can be obtained by electronic intercepts, the internet, and normal above board contacts of US embassies. It is not necessary to suborn the treason of foreigners. But the really poisonous part of the CIA is the operations side, the ninjas. The very purpose of this side is to enable the rulers of the US to wage clandestine warfare against enemies some of whom may not even know they are being targeted. This is both immoral and cowardly. The CIA is far from the only governmental alphabet agency which should be abolished, but it definitely should be on the list. It is in fact “a damned murder inc.”
12 Comment by Allen Wilson on 3 August 2009:
Without the existence of such organisations as the CIA, there would be less mistrust and even contempt of government in general. Without a CIA, where would most JFK assassination conspiracy theories be? Everyone is aware of how suspicions of CIA involvement has lead to disillusionment with the system as a whole, across the political spectrum. Without the existence of British intelligence, where would Diana assassination conspiracy theories be? Such conspiracy theories may or may not be true, but the effect is the same, because for all we know, they just may be true.
While I do believe that on-the-ground intelligence gathering, spying and espionage may be necessary in some cases, especially if you have something like the Soviet Union and it’s world wide subversion activities bearing down on you, in most cases, a country that does not run a partly covert, partly overt empire like the U.S. does has precious little need for such things, and in any case they can be done small-scale without the need for an entire bureaucratic apparatus, as they were done throughout most of history. Usually, though, there is little or no need for such things and they should be avoided if possible.
Since the CIA has mostly been a failure, a largely incompetent organisation which usually doesn’t serve the interests of the country or the government but rather it’s own, why keep it around?
13 Comment by R. McCabe on 4 August 2009:
11, 12, these are all fine points. I think I am approaching a very similar viewpoint but from an opposite direction. Here are some challenges:
“In the rare instance of a just war (and when did the US last wage one of those?) members of the armed forces are trained and authorized to kill. Maintaining a group of killers to use in peacetime to clandestinely kill enemies of the government, or overthrow governments or sabotage economies is just plain immoral.”
It is just plain immoral on whom? I suppose the answer to this gets at my earlier question, which is that Mr. Cockburn is really after the Dick Cheney’s of the world not Agent Bill. I would agree, and if what Mr. Gervaise says is true, then it’s clear how one perversion soon begets another. But you would no sooner blame the private in Afghanistan for the unjustness of our war there than you would the spook in the CIA for our ridiculous policies in Colombia. And if our private in Afghanistan kills someone in the name of our unjust war, he is no different than that spook who does the same thing, albeit in a different way. Or are you condemning the method outright?
“Since the CIA has mostly been a failure, a largely incompetent organisation which usually doesn’t serve the interests of the country or the government but rather it’s own, why keep it around?”
This is a very important question, but how exactly do we even go about talking about it? I have no idea if the CIA has been unsuccessful or great. I fear it is like when your goalie makes a mistake, the result is a goal for the other team, whereas others’ mistakes are less apparent or quantifiable. How do we know what their successes are? How do we know they’re serving their own purposes? While we keep electing maniacs, there will be no sense in scrutinizing the servants.
I just think it makes for difficult footing from an effectiveness standpoint. It is clear to me in a broad way that there is too much bureaucracy within the intelligence community, but a completely centralized reaction would be equally dangerous.
(I’ve been thinking as well about what if we got someone with common sense into office, and what if we scared Congress so badly that they would go along with it. How could an acting President ratchet-down previous promises or decisions that maybe have taken years to play out? I’m becoming more convinced that term limits are a big problem.)
14 Comment by Allen Wilson on 4 August 2009:
You have a point, Mr McCabe, and I have thought of that as well. On the other hand, aside from the fact that members of the KGB used to have a whole range of inside jokes on the incompetence of the CIA, and some former CIA members have admitted the fact that the CIA is incompetent and has agendas which are not in the interest of either the country or government and often conflict with them, there is the fact that the agency is mostly unaccountable to anyone precisely because of it’s secrecy. What better incentive for incompetence, corruption, waste, etc.?. How could it not be a bloated monstrousity sucking endless dollars and accomplishing little if anything of value?
15 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 7 August 2009:
Dr. Fleming in his “Clean Jim . . .” theme, has some comments, especially #26 and #27 concerning the responsibilities of those who carry out immoral orders and, in many cases, their lack of any moral sensibility. In an age where the US wages “perpetual war for perpetual war” (to quote a phrase from TAC), we would do well to simply advise our sons and daughters not to join the military, let alone the clandestine services, lest they become complicit in the murders ordered by the rulers of the empire. Dozens of Israeli conscripts have served or are serving jail terms for refusing assignments in the occupation of Palestinian territory. The US has solved the problem of morally sensitive conscripts by relying on volunteers (with standards now lowered to include convicted felons), with increasing reliance on foreigners and mercenaries such as the Xe (formerly Blackwater) thugs. Looking down the line 15 or 20 years, the war party simply intends to take the human factor out of the decision making process as much as possible and rely on killer robots and drones, a tactic now being extensively tested in Pakistan. Hopefully the economic decline of the US will simply make it impossible to fund this world-wide empire of overt and covert armed forces.
16 Comment by R. McCabe on 10 August 2009:
14, 15, thank you for your replies. The comments by TJF in the other loop were indeed fine points, whereas I was making blunt ones. You each are arguing based on reality, whereas I was carrying on hypothetically. Given the situation today and the history of the last 50 years, I think your arguments are probably more relevant.