10.6092/issn.2611-2752/7205
The following article sets out to provide a historical account of the assassination ban in the United States. As such, it traces the roots of the prohibition, analysis processes, and forces at work that shaped its path towards acceptance and looks at the wider political context that made its introduction possible. Recently declassified US National Security archive data: testimonies, notes, raw files, and other forms of political correspondence provide a solid basis for comprehensive examination of America's historical assassination plots, a subject that often cannot be easily investigated due to its politically sensitive nature.
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Andris Banka
USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics
US Foreign Policy
“Church Lessons”: Revisiting America’s Assassination Ban
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USAbroad
Andris Banka
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“Church Lessons”: Revisiting America’s Assassination Ban
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Essays – peer-reviewed                                 USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics. Vol. 1 (2018)
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-2752/7205                                                             ISSN 2611-2752




     “Church Lessons”: Revisiting America’s Assassination Ban

                                                  Andris Banka

                 Submitted: August 27, 2017 – Accepted: November 28, 2017 – Published: March 1, 2018



                                                      Abstract

       The following article sets out to provide a historical account of the assassination ban in the United
       States. As such, it traces the roots of the prohibition, analysis processes, and forces at work that
       shaped its path towards acceptance and looks at the wider political context that made its introduc-
       tion possible. Recently declassified US National Security archive data: testimonies, notes, raw files,
       and other forms of political correspondence provide a solid basis for comprehensive examination
       of America’s historical assassination plots, a subject that often cannot be easily investigated due to
       its politically sensitive nature.
       Keywords: Assassination Ban; Church Committee; US Foreign Policy




Andris Banka: Cag University (Turkey)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9467-3470
Contact: banka.andris@gmail.com
Dr. Andris Banka is Assistant Professor in Politics at Cag University in Turkey. Prior to that, he completed his
doctoral thesis in the United Kingdom. He has taught courses on US foreign policy at the University of Birming-
ham, UK. He holds advanced degrees in international politics from the United States (Florida), the Netherlands
and Latvia.



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1 Introduction:
The following essay sets out to provide a historical account of the assassination ban in the United States.
As such, it traces the roots of the prohibition, analyzes processes and forces at work that shaped its path
towards acceptance, and looks at the wider political context in which the introduction of such prohi-
bition was possible. Recently declassified US National Security Archive materials—testimonies, notes,
raw files, and other forms of political correspondence—provide a solid basis for comprehensive exam-
ination of America’s historical assassination plots abroad, a subject that often cannot be easily inves-
tigated due to its politically sensitive nature. The centerpiece of this study is the Church Committee.
Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church, the committee was formed in 1975 to investigate allegations
of various wrongdoings in US intelligence agencies, above all plots to assassinate foreign leaders.
     The material made available to the public as a result of the committee endeavors is considered
to be the most thorough public record about modern US intelligence bureaucracy and its hidden
activities. The so-called “Year of Intelligence” was by far the most extensive probe into the covert
world of US intelligence. As once described by CIA Director William Colby, it was an “inspection of
almost thirty years of CIA’s sins.”1 The investigation symbolizes a high-water mark moment when
US officials for the first time drew a public red line with respect to assassination as an illegitimate and
unacceptable means of foreign policy. The article details the process by which the assassination ban
came into force, exposing the US government’s inner debates, justifications, and strategic reasoning
behind attempts to assassinate foreign individuals.
     While the analysis presented here concerns historical events, it equally speaks to the current sit-
uation. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the US government embarked on a
massive campaign to eliminate suspected terrorists outside conventional combat settings via singled-
out drone strikes. Targeted killing, a method that had historically served as a last-resort self-defensive
option, was turned into a central tool for addressing national security threats. While publicly the as-
sassination ban was not set aside, policies pursued by both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama
administrations clearly violated previously established normative boundaries.
     As the analysis reconstructs the work of Church Committee—its leading figures, methods, and
strategies—to reveal government related secrets, this in turn illuminates the path and conditions un-
der which the US government is likely to undergo a process of democratic self-correction, something
that many policy observers and human-rights activists have called for in the light of routine targeted
killings via drones. Such historical contextualization makes it possible to draw comparisons and high-
lights how the meaning of “appropriate” behavior has changed over a period of time.



2 Establishing the Church Committee
The roots of the US assassination ban lie in domestic processes and politics. While the overall context
of the prohibition was external—the US government had attempted or hoped to carry out assassina-
tion plots in Congo, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Vietnam—the ban itself originated
from within the US domestic arena. It was a democracy examining itself and attempting make neces-
sary policy adjustments. As such, the narrative here concerns the national level in which certain actors
can challenge and, consequently, change the rules of behavior from within the state.
    In December 1974, the New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh broke a cover story detailing nu-
merous illegal domestic intelligence operations.2 The investigative piece immediately sparked a ma-
jor political firestorm. While some government officials, President Gerald Ford included, had hoped
that the scandal would somehow subside on its own, the accusations were far too egregious and dam-
aging for that to happen. A number of newspapers across the nation reprinted Hersh’s cover story,
and Congressional offices started to fill with thousands of letters from citizens demanding an explana-



1
    William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), 397.
2
    Seymour Hersh, “Huge CIA Operation Reported in U.S. against Anti-War Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years,” The
    New York Times, December 22, 1974.



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tion.3 The journalistic piece had triggered a nationwide discussion about the role and purpose of the
CIA, and the extent to which it should make use of clandestine operations without the public’s input.
    In reaction to accusations that had flooded the press, on January 21, 1975 Senator John O. Pastore
put forward a legislation to establish a Senate Select Committee. The proposed legislation was passed
by a landslide vote of 82 to 4, and a bipartisan group of eleven members was established with broad
power to investigate possible unlawful government activities.4 Senator Frank Church, an Idaho Demo-
crat, was named to lead the committee. Trying to capture the sentiment of the day, Frank Church
famously described the CIA as “a rogue elephant rampaging out of control.”5 He interpreted the man-
date given to this Congressional group as follows: “To determine what secret governmental activities
are necessary and how they best can be conducted under the rule of law.”6
    Initially, domestic issues were at the top of the committee’s agenda and inquiry into foreign assas-
sination plots emerged only gradually and, in some ways, even accidentally when on January 16, 1975,
during a lunch with the editors of The New York Times, President Gerald Ford made a careless remark
by mentioning that previous administrations, among other secretive operations, had also been en-
gaged in plotting assassinations abroad.7 Journalist Daniel Schorr of CBS News quickly picked up the
controversy with CIA Director William Colby, directly confronting him as to whether the agency had
ever been involved in assassination plots.8 Surprised and cornered, Colby awkwardly replied, “Not
in this country,” leaving the impression that the agency may have carried out such activities abroad.9
Caving to public and media pressure, Committee Chairman Frank Church announced that the inquiry
would also take on the examination of possible government assassination plots. Church was quoted
in the Washington Post as saying, “In the absence of war no agency can have a license to murder and
the President can’t be a Godfather.”10 Due to its highly sensational nature, the topic of assassinations
soon became the most talked about news in the country.
    All things considered, it was a number of events and dynamics that led to scrutiny by a Congres-
sional body of highly sensitive US intelligence matters. At first, investigative newspaper reports tore
open the initial debate about the CIA’s role and its reliance on questionable covert operations. In
terms of assassination plots, however, it was President Gerald Ford himself who had “let the cat out of
the bag” by carelessly admitting that the CIA had previously contemplated assassinations of foreign
heads of state. Many years later, Richard Helms, former CIA Director, admitted that President Ford
had displayed “terrible judgment” in this particular situation.11
    Equally, though, it is also important to account for some of the contextual factors that allowed
for the creation of an investigative body as powerful as the Church Committee. Only few years had
passed since the Watergate scandal, during which public’s trust in government institutions had seri-
ously eroded. When accusations about intelligence wrongdoings first surfaced, government officials
were not in a position to simply “sweep them under the rug.” The CIA’s approval rating at the time
stood at a staggering 14 percent.12 As the chairman of the committee, Church had pointed out that


3
     Loch Johnson, A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1985).
4
     “Foreign Relations of the United States,” Document 31, Part 2, 1917–1972 Vol. 38, Public Diplomacy, 1973–1976, Organization
     and Management of Foreign Policy, State Department Office of the Historian.
5
     “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders,” Vol. 3–8, 1975, Senate Reports, Government Printing Office, Wash-
     ington.
6
     CIA, “A Look Back … The Church Committee Meets,” March 27, 2008, https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-
     story-archive/2008-featured-story-archive/a-look-back-the-church-committee-meets.html.
7
     Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (New
     York: HarperCollins, 1995).
8
     Daniel Schorr, Clearing the Air (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 145.
9
     Colby, Honorable Men, 410.
10
     Steve Rich, “Denied by Colby. But He Admits CIA ‘Discussed’ Assassinations,” The Washington Post, January 15, 1975.
11
     CIA History Archives, “Oral History: Reflections of DCI Colby and Helms on the CIA’s Time of Troubles”, June 27,
     2007,    https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no3/
     reflections-of-dci-colby-and-helms-on-the-cia2019s-201ctime-of-troubles201d.html.
12
     Michael Warner and Kenneth J. McDonald, US Intelligence Community. Reform Studies Since 1947 (Washington: U.S. Center



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political elites did not have the strength to resist “the tidal shift in attitude.”13
     Past political scandals during the Richard Nixon years—excessive government secrecy, cover-ups,
lies, and illegal wiretapping—had paved the way for substantial normative rethinking and wide-scale
reforms regarding the functioning of intelligence agencies. In the post-Watergate era, Congress was
willing to grant broad authority with substantial investigatory powers to an independent body in order
to examine highly sensitive matters. It was the accumulated disbelief in government and intelligence
structures that made this unprecedented inquiry possible in the first place.



3 The Fight for the Assassination Report
Just because the Church Committee had opened its investigative session, this did not necessarily mean
that the assassination ban was inevitable. Early on, a clear battle line was drawn between those who
believed that it was not in the nation’s best interest to bring out the CIA’s past dark secrets and those
who advocated full disclosure of facts. Intense clashes regarding this matter took place in different
corridors of power, most notably the White House and the CIA. Having obtained a broad investiga-
tive mandate, the Church Committee was eager to leave “no stone unturned,” doing everything in its
power to deliver a detailed report on the controversial topic of assassinations, while the Ford admin-
istration together with intelligence agencies pulled exactly the opposite direction, trying to stonewall
such efforts and suppress information disclosure.
    A series of declassified government memos and cables document intense and lengthy behind-the-
doors struggle between the Congressional Committee and the Ford administration. As soon as the
Hersh story broke out, the White House, with Henry Kissinger in charge, kept a close eye on the
developments. Early communication between Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld, White House Chief
of Staff, indicate that the administration was initially caught by surprise and was not aware of the full
extent of the CIA’s illegal activities.14 After studying the issue in greater detail, however, Kissinger
warned President Ford that the first revelations were only “the tip of the iceberg” and that if further
newspaper reporting on this issue was not stopped, then “blood will flow.”15
    From the beginning, the Ford administration sharply resisted the idea that an independent Con-
gressional group would be granted limitless access to highly sensitive intelligence materials. “Asking
for information is one thing, but going through the files is another,” Kissinger fumed in a closed-door
meeting.16 He believed that, by disclosing various unsavory intelligence activities, the investigation
threatened to leave the country “naked in a vital area of national security.”17 Kissinger would become
a frontline figure in the fight against the committee’s investigative efforts and often worked the back-
rooms, trying to persuade members of Congress that publishing scandalous foreign assassination plots
would do the country no good.
    Many in the Ford administration feared that if the committee started revealing the CIA’s “skele-
tons,” this would severely damage relations with countries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Laos,
and Congo.18 Addressing a joint session of Congress shortly after accusations in the press, President


     for the Study of Intelligence, 2005), 29.
13
     Kathryn S. Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (Chapel Hill:
     University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 12.
14
     “Telcon: Rumsfeld and Kissinger.” Case Number F-2001-02979, Document Number 8093344, 1974, US Department of
     State, The National Security Archive.
15
     Memorandum of Conversation, January 4, 1975, Participants: President Gerald R. Ford, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary
     of State and Assistant to the President, Lt. General Brent Scowcroft, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security
     Affairs, The National Security Archive.
16
     Memorandum for the President, Signed by Henry Kissinger, Box 7, 1975, Friedersdorf Files, Gerald. R. Ford Presidential
     Library.
17
     Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little Brown & Co, 1979), 780.
18
     Memorandum: From the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hyland) to Secretary of State Kissinger, 1975,
     Box CL 405, Department of State, Commissions- Commission on CIA Activities Within the U.S. Rockefeller Commission,
     Kissinger Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.



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Ford stated: “It is entirely proper that this system be subject to Congressional review. But a sensa-
tionalized public debate over legitimate intelligence activities is a disservice to the nation and a threat
to our intelligence system. It ties our hands while our potential enemies operate with secrecy, with
skill, and with vast resources.”19 Later, in his memoirs, President Ford only sharpened this point by
suggesting that the only thing this inquiry could achieve was to cripple the intelligence apparatus.20
Dick Cheney, Ford’s Chief of Staff, who played an important role in framing the administration’s re-
sponse to the Congressional investigation, had a similar reading of the situation, holding on to the
belief that possible exposure of assassinations would only lead to wrecking of the US intelligence ca-
pacity.21 In short, the White House believed that the massive inquiry could seriously damage the CIA,
and therefore was poised to protect it.
    Resistance and hostility towards the Church Committee was also strongly felt inside the CIA, which
was only logical, given that the agency’s reputation now hinged on the revelations of this inquiry. In
the words of CIA Director William Colby, he had “flung into a struggle to prevent an investigation
into the subject of assassinations” because the only thing an investigation into the matter could ac-
complish was to seriously “harm to the good name of the United States.”22 Colby was quoted saying,
“These exaggerations and misinterpretations of CIA activities can do irreparable harm to our national
intelligence apparatus and if carried to the extreme could blindfold our country as it looks abroad.”23
The Church Committee was visibly at odds with the Ford administration and the CIA over exposure
of highly secretive operations.
    Publicly, however, the Ford administration applied a different posture and attempted to create
an impression of goodwill and cooperation in its dealings with the investigators. President Ford had
openly declared full assistance on the issue of assassinations.24 When asked about the handover of
highly classified data to investigators, White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen described the process
as “easy” and “without serious obstacles.”25 Nessen stated, “As far as I know, nothing has been denied.”
In reality, White House staff was instructed to do everything in its power to shield sensitive informa-
tion regarding assassination plots, and secretly put various bureaucratic hurdles in the committee’s
way. Chairman Frank Church had expected to encounter fact-finding problems and bureaucratic
resistance, but assumed that once officials were convinced that this was a judicious inquiry, the com-
mittee would be entrusted with sensitive information.26 This never fully materialized, as resistance
from the Executive Branch merely intensified exponentially.
    In order to effectively evade the Church Committee, the Ford administration decided to purpose-
fully evoke concerns over national security. Kissinger outlined the approach that should be followed
in a closed-door meeting: “We must say this involves the profoundest national security. Then we
could go to the public and say that they [the Church Committee] are undermining the country.”27
References to national security soon became the key ideational block around which opposition was
mobilized. When calls for transparency and accountability surfaced, the White House swatted them
away by arguing that the exposure of certain information would severely undermine the security of
the nation, and tarnish its good name.
    On the opposing side, facing systematic delays and unwillingness to cooperate, the Church Com-
mittee had to come up with its own strategy for effectively obtaining the material needed for comple-


19
     Gerald Ford, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975).
20
     Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 230.
21
     Dick Cheney, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (New York: Threshold Editions, 2011), 65.
22
     Colby, Honorable Men, 410.
23
     Johnson, A Season.
24
     Richard L. Madden, “President Scans C.I.A. Tie To Any Death Plot Abroad,” The New York Times, March 18, 1975.
25
     “White House Gives Secret C.I.A. Data To Senate Inquiry,” The New York Times, March 21, 1975.
26
     “Church Urges Ford to Assist Inquiry,”The New York Times, February 3, 1975.
27
     The White House, National Security Council Staff, Memo of Conversation, Kissinger, Schlesinger, Colby, Areeda, Hoffman,
     Silberman, Scowcroft, Investigation of Allegations of CIA Domestic Activities, February 20, 1975, Box 9, Memoranda of
     Conversations, National Security Files, Gerald R. Ford Papers, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.



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tion of the planned assassination report. Loch Johnson, who served as an assistant to the committee,
captured the fundamental issue facing investigators: “We were unable to dance alone. Like it or not,
our partner was the executive branch, for it had what we needed to conduct the inquiry; information
on intelligence activities.”28 As a counterstrategy to the administration’s unwillingness to share infor-
mation, the committee often relied upon public shaming. This is where the long shadow of Watergate
played in the Church Committee’s favor. Frederick Schwarz, chief counsel to the Church Committee,
points out that Congressional investigators were aware of the fact that the Ford administration simply
could not afford to be seen as obstructionist to the public.29 Caught between advisers who advocated
confronting the committee at any cost and the fear of being seen in the same disgraceful light as his
predecessor Richard Nixon, President Ford ended up transferring valuable materials to investigators.
     The Church Committee used the public domain to empower itself, change public perceptions, and
put pressure on the White House to cooperate. Initially, Church himself had promised not to create
“a legislative carnival,” or “television extravaganza” out of the investigation.30 He ended up keeping
his word only partially. On the one hand, Church dismissed the suggestion that interrogations of CIA
officials should be held in public. Still, when facing off against an obstructive executive branch, his
position changed slightly. During one televised session, for example, Church purposefully displayed
a secret CIA weapon: a poison dart gun that the agency had developed explicitly for assassination
plots. The optics of the senator holding an exotic weapon stunned the public and showcased how far
the CIA had gone in its plans to assassinate foreign leaders.
     After finally completing the report titled “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders,”
the Church Committee, as previously agreed, first forwarded it to the White House for an internal
private reading. Having opposed the committee’s work all along, the Ford administration now dou-
bled down on its efforts. The assassination report, 247 pages long, was incredibly nuanced and highly
embarrassing to the US government. It suggested that the first democratically elected leader of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Patrice Lumumba, had been perceived by the US govern-
ment as a serious political threat.31 His removal was deemed to be an “urgent and prime objective.”32
To that end, in the fall of 1960, two CIA agents were clearly instructed to assassinate Lumumba. In
order to carry out the mission, the agency had turned to a well-known chemist. Under the code name
“Joe from Paris,” the chemist prepared a poison that was supposed to be put in the victim’s tooth-
paste.33 In later stages, the situation unfolded in a way that did not require the CIA to complete the
plan. Lumumba had gained other enemies, and in the end was shot dead on January 17, 1961 by Con-
golese rivals with direct assistance from the Belgian government. Nonetheless, the Church Committee
established that the CIA was fully prepared to kill the legitimate leader of Congo.
     In the second examined case, the committee had found “concrete evidence” of at least eight plots
involving the CIA to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro between 1960 and 1965.34 Cuba, located just 90
miles from US shores and led by the revolutionary Castro, infuriated lawmakers in Washington. Over
the years, in its plans to kill Fidel, the CIA had reached out to foreign citizens with a criminal back-
ground, mafia-type personalities as well as Cubans hostile to Castro’s government. While some of the
assassination schemes, such as the exploding seashell and diving suit contamination, were abandoned
“at the laboratory stage,” others advanced well beyond that, including dispatching teams to commit
the act.35 In the end, all attempts were unsuccessful. In the other three cases examined, the Church
Committee found less direct authorizations for assassination, while still detecting Washington’s fin-


28
     Johnson, A Season, 28.
29
     Frederick Schwarz, Democracy in the Dark: The Seduction of Government Secrecy (London: The New Press, 2015), 273.
30
     “Neither a Vendetta Nor a Whitewash.” Speech by Senator Frank Church. Proceedings and Debates of the 94th Congress,
     First Session, 27 February, 1975, The National Press Club.
31
     “Alleged Assassination,” 25.
32
     Ibid., 13.
33
     Ibid., 25.
34
     Ibid., 71.
35
     Ibid., 71.



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gerprints in attempts to kill political leaders in the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Vietnam.
     Realizing how detailed, shocking, and embarrassing the assassination report was, President Ford
insisted on limiting its availability only to the Senate and House Select Committees. The administra-
tion suggested ironing out past mistakes quietly, behind closed doors. In a major address, first after
reading the assassination report, President Ford applauded the committee’s efforts and described the
produced document as “fair, frank and balanced.” While expressing his total opposition to assassi-
nations, the president nonetheless urged the committee not to make the report public due to the
“extremely sensitive matters” it contained.36 In Ford’s view, it was enough that he had instructed in-
telligence agencies that “under no circumstances should any agency in government participate, in or
plan for any assassination of a foreign leader.”37 This clearly did not please the Church Committee,
which all along had counted on public release of the report. Chairman Frank Church dismissed the
claims that exposure of the CIA’s past mistakes served no useful purpose. “I don’t accept that thesis.
We need to know what went on and the degree to which assassination was an instrument of foreign
policy,” Church insisted.38
     The confrontation between both sides reached its peak at the end of November 1975. Fearing
that the committee might strike on its own and publish the report, President Ford sent a “strongly
worded” letter urging members of the Select Committee not to make it public.39 At this point, Chair-
man Church responded with an equally bold move: an ultimatum threatening to resign unless the
report was published. Consequently, a compromise was reached between the two. The report would
be sent to the Senate, which would then decide what to do with it: keep it classified or make it public.
After several hours of intense discussion, the Senate was unwilling to take a clear stand. It refused to
block the document’s release, but at the same time it did not approve of publication of the material.40
Instead, it sent the report back to the Church Committee, suggesting that its own internal decision
would also be the final one. With all eleven members of the committee voting in favor, the assassina-
tion report finally became available to the wider public. In the end, the committee had prevailed and
managed to fully present its findings, laying the necessary groundwork for a formal assassination ban.
     In short, the presented analysis demonstrates that the path to the assassination ban was long, tor-
turous, and full of obstacles. Along every step of the way, the committee faced stiff bureaucratic
resistance, as it was engaged in a power struggle with the Ford administration over what secretive
intelligence materials would come to light. Intelligence agencies had to be systematically pushed to
cooperate, and roles of individual committee members were crucial in forcing the topic of assassi-
nations into the open. There was nothing inevitable about the final outcome. Different end results
were not only possible, but at times even appeared more likely. The inquiry, for example, could have
concluded with a report that was available exclusively to the Senate Select Committees, but not the
general public. Alternatively, the final document could have been crafted as a “watered-down” ver-
sion, describing events in fuzzy generic terms, which was something that the Ford administration had
hoped for. Instead, what the Church Committee managed to achieve was a 247-page report exposing
the secret conversations of political elites in a highly detailed manner.
     The final report was not merely an informative piece. For the Church Committee, it served as
a vehicle through which it made its case to introduce a formal assassination ban. The unsanitized
language in which the report was produced was no coincidence. The document was purposefully
crafted in a way to shock the public about government abuses and build momentum for change. The
report had, for example, revealed that in Congo, the agency had prepared toxic biological materials to
assassinate Patrice Lumumba. One station officer’s testimony revealed that he had received “rubber
gloves, a mask, and a syringe along with lethal biological material … to be injected into some substance
that Lumumba would ingest.”41 In the case of Fidel Castro, the agency had explored the following

36
     Ford, Public Papers.
37
     Press Conference no. 23 of the President of the United States, November 26, 1975. Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
38
     “Texts on Alleged U.S. Assassination Plots,” The New York Times, November 21, 1975.
39
     Nicholas M. Horrock, “Ford Acts To Bar Death Plot Data,” The New York Times, November 3, 1975.
40
     Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government, 106.
41
     “Alleged Assassination,” 19.



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devices to kill the Cuban leader: a “contaminated diving suit, exploding seashell, poison pills, poison
pens, deadly bacterial powders, and other devices which strain the imagination.”42
    The Church Committee had accumulated a massive amount of data comprising over 8,000 pages
of testimonies taken from over seventy-five witnesses, including individuals at the highest echelons
of power.43 Investigators managed to get their hands on virtually all White House authorizations
for foreign intelligence activities and, consequently, were able to present a complete anatomy of US
assassination plots abroad.44 In reaction to the report, on February 18, 1976 President Ford issued
Executive Order 11905, which stated: “No employee of the United States Government shall engage in,
or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”45



4     Committee Findings and Recommendations
Drawing on the investigative work of the Church Committee, what were the main lessons learned
regarding assassination plots initiated by the US government abroad? What exactly led the United
States to such policy extremes? The committee established a number of similarities and common
patterns in plans to assassinate foreign leaders that took place under the watch of both Republican and
Democrat administrations. First, it is crucial to recognize that all US assassinations had been planned
and evolved in the context of the Cold War and slowly deteriorating Soviet-American relations. The
very first sentence of the Church report makes a note of this fact: “The events discussed in this report
must be viewed in the context of United States policy and actions designed to counter the threat of
spreading Communism.”46
     At the time, policymakers viewed the CIA as a “primary means of defense against Communism,”
and covert operations were considered a key element in the pursuit of US strategic policy objectives.
Fear of Soviet expansion was the uniting element in Washington’s desire to remove foreign heads of
state from their office. In Congo, the newly elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was seen as a
“Castro or worse.”47 Lumumba’s Soviet sympathies were reason enough to try to assassinate him. In
the case of Cuba, an island located just 90 miles away from the US, Fidel Castro had basically granted
Moscow access to the backyard of the United States, which resulted in relentless attempts against his
life.
     Those inside the US political establishment who had favored going after specific foreign leaders,
justified their position on the grounds of profound national interest—a monolithic Communist threat.
Later, when the same individuals testified before the Church Committee, they all agreed that assassi-
nation was “stupid, foolish, ridiculous, unworkable; worse than a crime” and the only justification they
came up with was “the climate of the time.”48 The Church Committee was not blind to the political
and ideological context within which assassination plots had been planned and authorized. Still, for
investigators the threat posed by the Soviet Union only explained why the phenomenon had occurred,
but in itself did not justify such extreme measures.
     The Church Committee members argued that the Cold War, intense as it was, did not change the
fact that assassination as a method was unacceptable for American-style democracy.49 In a letter to
one of his constituents, Frank Church wrote, “I believe the best method of countering them [Soviets]
abroad is not to imitate their tactics of subversion and deceit but to provide an example of decency



42
     Ibid., 71.
43
     Ibid., 2.
44
     Madden, “President Scans C.I.A”.
45
     President Gerald R. Ford’s Executive Order 11905: United States Foreign Intelligence Activities, 8, February 23, 1976, The
     Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents.
46
     “Alleged Assassination,” 20.
47
     Ibid., 220.
48
     Ibid., 20.
49
     Ibid., 258.



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and honesty for other countries to emulate.”50 The Church Committee was convinced that means
were as important as ends, and that the United States should not attempt to justify its actions by the
same standards as totalitarian states; instead its standards as a liberal democracy had to be higher.
     While acknowledging that the revealed facts about US government assassination plots were “sad,”
Congressional investigators equally believed that the country had the strength to hear the story, learn
from it, and follow through with necessary policy adjustments.51 “Despite temporary injury to our
national reputation, the Committee believes that foreign peoples will, upon sober reflection, respect
the United States more for keeping faith with its democratic ideal than they will condemn us for the
misconduct revealed,” the final report noted.52 As such, the introduction and formalization of the
domestic assassination ban served as an expression of the US democratic character and its willingness
to be associated with liberal democracy. The ban was a value orientation, containing information
about US government’s intentions and future behavior in the international realm.
     Another commonality among the plots was that they all had involved relatively weak countries:
Congo, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and South Vietnam, none of which were in a position
to seriously challenge or threaten the United States. In the case of Congo, for example, the newly
elected president had “neither committed any crime nor even voiced any threat against the US.”53 He
had merely reached out to the Soviet Union for assistance, flirting with the idea of establishing closer
ties with Moscow. Retrospectively, his ties to and willingness to work with Moscow were called into
serious question. CIA Director Allen Dulles later admitted, “I think we overrated the Soviet danger,
let’s say, in the Congo.”54
     Similarly, US plans to kill Fidel Castro appear to have evolved primarily from political and ideolog-
ical considerations, not imminent security threats to US citizens. While the report did make note that,
out of all examined cases, Castro posed a real national security threat to the United States during the
period of the Cuban missile crisis, it equally recalled that attempts to assassinate him “had begun long
before that crisis.”55 The Church Committee did not rule out that, in exceptional circumstances, the
nation could end up relying on certain covert operations, but it also added that such steps should be
undertaken only when national security truly called for it and when overt means no longer sufficed.56
The situations and circumstances in which the US government had gone after foreign leaders clearly
did not meet such an imminent security threat threshold.
     Another key takeaway from the Church investigation was that, as a practical matter, assassination
carried many risks. The final Church Committee report pointed out that, apart from moral and ethical
considerations, there were also some “practical reasons” why the United States should never engage in
such activities.57 Review of government cables and documents attests that, even for a superpower like
the United States, the assassination of foreign individuals was difficult to pull off. Substantial technical
expertise and financial means did not automatically lead to successful outcomes. Countless failed
attempts against Fidel Castro’s life serve as the best testimony to this.
     Declassified CIA file titled “A Study of Assassination,” intended for internal CIA field-agent read-
ing, listed diverse tools for the successful execution of assassinations. “A hammer, axe, wrench, screw
driver, fire poker, kitchen knife, lamp stand, or anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice. A length
of rope or wire or a belt will do if the assassin is strong and agile. All such improvised weapons have
the important advantage of availability and apparent innocence,” the document advised.58 In reality,


50
     Russell A. Miller, US National Security, Intelligence and Democracy: From the Church Committee to the War on Terror (London:
     Routledge, 2008), 83.
51
     Schwarz, Democracy in the Dark, 9.
52
     “Alleged Assassination,” 2.
53
     Avery Plaw, Targeting Terrorists A License to Kill? (London: Routledge, 2008), 99.
54
     Stephen R. Weissman, “An Extraordinary Rendition,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 25, No.2: 202.
55
     Senate Reports, “Alleged Assassination,” 258.
56
     Ibid., 160.
57
     Ibid., 258.
58
     “A Study of Assassination”: CIA unclassified file, 1953, The National Security Archive.



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no matter how well planned, US government plots had all failed. CIA Director William Colby later
admitted that assassination plans had led to “absolutely uncontrolled and unforeseeable results, usu-
ally worse results than by continuing to suffer the problem that you are facing.”59 Colby elaborated
on some of the lessons learned: “You think you can solve something by eliminating a guy—it’s playing
God. You have no idea who is going to succeed him, you have no idea what the repercussions will be,
or, the worst, you getting caught doing it.”60
     What made such attempts even more complicated was the fact that the US clearly wanted to keep
its hand hidden. Killing a foreign official was one thing, while making it look like an accident was
substantially more demanding task. “I mean you couldn’t invite [the victim] to a cocktail party and
give him a drink and have him die a short time later,” explained one CIA agent who had worked
for the agency in the 1970s.61 Moreover, officials were concerned that if information about foreign
plots became a public knowledge, this would invite “reciprocal action from foreign governments.”62
American officials could then become prime targets themselves. As Walter Mondale, a member of the
Church Committee, explained, “When we pursue a strategy of assassinating foreign leaders, I think we
ought to concern ourselves with the possibility that foreign leaders might decide that if we are going
to play such a game against them they can play it against us.”63
     The investigation further revealed that assassination plots had flourished in an atmosphere of
“plausible denial.” In every single administration there was a failure of control by all of the presidents.
It was unclear where exactly the power resided in terms of ordering covert intelligence activities. Dur-
ing the testimony, when CIA witnesses were questioned, their answers usually involved one of the
following phrases “could,” “would,” “probably,” “assume,” “might,” “have a feeling.”64 The committee
concluded that many of the abuses were a result of lack of reasonable accountability requirements.
Agencies were not accountable to the White House, and there was a great deal of inertia in terms of
intelligence oversight. Covert activities were never cross-examined outside agency walls. While the
committee provided an impressively thorough report on assassination plots, it equally failed to es-
tablish individual responsibility. Pinning down responsibility for covert action, Mondale complained,
was “like nailing jello to a wall.”65 The committee concluded that accountability measures and proce-
dural barriers were inadequate for covert action, and that they needed to be visibly strengthened.66



5     Conclusions
Widespread suspicion about government institutions in the 1970s created an unusual window of op-
portunity for a major Congressional investigation. But even big opportunities by themselves do not
automatically lead to changes in rules and practices. A long and fierce tug-of-war played out between
those who believed it was not in the nation’s best interest to bring out a reputation damaging the CIA’s
secrets and those who advocated full disclosure of facts, even at the expense of embarrassment and
international condemnation. The final outcome here, above all, hinged on the ability and willing-
ness of the individual investigators of the Church Committee to mobilize support, shame the Ford
administration, and coerce the government to reveal facts about its clandestine operations abroad.
After presenting the final document, a substantial body of evidence, the Church Committee laid the



59
     “Colby Says He Rejected All Suggestions for C.I.A. Assassinations,” The New York Times, September 15, 1975.
60
     CIA, “Oral History”.
61
     Democracy Now, “Flashback: A Look Back at the Church Committee’s Investigation into CIA, FBI Misuse of Power,” April
     24, 2009, https://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/24/flashback_a_look_back_at_the.
62
     Senate Reports, “Alleged Assassination,” 282.
63
     Congressional Record, Mondale, Walter F. – RNC Quotebook, 1975, The Ron Nessen Papers, Gerald R. Ford Presidential
     Library.
64
     Loch K. Johnson, “CIA Needs Vigilant Oversight, but It Won’t Always Work,” The Washington Post, August 28, 2009.
65
     Andrew D. Crain, The Ford Presidency: A History (New York: McFarland, 2009), 121.
66
     “Alleged Assassination,” 160.



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groundwork for the domestic assassination ban, later formalized in President Gerald Ford’s Executive
Order 11905.
    More than four decades have now passed since the infamous Church inquiry. Following it, the US
government for considerable time (1975–2001) steered its foreign policy without using the instrument
of singled-out killings.67 Before 2001, there even was considerable reluctance within the US national
security bureaucracy to go after individual terrorism suspects.68 Attacks on 9/11, however, ushered
in a new understanding about the reach of international terrorism, with an unparalleled impact on
the external behavior of the US. In the wake of the national security emergency, in order to operate
effectively and with less restraint, the government untied its own hands, and reintroduced lethal au-
thority in order to go after singled-out individuals, in some ways resembling the times of the prior to
the Church Committee.
    The introduction of Predator drones markedly increased the success rate of targeted killing opera-
tions, which historically carried immense risks and practical complications. With time, as the technol-
ogy of unmanned aerial vehicles advanced, targeted killing numbers surged to historical levels. What
is equally significant is the fact that, for the most part, the US government kept the lethal program
in the shadows and refused to release information regarding how and by what standards individuals
could end up on a kill-list, the location of strikes, or estimated civilian casualties. Using the CIA as
an instrument for flying drones, both the Bush and Obama administration kept important details of
such missions away from the public domain.
    While the targeted persons are no longer Soviet-leaning world leaders but suspected terrorists, and
poison has been replaced with sleek unmanned aircraft, the original concerns of the Church Commit-
tee remain relevant today. The historical investigation offers a dire warning to those who intend to
operate without the input of the public and routinely use lethal power, while ignoring checks and bal-
ances. History shows that by bypassing traditional democratic processes and rolling back restraints in
the face of its enemies, the US government can easily slide into controversial foreign involvements
and unacceptable acts. Even in the era of flying drones, “Church lessons” remain salient and worthy
of study.



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