Thread by @AnnieJacobsen

For readers interested in historical and factual (not political) information about Executive Order 12333—and why it is accurate to say assassination is prohibited and has also been legally authorized by almost every President since Eisenhower, here 👇 is a thread.

Presidents do not refer to such covert action programs as assassination. As per docs @USNatArchives, they call it:

Eisenhower: "Health Alteration"
Kennedy: "Executive Action"
Reagan: "Pre-emptive Neutralization"
George W. Bush: "Lethal Direct Action"
Obama: "Targeted Killing"

@USNatArchives There's overwhelming evidence to support this.

But first, let's remember what former CIA director Richard Helms said about assassination—or "targeted killing" or any other euphemism chosen to obfuscate truth.

“If you kill someone else’s leaders, why shouldn’t they kill yours?”

@USNatArchives Richard Helms, a WWII member of the OSS, oversaw a majority of the Kennedy-era assassination plots but cautioned against the act in his later testimony to Congress.

@USNatArchives During the Church Committee investigations into the CIA (circa 1975), many White House–level assassination plots were revealed.

senate.gov/artandhistory/…

@USNatArchives Before that, there was no oversight with regard to CIA covert action, which is the President's third option (tertia optio) after diplomacy fails and when war is a terrible idea.

After the Church hearings, there was oversight. Sort of.

@USNatArchives First, a VERY prescient thing happened in light of what's happening today.

During the Church investigations, Henry Kissinger warned President Ford that if certain revelations about assassination became public, “the CIA would be destroyed.”

@USNatArchives President Ford called into his office his Chief of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld, and his Deputy Chief of Staff, Dick Cheney, and asked: how to keep secrets and restore presidential power?

@USNatArchives Dick Cheney advised President Ford to object to the release and attempt to block the reports on grounds that it compromised national security. President Ford agreed.

"It was one of the few cowardly things I did in my life,” President Ford later said.

The effort failed.

@USNatArchives In undated notes located at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, Dick Cheney advised President Ford that it was imperative to restore the authority of the executive branch.

The advice foreshadowed Cheney’s own use of presidential authority 26-years later, when he served as VP.

@USNatArchives President Ford issued EO 11905: “No employee of the US Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.”

Senator Church objected. A presidential decree could easily be changed by decree, by another president—which is precisely what has happened.

@USNatArchives So yes, Reagan signed EO 12333, reiterating the already existing ban sponsoring or carrying out an assassination.

But the same time, Reagan and his advisors were exploring a new executive order allowing for "preemptive neutralization" of people who wanted to harm the US.

@USNatArchives Reagan's CIA director Bill Casey led the charge.

To argue for "preemptive neutralization," Casey referenced a covert action program authorized by President Carter, a large-scale operation to supply weapons to anti-Soviet holy warriors, called mujahedin, in Afghanistan.

@USNatArchives “We’re arming the Afghans, right?” Casey argued. “Every time a mujahedin rebel kills a Soviet rifleman, are we engaged in assassination?" he asked of former President Carter's covert action program...

@USNatArchives ..."This is a rough business," Casey argued. "If we’re afraid to hit the terrorists because somebody’s going to yell ‘assassination,’ it’ll never stop. The terrorists will own the world. They’ll know nobody is going to raise a finger against them.”

Words spoken in 1981.

@USNatArchives From December 4, 1981, on out, there would be great flexibility in how targeted killing could be undertaken, and in what circumstances, so that it was not called "assassination."

@USNatArchives Which brings us to assassination (but not legally called assassination) today.

"Today" begins with 9/11.

Or, more to the point, with September 17, 2001 when covert-action orders were formalized by CIA lawyers for a Presidential Finding, or Memorandum of Notification (MON).

@USNatArchives “I wrote the September 2001 MON,” John Rizzo told me.

Number two lawyer at CIA, Rizzo served 11 CIA directors and 7 presidents. “The first MON I ever drafted was during the Iranian hostage” crisis and “this [2001] Memorandum of Notification was nothing short of extraordinary.”

@USNatArchives “It was the most comprehensive, most ambitious, most aggressive and most risky Finding, or MON, I was ever involved in," Rizzo said.

Radical in scope, ambition, aggression, and risk, it included military planning and covert actions to go after terrorists around the world...

@USNatArchives This September 17th Memorandum of Understanding also contained another authority that would revolutionize the way in which individual people would be targeted and killed: drone strikes.

Both documents were classified Top Secret.

Both remain in effect today.

End of thread.