Assassination, U.S. Executive Order Against

Executive order originally issued in 1976 by President Gerald Ford to outlaw political assassination following allegations revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had made attempts to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro. Ford's executive order was the first of a series of three executive orders that included assassination bans. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter included the ban in an executive order issued to reshape the U.S. intelligence structure. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan reiterated the assassination prohibition, which remains in effect today. The president may modify or rescind the assassination ban by executive order. Congress also may legislate to modify or repeal it.

The first prohibition—executive order 11905, issued by President Ford on February 19, 1976—prohibited any member of the U.S. government from engaging or conspiring to engage in any political assassination anywhere in the world. This ban was superseded by executive order 12036, issued by President Jimmy Carter on January 26, 1978. Section 2-305 of that order stated that “[n]o person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” The order thus expanded the ban to include not only individuals employed directly by the U.S. government but also any individuals acting on the behalf of the government. President Reagan's executive order 12333, issued on December 4, 1981, reiterated the ban using the same language as the Carter order. Reagan was the last president to address the topic of political assassination.

None of the presidential executive orders define the term “assassination.” In general, an assassination is the intentional killing of a targeted individual for political purposes. It is worth noting that only the Ford order referred to “political assassination,” whereas Carter and Reagan used the term “assassination” only. It is unclear whether this change in language indicated any change in the scope of the ban.

The scope of the term “assassination” is the subject of differing interpretations and depends on whether the killing takes place during a time of war or peace. For example, in his Special Message to the Congress, delivered on February 18, 1976, which accompanied the executive order, President Ford indicated that he would “support legislation making it a crime to assassinate or attempt or conspire to assassinate a foreign official in peacetime.”

However, the ban did not prevent the Reagan administration from bombing the house of Libyan leader Mu'ammar Gadhafi in 1986 in retaliation for a bombing attack at a Berlin discotheque in April 1986. Moreover, in 1998, President Bill Clinton ordered the firing of cruise missiles at training camps in Afghanistan after the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

Three days after the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, the U.S. Congress passed joint resolutions authorizing the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Although there was no explicit reference to the assassination ban, the breadth of the joint resolutions could be sufficient to authorize actions that otherwise would be prohibited under the executive orders banning assassination.

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