Intelligence
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General
News 12/19/2014 at 17:16:41
CIA report warned assassination programme might
backfire
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WikiLeaks today, Thursday 18 December, publishes a review by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of its "High Value Target" (HVT) assassination programme. The report weighs the pros and cons of killing "insurgent" leaders in assassination plots. After the report was prepared, US drone strike killings rose to an all-time high.
The report discusses assassination operations (by various states)
against the Taliban, al-Qa'ida, the FARC, Hizbullah, the PLO, HAMAS, Peru's Shining
Path, the Tamil's LTTE, the IRA and Algeria's FLN. Case studies are drawn from
Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand.
The assessment was prepared by the CIA's Office of Transnational Issues
(OTI). Its role is to provide "the most senior US policymakers, military
planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support."
The report is dated 7 July 2009, six months into Leon Panetta's term as CIA
chief, and not long after CIA analyst John Kiriakou blew the whistle on the
torture of CIA detainees. Kiriakou is still in prison for shedding light on the
CIA torture programme.
Following the politically embarrassing exposure of the CIA's torture
practices and the growing cost of keeping people in detention indefinitely, the
Obama administration faced a crucial choice in its counter-insurgency strategy:
should it kill, capture, or do something else entirely?
Perceived benefits of assassinating insurgent leaders
Evidence for successful assassinations is slight. One of the few
examples claimed to have had positive results is the assassination of
Colombia's FARC leaders Raul Reyes and Ivan Rios, which is thought to have
eroded the coherency of the FARC. Similarly, morale of the rank and file of
HAMAS is said to have weakened as a result of the assassination of its founder
and co-founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi by Israeli missile
attacks in 2004. The CIA report nevertheless pointed out that "HAMAS'
highly disciplined nature, social service network and reserve of respected leaders
allowed it to reorganize after the killing..."
The CIA claimed that the paranoia its assassination programme was
generating could be helpful: "HVT operations typically force the remaining
leaders to increase their security discipline, which may compromise a leader's
effectiveness." HVT operations had forced Osama bin Laden to stay in
hiding, rely on low-tech communications and avoid meeting his subordinates. The
CIA considered that this had "affected his ability to command his
organization." Bin Laden was seen to be isolated and out of command. Bin
Laden's assassination in May 2011 occurred as President Obama prepared to run
for his second term in office.
The assassination of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) leader Abu
Laith Al-Libi and his deputy in Waziristan in January 2008 by a US missile
strike informed the report's 'benefits' analysis. The CIA analysts considered
that it resulted in "probably hindering the group's merger with
al-Qa'ida". The LIFG was dismantled a year after this report was written.
Many of its top leaders subsequently became key members of al-Qa'ida.
CIA's "pruning" strategy
The secret assessment also goes into what it calls "The Pruning
Approach," where individuals within the insurgency group are selected for
killing so as to affect the organization. Rather than killing senior
commanders, it is sometimes more effective to kill individuals who are
important to core functions. The Pruning Approach, CIA analysts state, can be
"used to remove effective mid-level leaders, protect incompetent leaders
or restore them to positions of authority, separate insurgent personalities
from potential sources of government sponsorship, or protect human sources that
are collecting intelligence on networks."
Taliban egalitarianism to blame for failure of CIA
targeted assassination programme
The report acknowledges that the effect of assassinating insurgent
groups' leaders is sometimes lessened by organizations' command structure and
succession planning. This is said to be a problem both in relation to al-Qa'ida
in Iraq and to the Taliban.
"The Taliban's military structure blends a top-down command system
with an egalitarian Afghan tribal structure that rules by consensus, making the
group more able to withstand HVT operations." Al-Qa'ida's less centralized
structure meant they were able to "weather leadership losses such as the
death of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi." He was killed by US forces in Iraq in June
2006.
In its key findings, the report warns of the negative consequences of
assassinating so-called High Level Targets (HLT), a prediction that has been
proven right. "The potential negative effect of HLT operations include
increasing the level of insurgent support,["] strengthening an armed
group's bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group's remaining
leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and
escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents."
Capturing HVTs instead is not necessarily a desirable option from the
CIA's perspective.
Drawing on the CIA-assisted capture of Nelson Mandela and
the ANC leader's 27-year sentence, which he served in an Apartheid prison, the
report concludes that: "Capturing leaders may have a limited psychological
impact on a group if members believe that captured leaders will eventually
return to the group [...] or if those leaders are able to maintain their
influence while in government custody, as Nelson Mandela did while incarcerated
in South Africa. (S//NF)"
Assassinations by drone strike escalated to an all-time high a year
after the CIA report was written. According to findings by the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism, 751 people were killed in drone strikes that year,
compared with 471 in 2009 and 363 in 2011.
Drawing on the experience of assassination programmes in Thailand, the
report warns that High Value Target assassinations "can capture the
attention of policymakers and military planners to the extent that a government
loses its strategic perspective on the conflict or neglects other key aspects
of counterinsurgency".
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