Assassinations vs. targeted killings

Now comes David Perry, professor of applied ethics and director of the new Vann Center for Ethics at Davidson College, to explain that the legal status of assassinations by our U.S. government “is murkier than it appears.”

Perry, who served from 2003 to 2009 as professor of ethics at the U.S. Army War College, recently authored "Partly Cloudy: Ethics in War, Espionage, Covert Action, and Interrogation."

The legal boundaries are relevant considering that upcoming congressional hearings may reveal details about a mysterious program abruptly cancelled by CIA Director Leon Panetta. The program was allegedly part of a directive from former Vice President Dick Cheney that extended CIA efforts to go kill bad guys.

In a recent press release, Perry provides a brief history lesson and some things to consider when Congress politicizes the issue.

• “Assassinations of foreign officials by American government personnel have been prohibited overtly by presidential executive orders since the Ford Administration in the 1970s, in the wake of intensive congressional hearings on earlier plots against Fidel Castro and others. This has persuaded some commentators today to conclude that assassination must be illegal, that Dick Cheney was therefore trying to hide an illegal CIA program from Congress, and so on.”

• However, Congress has never passed a law against it, apparently worrying that we might one day face another Hitler who might be stopped through an assassination rather than by going to war against his whole country.

• Perry also notes that executive orders can be classified. In other words, a secret executive order might rescind or render obsolete an overt one, so theoretically any president (including President Obama) might issue both a public order prohibiting assassination and then a secret one permitting it.

• Targeted killings of the leaders of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups are not prohibited, according to Perry.

• Perry also wondrs that where the target is not a high official or an otherwise famous terrorist or gangster, can we be so sure that our intelligence about that person is accurate enough to warrant his execution without due process of law?

• Concluding, Perry noted: “Finally, although it would seem very tempting to remove a tyrannical leader like Hitler, Saddam Hussein, or Kim Jong Il, assassination by itself would be extremely unlikely to lead to a more humane regime. Indeed, it might well induce new regime leaders to attack the U.S. Perry asks Americans to imagine their reaction if President John Kennedy, for instance, had been killed by a Soviet KGB agent.”