H is for Hit Squads from the CIA

A new book released today takes a look at the CIA’s shifting role from that of intelligence gathering (aka “spying”) to more direct action through targeted killings, through drone strikes, hit squads, or other clandestine action. The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by journalist Mark Mazzetti reveals a world not unlike John le Carre‘s dark universe of “scalp hunters.”

From the Amazon summary:

The most momentous change in American warfare over the past decade has taken place away from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the corners of the world where large armies can’t go. The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies.

This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime.

If a government that has, and uses, the power to kill in secret doesn’t give you pause, it should. As citizens of a democratic republic, allowing too much secret activity, including against our enemies, sets a dangerous precedent, and the weapon we wield today can just as easily be put at our throat tomorrow.

In an interview with NPR, Mazzetti points out that authorization for targeted killings, originally begun under the Bush Administration, has expanded under the Obama Administration:

Seal of the C.I.A. – Central Intelligence Agency of the United States Government (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The CIA has become a machine for killing in many ways. The counterterrorism center has become, in many ways, the sort of beating heart of the agency that does manhunting. And the drone operations are something that two successive White Houses have embraced. You could argue that the current administration, the Obama administration, has embraced it even more than its predecessor. And these questions of ‘Should the CIA stay in the killing business? Should they be focused on drone strikes? Or should that be something that the military should do?’ It is something that is unresolved but is certainly being discussed.

Apropos:It was initiatives like this that the peace movement protested in the second term of the Bush Administration, but those same activists are almost no where to be found today.

Related articles

• Mark Mazzetti Reports how the CIA has Turned from its Original Mission in New Book (booksnreview.com)
• A cold war espionage service becomes a paramilitary organization (aislec.wordpress.com)
• CIA Drone Campaign in Pakistan Started With Two Dead Children and a Favor (txwclp.org)
• Blood Money, Kill Lists, Favors for Favors: Deep Inside the CIA’s Targeted Killings (wired.com)
• ‘Way Of The Knife’ Explains CIA Shift From Spying To Killing (wnyc.org)