Assassinate Vladimir Putin? Or Try Him in the International Criminal Court in The Hague?

Vladimir Putin sits at the end of a 40-foot-long table in the Kremlin for 2 reasons:

1.) So the men at the other end can’t smell the fear in his breath, and;

2.) So they can’t see the cowardice in his eyes.

Vladimir Putin is an evil man, and an International Terrorist.

For that reason (being an International Terrorist), the CIA, our military intelligence, and other such officials in our government are EXEMPT from Executive Orders 11905, 12036, 12333, 13355, 13470, and all others that similarly direct our intelligence-gathering agencies from engaging in, or conspiring to engage in, assassination. Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, and George W. Bush had all signed EOs that worked upon that theme.

Foreign Policy magazine published an article — “Mission: Assassination, The CIA’s a lot better at targeted killing now than it used to be.” — by Malcolm Byrne, Deputy Director, and Director of Research at the National Security Archive, and Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson, PhD, a Senior Fellow with the National Security Archive — on June 6, 2013, 3:37 AM that detailed the matter of the involvement of American intelligence agencies and their operatives in assassination efforts, ranging from planning, to execution… no pun intended.

Cited was a 1996 article by an attorney in the CIA’s Office of General Counsel (whose name was redacted) — “Covert Action, Loss of Life, and theProhibition on Assassination, 1976-96 (U)” — published in the CIA’s intra-agency journal “Studies in Intelligence” which dealt with ideas surrounding the “lethal use of force” and the agency’s efforts “at various times” from its 1947 inception to the date of publication, to engage in assassination of political enemies of the United States, Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba being the two most notable examples, and all targets which the author specifically wrote that, “In no case was CIA assassination plotting ultimately successful.”

I’m uncertain whether such failures are an indictment of incompetency, or not. They would certainly seem to be.

Besides being a reviled agency off-and-on over the years, the CIA has certainly participated in, or in some capacity been responsible for, some phenomenally abysmal blunders, primarily at the foreign policy level, among the most notable of which is their “Operation Ajax” to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected government and oust Prime Minister Mossadeq in 1953, and install the brutal totalitarian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Interestingly enough, the PM Mossadeq had sought to nationalize Iran’s oil supply, and sought an audit of the company managing the nation’s oil field operations, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation now part of BP (British Petroleum), in order to determine if the AIOC had been paying the proper amount of royalties to the nation, and to limit their control over the nation’s oil reserves.

Ultimately, of course, we know how that turned out — miserably, and eventually resulted in the people overthrowing him, and installing a ruler of their own — the now-deceased Ayatollah Khomeini, another miserable despot and extremist leader of a far-right-wing Islamic religious sect of Shia Islam, who along with his brand of religious extremism, ushered in a still-ongoing era of despotism and oppression of the nation’s people, and women, especially, including being declared a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984 by the U.S. Department of State, for their direct involvement in, and influence over numerous international terrorist organizations.

Again, we can thank the CIA for their direct role in the proliferation of global terrorism.

But somehow, few, if any, ever talk about that.

And yet, it’s undeniable.

Also mentioned was the agency’s dilemma posed by Manuel Noriega in the 1980s, the now-late, former dictator of Panama, and curiously enough, 2 Doonesbury cartoons by renown cartoonist Gary Trudeau, which dealt with the agency’s sponsorship, and participatory engagement in coup attempts, and subsequent “accidental death” of political enemies. While the were some redactions in the article before it was approved for public release 7/25/2012 in accordance with a Freedom Of Information Act request by Dr. Jeffrey T. Richelson, PhD, a now-late former Fellow with the National Security Archive, it was mostly public.

Pointedly, in some capacity the United States should collaboratively engage in clandestine effort with other nations to assassinate Vladimir Putin.

Either that, or have him captured and brought to justice before an international tribunal at the Hague to be tried for Crimes Against Humanity.

But regardless, either way, the world will be better off without him.