Beware the Golden Rule of Assassination

     I wrote this as an op ed on January 3, 2020 and submitted it to several publications.  None was interested. I chalked it up to how little editors understand history.  However, now with the arrest of an Iranian on suspicion that he planned to assassinate John Bolton in retaliation for Soeleimani's killing, I wanted to publish it somewhere. This blog seemed appropriate.

 Beware the Golden Rule of Assassination 

            Qasem Soleimani of Iran was assassinated in a drone strike in Baghdad.  The White House has indicated that President Trump himself gave the order.  Was this wise?  Iran has vowed “severe revenge.” 

            This is the first time in history that the United States has so openly stated that it assassinated someone and that the president ordered it.  This is contrary to an executive order against assassination that Republican president Gerald Ford signed.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this prohibition against assassination was the work of bleeding-heart liberals, or that it was because murder violates most people’s moral principles.  There are good, practical, hard-hearted reasons for not assassinating people.  These might be summed up as the “Golden Rule” of assassination:  Others will do unto you what you did to them.  Assassination invites retaliation.

            It is never clear who will pay the price of assassination, but a price will surely be paid.  I make an historical case-in-point in my book, Murder, Inc., The CIA under John F. Kennedy.  The title comes from something former president Lyndon Johnson said to a reporter.  When asked about President Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson said he thought Cuba’s Fidel Castro had retaliated for CIA attempts to kill him.  After all, Johnson continued, Kennedy was running “a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean.”

            The parallels between recent events with respect to Iran and those in 1963 with respect to Cuba are instructive.  Kennedy wanted the CIA to get rid of Castro and the Communist regime in Cuba.  The CIA tried first by having Cuban exiles invade at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. That failed.  The CIA turned to Operation Mongoose in 1962 to create discontent in Cuba with raids and sabotage, but this operation was shut down after the Cuban Missile Crisis.  In 1963, the CIA decided to orchestrate a coup.  But when it first met with the high-level Cuban that it wanted to lead the coup, he insisted Castro’s assassination was the only way to do it.  Castro seemed instantly to know what was going on because that very same day he warned through a reporter “United States leaders should be mindful that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” 

            The National Security Council analyzed Castro’s threat and concluded that he might order the sabotage of an American oil refinery in Latin America or the assassination of an American businessman or diplomat there.  However, it did not know the CIA was involved in a possible assassination plot against Castro.  Thus, it did not take his threat literally.  It did not think he would try to assassinate the president, and it did not warn the FBI or Secret Service.          

            The CIA’s assassination plot against Castro continued.  It was meeting with the assassin, offering him a poison pen and promising him sniper rifles, at the very moment President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

            Murder, Inc. concludes that President Kennedy authorized the CIA plot and that President Johnson approved the CIA’s covering it up from the Warren Commission.  The intelligence professionals at the CIA had opposed the assassination aspects of the planned coup but were apparently overruled by the White House.  In Senate hearings in 1975, Senator Frank Church asked Richard Helms, deputy director of CIA in 1963: “If we reserve to ourselves the prerogative to assassinate foreign leaders, we may invite reciprocal action from foreign governments… wouldn’t you agree?” Helms answered simply: “Yes sir.”

            That is the point of the Golden Rule of assassination.  If our government does it, we invite retaliation.  Indeed, by taking credit for the assassination of Soleimani, President Trump seems to be daring Iran.  Hopefully, that doesn’t prove as unwise as it seems at the moment.