Talk:Human rights violations by the CIA

Replaced "General principles" section

The "General principles" section was poorly written and served no purpose, and the paragraphs, strangely, contained the only mentions of CIA involvement in supporting death squads in the whole article, so I converted the section into a death squad section. That's an essential piece of any evaluation of the CIA's "human rights" impact.

Assassination and targeted killing

Main article: Targeted killing

See United States involvement in regime change

Targeted Killing

At least since World War II, a distinction has been drawn between assassination of civilian leaders, and targeted killings of leaders of fighting organizations. Some cases were blurry, such as the British-Czech Operation Anthropoid, the killing of uniformed SS officer Reinhard Heydrich, the acting Reichsprotektor of The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. A failed attempt, by British troops, to kill Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was clearly aimed at a military leader, as was the successful shooting down of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

CIA has admitted being involved in assassination attempts against foreign leaders. Recently, there have been targeted killings of suspected terrorists, typically with missiles fired from unmanned aerial vehicles, in a manner that a number of legal authorities believe was a legitimate act as opposed to a prohibited assassination.

Assassinations

Of the cases cited, it appears that no CIA personnel or even directly controlled foreign agents personally killed any leader, but there certainly were cases where the CIA knew of, or supported, plots to overthrow foreign leaders. In the cases of Lumumba in 1960/61 and Castro in the 50s and 60s, the CIA was involved in preparing to kill the individual. In other cases, such as Diem, the Agency knew of a plot but did not warn him, and communications at White House level indicated that the Agency had, with approval, told the plotters the US didn't object to their plan. The gun or poison, however, was not in the hands of a CIA officer.

CIA personnel were involved in attempted assassinations of foreign government leaders such as Fidel Castro. They provided support to those that killed Patrice Lumumba. In yet another category was noninterference in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) Coup d'état in which President Ngo Dinh Diem was killed.

A distinction has been drawn between political assassinations and "targeted killing" of leaders of non-state belligerents.

Castro

Main article: Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro

Perhaps the best-documented account of CIA-sponsored assassination plans were against President Fidel Castro of Cuba.

According to columnist Jack Anderson, the first attempt was part of the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, but five more teams were sent, the last apprehended on a rooftop within rifle range of Castro, at the end of February or beginning of March 1963. Anderson speculated that President Fidel Castro may have become aware of it, and somehow recruited Lee Harvey Oswald to retaliate against President John F. Kennedy.

Maheu was identified as the team leader, who recruited John Roselli, a gambler with contacts in the Italian American Mafia and Cuban underworlds. The CIA assigned two operations officers, William King Harvey and James O'Connell, to accompany Roselli to Miami to recruit the actual teams.

Anderson's story appears to be confirmed by two CIA documents, the first referring to an Inspector General report of investigation of allegations that the Agency conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro. The story first appeared in Drew Pearson's column and has since appeared in Jack Anderson's column. "While the columns contained many factual errors, the allegations are basically true. Second, a declassified memo from Howard Osborne, director of the CIA Office of Security, dated 15 February 1972, in the "CIA Family Jewels" series, from to the Executive Director, speaks of John Roselli, then serving time in a Federal penitentiary in Seattle, Washington, with deportation scheduled at the end of his sentence. While the CIA was aware "Roselli intended to expose his participation in the plot should we not intervene in his behalf. The DCI at the time, John McCone, decided to take a calculated risk and accept the consequences of possible disclosure. Two articles by Jack Anderson discuss the plot, as well the Washington Post Sunday magazine, Parade

Individuals who were aware of this project were: Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, Richard M. Bissell Jr. (Deputy Director for Plans (DDP)) Colonel J.C. King (Chief, Western Hemisphere Division, DDP), Colonel Sheffield Edwards, William Harvey, and James P. O'Connell. Also included were Robert A. Maheu (former FBI agent, public relations agent who did work for the CIA, and later an aide to Howard Hughes), and his attorneys Edward P. Morgan and Edward Bennett Williams.

On 26 February 1971, Osborne arranged with the Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to flag any deportation. INS confirmed they did this again for 1972.

Cuba’s former counterintelligence chief, Fabian Escalante, reviewed more than six hundred CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, a project code-named Executive Action, in his book Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro. The various plots, some of which were abandoned, included the use of cigars (poisoned or exploding), poison pills hidden in a cold-cream jar, the use of Caribbean molluscs containing explosives and a custom-made diving-suit infected with a fungus that would cause a debilitating skin disease. The assassination attempts started under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and continued under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Most attempts were made during Richard Nixon’s presidency. When Castro travelled abroad, the CIA cooperated with Cuban exiles for some of the more serious assassination attempts. In 2000, when Castro was due to visit Panama, a plot was hatched to put explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. Castro’s personal security team discovered the explosives before he arrived.

Diem

In summary, CIA, Embassy, and other US personnel, up to White House level, were aware of yet another coup being planned against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. While the US had no direct participation in the coup, the plotters were told, in a deniable way, that the US did not object to it. No documentary evidence has surfaced that the US knew that Diem and his brother were to be killed, and it is unclear that all the Vietnamese plotters knew or agreed to it. President John F. Kennedy was aware of the coup plans, but apparently had not considered the hazard to Diem.

According to the Pentagon Papers, the final US loss of confidence in Diem began when his government violently suppressed a protest on Buddha's Birthday, 8 May 1963. Up to that point, the majority Buddhists had not been very politically active, even though Diem had given preference to the Catholic minority. Quickly, however, the Buddhists put a "cohesive and disciplined [political] organization" into action. By June, the situation moved from dissidence from a religious group to a "grave crisis of public confidence".

Then-Ambassador Frederick Nolting had tried to persuade Diem to moderate government action against Buddhists, but with no success. While Nolting was on leave, President John F. Kennedy appointed Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. as the new Ambassador. In June 1963, senior leaders began, for the first time, to discuss the effect of a coup to remove Diem. Nolting and the US military in Vietnam, however, argued that Diem was keeping chaos at bay. Nolting left permanently in mid-August, but the assurances from Diem died with multiple August 21 night raids on Buddhist temples in many parts of Vietnam. Two days later, a US representative was approached by generals considering a coup. On 23 August, the first contact with a U.S. representative was made by generals who had begun to plan a coup against Diem. They were told that the U.S. had determined that Diem's brother, who had led the raids on the Buddhists, could not stay in any kind of power, and that, "then, we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved."

A White House tape of President Kennedy and his advisers, published this week in a new book-and-CD collection and excerpted on the Web, confirms that top U.S. officials sought the 1 November 1963 coup against then-South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem without apparently considering the physical consequences for Diem personally (he was murdered the following day). The taped meeting and related documents show that U.S. officials, including JFK, vastly overestimated their ability to control the South Vietnamese generals who ran the coup 40 years ago this week [November 2003]. The Kennedy tape from 29 October 1963 captures the highest-level White House meeting immediately prior to the coup, including the President's brother voicing doubts about the policy of support for a coup: "I mean, it's different from a coup in the Iraq or South American country; we are so intimately involved in this ...

An 8 May 1973 memorandum states that "An Inspector General report of investigation of allegations that the Agency was instrumental in bringing about the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. The allegations were determined to be without foundation."

Nevertheless, the Pentagon Papers observed,

For the military coup d'etat against Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S. must accept its full share of responsibility. Beginning in August 1963 we variously authorized, sanctioned and encouraged the coup efforts of the Vietnamese generals and offered full support for a successor government. In October we cut off aid to Diem in a direct rebuff, giving a green light to the generals. We maintained clandestine contact with them throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational plans and proposed new government. Thus, as the nine-year rule of Diem came to a bloody end, our complicity in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities and our commitment in an essentially leaderless Vietnam.

Lumumba

The Church Committee concluded it had "solid evidence of a plot to assassinate Patrice Lumumba [the first elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo]. Strong hostility to Lumumba, voiced at the very highest levels of government may have been intended to initiate an assassination operation; at the least it engendered such an operation. The evidence indicates that it is likely that President Eisenhower's expression of strong concern about Lumumba at a meeting of the National Security Council on 18 August 1960, was taken by (Director of Central Intelligence) Allen Dulles as authority to assassinate Lumumba. There is, however, testimony by Eisenhower Administration officials, and ambiguity and lack of clarity in the records of high-level policy meetings, which tends to contradict the evidence that the President intended an assassination effort against Lumumba. In a footnote, the Committee cited an unnamed official as saying he had heard Eisenhower order the assassination."

Approval discussions and meetings

The week after the August 18 NSC meeting, a presidential advisor reminded the Special Group of the "necessity for very straightforward action" against Lumumba and prompted a decision not to rule out consideration of "any particular kind of activity which might contribute to getting rid of Lumumba." The Special Group is one of the many names for the often-reorganized committee that approved CIA covert action proposals. It has been called the 303 committee, Special Group (counterinsurgency), Operations Advisory Group, 5412 committee, and Forty Committee. "The following day, Dulles cabled a CIA Station Officer in Leopoldville, Republic of the Congo,* that "in high quarters" the "removal" of Lumumba was "an urgent and prime objective."

Shortly thereafter the CIA's clandestine service formulated a plot to assassinate Lumumba. The plot proceeded to the point that lethal substances and instruments specifically intended for use in an assassination were delivered by the CIA to the Congo Station. There is no evidence that these instruments of assassination were actually used against Lumumba.

Events overtaken by events

In the meantime, Lumumba was dismissed from his post by Congolese President Joseph Kasa-Vubu, an act of dubious legality; in retaliation, Lumumba attempted to dismiss Kasa-Vubu from the presidency, an act of even more dubious legality. On 14 September, a coup d'état endorsed by the CIA and organized by Colonel Joseph Mobutu removed Lumumba from office.

Lumumba was killed, in 1961, by forces under the control of the President, Moise Tshombe of Katanga, a province that had declared its independence of the Republic of the Congo. Lumumba was taken by Katangan soldiers commanded by Belgians, and eventually shot by a Katangan firing squad under Belgian leadership.

Planning in the clandestine services

The independent Republic of the Congo was declared on 30 June 1960, with Joseph Kasa-Vubu as President and Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister. It shared a name with the neighboring Republic of the Congo to the west, a French colony that also gained independence in 1960, and the two were normally differentiated by also stating the name of the relevant capital city, so Congo (Léopoldville) versus Congo (Brazzaville).

Larry Devlin became Chief of Station in Congo in July 1960, a mere 10 days after the country's independence from Belgium and shortly before Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba's two-month term in office, dismissal from power and ultimate execution. In his memoir, Devlin reveals that late in 1960, he received instructions from an agent ("Joe from Paris") who was relaying instructions from CIA headquarters that he (Devlin) was to effect the assassination of Lumumba. Various poisons, including one secreted in a tube of toothpaste, were proffered. The directive had come from the CIA Deputy Chief of Plans Dick Bissell, but Devlin wanted to know if it had originated at a higher level and if so, how high. "Joe" had been given to understand that it had come from President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but Devlin to this day does not know for sure. Devlin writes (and has recently said in public speaking engagements) that he felt an assassination would have been "morally wrong" and likely to backfire and work against U.S. interests. In the event, he temporized, neglecting to act, and Lumumba was ultimately murdered by his enemies in Katanga, with Belgian government participation. U.S. intelligence was kept apprised.

The United Nations Security Council was called into session on 7 December 1960 to consider Soviet demands that the U.N. seek Lumumba's immediate release, the immediate restoration of Lumumba as head of the Congo government, the disarming of the forces of Mobutu, and the immediate evacuation of Belgians from the Congo. Soviet Representative Valerian Zorin refused U.S. demands that he disqualify himself as Security Council President during the debate. Dag Hammarskjöld, answering Soviet attacks against his Congo operations, said that if the U.N. forces were withdrawn from the Congo "I fear everything will crumble."

Following a U.N. report that Lumumba had been mistreated by his captors, his followers threatened (on 9 December 1960) to seize all Belgians and "start cutting off the heads of some of them" unless Lumumba was released within 48 hours.

Mahdawi

Main article: CIA activities in Iraq

According to the Church Committee report:

In February 1960, CIA's Near East Division sought the endorsement of what the Division Chief [James H. Critchfield] called the "Health Alteration Committee" for its proposal for a "special operation" to "incapacitate" an Iraqi Colonel believed to be "promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq." The Division sought the Committee's advice on a technique, "which while not likely to result in total disablement would be certain to prevent the target from pursuing his usual activities for a minimum of three months," adding: "We do not consciously seek subject's permanent removal from the scene; we also do not object should this complication develop." ... In April [1962], the [Health Alteration] Committee unanimously recommended to the DDP [Deputy Director for Plans, Richard M. Bissell Jr.] that a "disabling operation" be undertaken, noting that the Chief of Operations advised that it would be "highly desirable." Bissell's deputy, Tracy Barnes, approved on behalf of Bissell ... The approved operation was to mail a monogrammed handkerchief containing an incapacitating agent to the colonel from an Asian country. [James] Scheider [Science Advisor to Bissell] testified that, while he did not now recall the name of the recipient, he did remember mailing from the Asian country, during the period in question, a handkerchief "treated with some kind of material for the purpose of harassing that person who received it." ... During the course of this Committee's investigation, the CIA stated that the handkerchief was "in fact never received (if, indeed, sent)." It added that the colonel: "Suffered a terminal illness before a firing squad in Baghdad (an event we had nothing to do with) not very long after our handkerchief proposal was considered."

Although some sources depict this operation as an assassination attempt on Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim, other sources note that this interpretation is inaccurate or unsupported by evidence, as the notion that the CIA sought the target's assassination is refuted by the plain meaning of the text itself. In addition, it is unlikely that Qasim was the intended recipient of the handkerchief, as CIA officials would likely have remembered an attack on the Iraqi head of state. While Qasim was not a colonel but a brigadier general and did not openly promote Soviet interests in Iraq, the pro-Soviet head of Iraq's "People's Court," Colonel Fahdil Abbas al-Mahdawi, fits the above description perfectly. Qasim effectively banned the ICP in January 1960, but Mahdawi remained a crucial conduit between Qasim's government and several communist-front groups—including the "Peace Partisans," which was allowed to operate in public despite being formally outlawed in May 1961—and was known for his outspoken praise for Fidel Castro as well as his trips throughout the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and China. In 1991, former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Hermann Eilts told journalist Elaine Sciolino that Mahdawi had been the target.

Mahdawi and some of his family members were stricken with a serious case of what Mahdawi dubbed "influenza" in 1962, but it is unknown whether this ailment was related to the CIA's plan to poison him; Nathan J. Citino observes that "the timing of the illness does not correspond exactly to that of the 'incapacitating' operation as described in the cited testimony."

Trujillo

An Inspector General report of investigation of allegations that the Agency was instrumental in bringing about the assassination of Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. Trujillo was effective head of government at the time of his assassination in 1961.

Conditions leading to a desire, by Dominicans, appeared to begin Johnny Abbes, took control the Intelligence Military Service (the secret police), and the country developed more internal violence and increasingly isolated from other nations. This isolation compounded Trujillo's fears, prompting him to worsen his foreign interventionism.

To be sure, Trujillo did have cause to resent the leaders of some nations, such as Cuba's Fidel Castro, who assisted a small, abortive invasion attempt by dissident Dominicans in 1959. Trujillo, however, expressed greater concern over Venezuela's president Rómulo Betancourt (1959–64). An established and outspoken opponent of Trujillo, Betancourt had been associated with some individual Dominicans who had plotted against the dictator. Trujillo developed an obsessive personal hatred towards Betancourt and supported numerous plots of Venezuelan exiles to overthrow him. This pattern of intervention led the Venezuelan government to take its case against Trujillo to the Organization of American States (OAS).

This development infuriated Trujillo, who ordered his foreign agents to plant a bomb inside Betancourt's car. The assassination attempt, carried out on 24 June 1960, injured but did not kill the Venezuelan president.The firestorm caused from the incident inflamed world opinion against Trujillo. The members of the OAS, expressing this outrage, voted unanimously to sever diplomatic relations and to impose strong economic sanctions on the Dominican Republic.

Finally on the night of the 30 May 1961, Rafael Trujillo was shot to death on San Cristobal Avenue, Santo Domingo. He was the victim of an ambush plotted by a number of Dominicans. According to American reporter Bernard Diederich, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had supplied some of the guns used to kill the president.

In a report to the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, CIA officials described the agency as having "no active part" in the assassination and only a "faint connection" with the groups that planned the killing. but the internal CIA investigation, by its Inspector General, "disclosed quite extensive Agency involvement with the plotters."

Sukarno

According to an 86-page portion of the Rockefeller Commission investigating the CIA's domestic activities that was removed at the behest of the Ford administration and did not become public until 2016:

[Richard] Bissell [Deputy Director of Plans for the CIA] also testified that there was discussion within the Agency of the possibility of an attempt on the life of President Achmed Sukarno of Indonesia which "progressed as far as the identification of an asset who it was felt might be recruited for this purpose. The plan was never reached, was never perfected to the point where it seemed feasible." He said the Agency had "absolutely nothing" to do with the death of Sukarno. ... He stated that no assassination plans would have been undertaken without authorization outside the Agency, and that no such authorization was undertaken for plans against either Lumumba or Sukarno. ... Since no evidence was found to bring the Sukarno and Lumumba matters within the scope of the Commission's investigative authority, no further investigation in these two areas was undertaken.

Nicaragua

In 1984, a CIA manual for training the Nicaraguan Contras in psychological operations and unconventional warfare, entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War", became public. The manual recommended "selective use of violence for propagandistic effects" and to "neutralize" (i.e., kill) government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were taught to lead:

... demonstrators into clashes with the authorities, to provoke riots or shootings, which lead to the killing of one or more persons, who will be seen as the martyrs; this situation should be taken advantage of immediately against the Government to create even bigger conflicts.

The manual also recommended:

... selective use of armed force for PSYOP [psychological operations] effect. ... Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA [unconventional warfare operations area], but extensive precautions must insure that the people "concur" in such an act by thorough explanatory canvassing among the affected populace before and after conduct of the mission.

The CIA claimed that the purpose of the manual was to "moderate" activities already being done by the Contras.

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Hello @GhostInTheMachine: I knew that didn't look very good. Nonetheless is there a way for us to explain the acronym in the sd? Invasive Spices (talk) 18:34, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Tricky. The article might be renamed to Human rights violations by the American Central Intelligence Agency? We should probably avoid acronyms in article titles — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 18:54, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

A tradeoff of explaining the acronym versus excess title length. In any case the current title is not too bad. Invasive Spices (talk) 21:56, 2 February 2023 (UTC)