Assassination of Leaders who did good for their Nations

Akber Choudhry -

In a chain of covert actions in the 21st century, Americans and Europeans have ended up killing, or attempting to kill, or deposing, leaders that did anything in the interest of their nation and against the interests of the West.

In the 1970’s, when the U.S. received worldwide condemnation for these assassinations, a U.S Senate committee revealed that the CIA had a unit called Executive Action, which was in charge of planning to assassinate foreign leaders, and something called the 'Health Alteration Committee,' the purpose of which was exactly what its name stated. It was just such ghastly details–including the CIA’s effort to infect Lumumba’s toothbrush with a deadly African disease–that led U.S. President Gerald Ford to issue an executive order on Feb. 18, 1976, which led to these assassination attempts to go underground.

Iran - overthrow of Mossadeq and killing of many gov officials

Under the auspices of the U.S. President and Secretary of State, a classic CIA operation to topple the fiercely nationalistic government of Iran.

Belgium and US assassinated Congo's best hope.

Belgium faces up to its bloody past.

Forty one years after the event, Belgium has finally apologised for its role in the murder of Patrice Lumumba, an icon of the Left and Africa’s most promising post-colonial leader, writes Andrew Osborn in the Guardian (February 8, 2002). Email: andrew.osborn@guardian.co.uk

He was shot by firing squad, dismembered and then dissolved in a vat of sulphuric acid, but the spirit of Patrice Lumumba could not be extinguished.

This week, forty one years later, Belgium, the former colonial power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (later to be renamed Zaire, and then after the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, the Democratic Republic of the Congo), apologised for its role in a political execution which ushered in 36 years of dictatorship under the tyrannical leadership of Mobutu Sese Seko.

Fidel Castro - a victim of wounded U.S. pride?

What has Fidel Castro ever done to the U.S. to warrant 11 documented attempts to assassinate him.

Trujillo and Vasquez - Interference in Dominican Republic

The U.S. occupied the Dominican Republic and Haiti for quite some time and has always been the ‘uncle’ in interfering in internal affairs of these countries, including the deposing of Vasquez and bringing Trujillo to power, and then going after Turjillo. This is a familiar pattern.

The irony is that an uncle like the U.S. should then look after the welfare of the poor relatives, but that will not happen.

Guatemala - hundreds targeted

Arbenz was elected President of Guatemala in 1950 to continue a process of socio- economic reforms that the CIA disdainfully refers to in its memoranda as “an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the ‘Banana Republic.'” The first CIA effort to overthrow the Guatemalan president–a CIA collaboration with Nicaraguan dictator Anastacio Somoza to support a disgruntled general named Carlos Castillo Armas and codenamed Operation PBFORTUNE–was authorized by President Truman in 1952. As early as February of that year, CIA Headquarters began generating memos with subject titles such as “Guatemalan Communist Personel to be disposed of during Military Operations,” outlining categories of persons to be neutralized “through Executive Action”–murder–or through imprisonment and exile. The “A” list of those to be assassinated contained 58 names–all of which the CIA has excised from the declassified documents.

PBSUCCESS, authorized by President Eisenhower in August 1953, carried a $2.7 million budget for “pychological warfare and political action” and “subversion,” among the other components of a small paramilitary war. But, according to the CIA’s own internal study of the agency’s so-called “K program,” up until the day Arbenz resigned on June 27, 1954, “the option of assassination was still being considered.” While the power of the CIA’s psychological-war, codenamed “Operation Sherwood,” against Arbenz rendered that option unnecessary, the last stage of PBSUCCESS called for “roll-up of Communists and collaborators.” Although Arbenz and his top aides were able to flee the country, after the CIA installed Castillo Armas in power, hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed. Between 1954 and 1990, human rights groups estimate, the repressive operatives of sucessive military regimes murdered more than 100,000 civilians.

by Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh
gwu.edu

Che Guevara in Bolivia

This charismatic leader of Latin America was brutally murdered by a Bolivian battalion founded and funded by the CIA.

Walt Rostow reports in this memorandum to President Johnson that unconfirmed information suggests that the Bolivian battalion–“the one we have been training”–“got Che Guevara.”
CIA Document

The purpose was to scare to other revolutionaries — Memo about Che’s death to U.S. President

Others

  • Salvador Allende of Chile
  • Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam
  • Francois Duvalier of Haiti
  • Sukarno of Indonesia
  • General Rene Schneider of Chile