Don't Shoot -- The CIA's kill teams were modeled on Israel's hit squads

[Octafish]

Source: Newsweek

A ferocious dispute between the CIA and Congressional Democrats centers on an ultra-secret effort launched by agency officials after 9/11 to draw up plans to hunt down and kill terrorists using commando teams similar to those deployed by Israel after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, according to a former senior US official.

Officials of the CIA's undercover spying branch, then known as the Directorate of Operations, on and off over the last several years repeatedly floated and revised plans for the such operations, which would involve sending squads of operatives overseas, sometimes into friendly countries, to track and assassinate Al Qaeda leaders, much the same way Israeli Mossad agents sent assassins to Europe to kill men they believed responsible for murdering Israeli Olympic athletes, the former official said. But several former and current officials said the highly-classified plans, which last week provoked into a bitter argument between congress and the CIA, never became "fully operational," and CIA Director Leon Panetta put an end to the program in June.

According to two former officials—who, like others quoted in this story, asked for anonymity to speak about sensitive matters—shortly after 9/11, the Bush White House consulted with the Directorate of Operations about expanding the agency's powers to track or lure terrorists. Top CIA officials ultimately concluded the program posed an unacceptable risk of failure or exposure, according to another former official. As a result, the initial plans proposed by officers of the Directorate of Operations— now known as the National Clandestine Service—were put on hold by CIA director George Tenet before he left office in 2004, former

officials said. Tenet's two successors, Porter Goss and Gen. Michael Hayden, kept the plans in the deep freeze. But a former official said that until Panetta killed the program outright last month the CIA never totally abandoned the plans for kill teams; agency personnel believed it was important to have them ready as an option for the president to use, and they continued to try to refine the idea.


Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/id/206607?from=rss

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Someone told me they heard Ms. Bhutto was a victim of Cheney's new Operation PHOENIX.

Edit: Fixed Title.

[KansDem]

1. "...commando teams similar to those deployed by Israel after the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre"

As I recall, one innocent person was murdered by the Israeli "hit squad." He looked similar to the person they were really after.

Ah, yes. Here it is...
At noon on the 20th, they spotted what they thought was their quarry. A man of Middle Eastern appearance seemed to resemble the fuzzy newspaper photograph that was their only way of identifying Salameh. But this Salameh was behaving strangely – although he was supposed to be a stranger in Norway, he clearly knew his way around Lillehammer.

Despite these question marks, Tel Aviv gave the go-ahead. The assassins blasted the man they had identified as Salameh with 14 bullets – a textbook killing. But they’d killed the wrong man – their victim was Ahmed Bouchiki, an innocent Moroccan waiter, who had been living in Norway for five years.

http://forums.canadiancontent.net/history/46726-israeli-murderous-response-munich.html

[Octafish]

3. It troubles me that the innocent are no longer protected when it comes to revenge, etc.

Murder is murder, even when our elected officials and their appointees call it justice.

Back in Reagan's day, DCI Bill Casey went after a sheikh that crossed him.
The car bomb missed the bad guy and instead killed 81 people --
men, women and children --
most of whom never lifted a finger against the United States of America.

[formercia]

14. Most of them were children

The bomb was in a car across the street from the target's house. It went off early, just as a school bus full of kids passed in front of it.

[No Elephants]

4. Sooo, Ahmed was killed for walking while Middle Eastern?

[aquart]

6. Those murderous Jews.

You've made your point. What was your point?

[KansDem]

9. That covert "hit squads" can make mistakes...

I wonder how many mistakes Cheney's "hit squads" have made...

[timeforpeace]

11. I thoughts the reports all say it never became operational? So what, right?

[formercia]

15. They never sent hit teams, supposedly

but individuals were tasked.

[No Elephants]

37. And you believe that because the CIA and Cheney have always been so forthcoming and

accurate about everything else?

If it never became operational, why are the members of Congress who have been told about it "shocked?"

I think the best we can say is that we don't know, one way or the other.

[The Stranger]

12. That murder is murder.

No matter who commits it.

[frylock]

18. really?!

really?!!! give it a fucking rest already.

[Leftist Agitator]

41. Must you always be such a douchebag?

:shrug:

[Hell Hath No Fury]

2. Assassination squads? Check.

Kidnapping? Check.
Bulldozing homes? Check.
Detention without charges or access to an attorney? Check.

Looks like we modeled a lot on Israel's various "techniques".

[midnight]

30. Looks similiar doesn't it.

[aquart]

5. Here's a thought:

Options available to small, weak nations are completely different from those available to superpowers. Bush/Cheney and quite a few at DU are unaware of those differences.

[No Elephants]

7. Which nation is too small and weak to arrest 3 men?

[cosmicone]

10. Israel is small but hardly weak ... it is also the most unethical and immoral n/t

[Behind the Aegis]

13. What ignorance.

[classysassy]

45. When you can't

defend your position,try name calling.

[Behind the Aegis]

46. When you can't make a point, make one up.

[Jim Sagle]

16. I pity you if you're dumb anough to actually believe that.

[cosmicone]

17. Ahhhh .. personal attacks. The hallmark of weakness. n/t

[Behind the Aegis]

21. As exposed by your comment in post #10

[Jim Sagle]

22. Yes, your personal attack on a nation of 5.5 million Jews IS a sign of weakness.

Or profound ignorance. Or deep malice.

[mitchum]

24. Only Jews live in Israel? It's still only 2009...

be patient, Jim

[Jim Sagle]

26. His attack was implicitlly on the Jews that live there, not the Arabs.

So my reply reflected that and not a wish to rid Israel of its Arab citizens.

[cosmicone]

29. See post No. 28 below. n/t

[No Elephants]

39. No, that was your assumption. Every remark questioning, criticizing or condemning actions by

Israel is not an anti-Semitic remark, any more than pro-Israel remarks indicate an authentic "love of Jews" per se. (Which itself is as dumb as saying one loves Italian people or Catholic people or Muslim people.)

[cosmicone]

28. Actually, my attack was on the government of Israel

not on its people -- whether Jewish or Arab.

The government has bombed civilian homes, killed children, bombed schools -- all with false pretenses, actions which are manifestly unethical and immoral.

All this for what? Land grab. Even today, despite Syria offering a peace treaty, Israel is only willing to part with only half of the land in Golan Heights -- why? The official reason is that that land is needed for farming and wine-making.

It is land grab pure and simple, perpetrated by a few religious zealots and Israeli military-industrial complex to the detriment or ordinary Israelis who are for peace.

[Jim Sagle]

31. Land grab? Yeah, right.

[cosmicone]

32. The map is supposed to disporve the land grab? n/t

[Jim Sagle]

33. Not "supposed to", it does. Next!

[cosmicone]

42. That map didn't prove any such thing. n/t

[Jim Sagle]

43. Put that magnifying glass away, you'll ruin yer vision.

[mitchum]

23. Exceptionalism?

interesting...

[nyc 4 Biden]

8. I thought they were modeled after Treadstone and Black Briar in the Jason Bourne Movies.

That's what I always think of when I hear about these hit squads.

[IndianaGreen]

19. I seriously doubt that!

This is another line of bullshit we are being fed by the government.

[dipsydoodle]

20. Why would the CIA want to kill

innocent Moroccan immigrants in Norway. :shrug:

Back in 1973, in Norway, another Mossad team murdered by mistake Ahmed Bouchiki, an innocent French waiter of Moroccan origin.

>

In 1973, Chico's elder brother, Ahmed Bouchiki, was employed in a restaurant in the resort town of Lillehammer, in Norway. On July 21, Mossad spies apparently mistook the immigrant waiter for their number one target, the terrorist Ali Hassan Salameh, believed to be the mastermind of the Munich massacre. Ahmed was shot dead by an assassination-squad in front of his pregnant wife, as they came out of a cinema. The Norwegian police arrested four Israeli citizens shortly after, as they were boarding a flight out of Oslo, and put them on trial. They were found guilty of Ahmed's murder and sentenced to five years in jail.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=278985&rel_no=1

Link was just a convenient one. It's well documented elsewhere.

[Snazzy]

25. "expanding the agency's powers to track or lure terrorists."

Lure is an interesting word there. How so, how do you lure a terrorist? By committing terrorism?

[No Elephants]

38. By telling him you'll pay for the surgery his brother needs if he commits a terrorist act.

Apparently, that's at least one situation of a terrorist "found" in an American mosque.

[Snazzy]

44. yeah that's the FBI version

I'd imagine the CIA took that to a different level.

[sofa king]

27. The CIA is hardly the only agency capable of such things.

In fact, I'd be looking to the Department of Defense, which was thoroughly controlled by the Bush Administration, operates under different secrecy and disclosure rules, and has a budget about a thousand times larger than the CIA.

The DOD had a proclivity for hiring contractors at that time, too....

[steven johnson]

34. CIA 'planned to assassinate al-Qaida in friendly states'

Weren't the assasination attempts on Castro part of the events leading up to Kennedys assasination?

What you sow, you shall also reap.

Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ordered a highly classified CIA operation hidden from Congress because it pushed the limits of legality by planning to assassinate al-Qaida operatives in friendly countries without the knowledge of their governments, according to former intelligence officials.

Former counter-terrorism officials who retain close links to the intelligence community say that the hidden operation involved plans by the CIA and the military to launch operations, similar to those by Israel's Mossad intelligence service, to hunt down and kill al-Qaida activists abroad without informing the governments concerned, even though some were regarded as friendly if unreliable.
The CIA apparently did not put the plan in to operation but the US military did, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the programme.
A former intelligence official said the plan was hatched in the cauldron of the September 11 attacks when officials were pushing various forms of unilateral action and some settled on the Israelis as an example.
"One of the most sensitive areas has been what we do in friendly countries that don't want to co-operate or maybe we don't have enough confidence to entrust them with information. If you have an al-Qaida guy wandering around certain bits of the world we might decide that we need to deal with that ourselves, directly, without making a lot of noise," he said. "There was a plan to deal with that. It was much talked about in the CIA and the military had its own operation."

[Piewhacket]

35. "unacceptable risk of failure or exposure". And here is the proof.

Hilarious.
(I laugh because I can find no tears in me for these criminals.)

They attempted to implement it. OF COURSE they did. For sure.
I'll bet you believe that too.

Killing someone is not the criteria for reporting.
Any instructions in preparation, buying supplies, a bullet
for example, would require reporting to the gang of 8. Did
they do that stuff? Oh, plueeze, of course they did.
Did they report? er... apparently they musta figured they
could wait until they actually killed someone.

Was it all a criminal conspiracy?
Is the Pope Catholic?

[No Elephants]

40. I'm not entirely sure about the Pope yet, but I take your oher point. A

[Vidar]

36. It's peculiarly appropriate that Cheney is in charge of this latest "gang that can't shoot straight"