E268 - A Modern History of Assassination w/ Simon Ball

0:00You're listening to American Prestige. To listen ad-free, you can subscribe at AmericanPrestigePod.com. Find the link in our show notes. Fall flavors are waiting for you at Whole Foods Market. Cozy picks all through the store, like maple leaf cookies from 365 brand. Swing by the bakery for pumpkin cheesecake, here for a limited time, and pumpkin turmeric bread freshly baked every single day. Set the season with 365 brand cinnamon spice coffee and pumpkin spice creamer. While you still can, spice up fall at Whole Foods Market. Hello, Prestige heads and welcome to American Prestige.

1:03I'm Danny Bessner here as always with my friend and comrade Derek Davidson. And we're very excited to welcome to the podcast today. Simon Ball. Simon's a professor of international history and politics at the University of Leeds, an author of the recently released Death to Order, a modern history of assassination. Simon, thank you so much for coming on the show to chat. My pleasure. Nice to be here, guys. Yeah, appreciate it. So why don't we start with probably the most basic question, which is assassination as a historical subject or a historical object. There's no, you know, subgenre of the history of assassination, like there is a history of terrorism. So maybe we could talk about the difficulty of studying assassination, how we should think about it, and then go from there. Well, part of the reason for the book is to clear away some of, in some ways, the unnecessary complexity about talking about assassination.

2:04As you suggested, assassination in historical scholarship, political science scholarship has tended to be a lie, did with terrorism since the 1970s, because it got caught up with that new discipline. Clearly, it can be part of terrorism, but it can be other things. So assassination, what you need, you need the killing of a named individual by an organized conspiracy for a political purpose. Once you've got that, you're in the world of assassination. Certainly, from a scholarly point of view, as we know, when we're talking, if we're talking for American audience, they're all kind of legal problems about using the word, because in 1976, by executive order, then President Jen Gerrond Ford and all the subsequent presidents have said that the American state does not, and must not be involved with assassination.

3:05So any kind of American official commentators have to bend themselves out of shape always to say that when we kill people named individuals in an organized fashion for political purposes, we, United States, is not committing assassination. But we don't have to go with that. We can just use the word in a neutral way. So one thing that I found really interesting about the book is that it begins almost and correct me from wrong just after the great age of assassination. And Dave? Yeah, so could we talk a little because whenever I talk about this, I'm always talking about, you know, just even in casual conversation, the transformation or the transition between orders, I forget, I did some early work in my career on the history of terrorism and Carl Heinsen in the 19th century. So I was a bit embedded in this field. And you get, I, correctly, between like 1890 and 1914, there's hundreds of assassinations of European, I was going to say, European aristocrats.

4:08So maybe we could do that as a little bit of a lead up to the Franz Ferdinand assassination and talk about like, why not start in the Fondesect? Why start at World War I? And maybe because what changes then? OK, so I'm well aware of the work on Carl Heinsen because it appears on my reading list for a course on terrorism that I teach leads and I'm aware of it in this point of view. But the answer is, you know, really to cut people like you off at the knees, that essentially the trouble, as I saw it, with talking about assassination is that there's endless clearing of the throat in which, you know, we're back with harmonious and aristogytal and you know, we have Athens or, you know, so you can, you know, you can read the nice, it can be the early modern period. If we want to get on to modern assassination, I think we just need to start in the modern

5:15age. The change is that Carl Franz Ferdinand is a state sponsor of assassination. State is, assassination carried out by a group of Bosnian terrorists, but on behalf of the Serbian state. And by, you know, there's, you know, there's at a time there's some lack of clarity on that. The Austro-Hungarianist can't actually prove the point in 1914, but by 1930, all states been around Europe. No, that was a state sponsor's assassination. And so they have to build this into their thinking. They have to, as part of state craft, they now know that assassination can have a detonator effect. It's not just a few kings and queens and princesses being knocked off. It can actually cause enormous political impact.

6:17And in the terms of the First World War, it leads to the collapse of four empires. So also Hungarian empire collapses, German empire collapses, the Russian empire collapses and the Ottoman empire collapses. So no policy maker in the post-Fort First World War can afford to think of assassination as a bunch of anarchists or small groups. They have to be aware that even if it's not state sponsored, then what they do about assassination can have far-reaching geopolitical consequences. And that's, so that is the modern age of assassination. Modern states, modern assassination, putting it in its former historical context is not entirely relevant to this new age. Hey, proceed heads, Danny here.

7:17I'm excited to tell you about our new sponsor, KozyEarth. If there's one thing you guys know about me, it's that I love sleeping. Anytime day or night, I'm always down for a good sleep. I've actually been hearing about KozyEarth for a while and was stoked to try out their new sheets. And I've got to say they're amazing. I love them. It's like sleeping on a cloud of marshmallows. The sheets are made from viscous, from bamboo, and they're soft and extremely comfortable. I already don't like getting out of bed, and these sheets make it even harder to do that, especially given that Seattle gets pretty cold in the fall and winter. If you're looking for new sheets, I hardly recommend KozyEarth. And the best part is you get to try them out. KozyEarth has a 100 night sleep trial. So for some reason you want to send them back, and frankly, I don't think you will, returns are easy. And of course, KozyEarth stands behind everything they make, so they've got a 10 year warranty. So head to KozyEarth.com and use the code Prestige for up to 20% off. That's code Prestige for up to 20% off home and sleepwear.

8:22And if you see a post-purchase survey, please be sure to mention that you heard about KozyEarth right here. That actually really helps us. Hey Prestigeheads, Danny here. One of our sponsors for today's episode is Vintage, a second hand marketplace app, and we're very happy to have them on board. If you're like me and my family, you've got to closet full of clothes that you never wear anymore. And what's worse, you need that space. Either you want to refresh your wardrobe, or you just feel kind of guilty that all of these great clothes are just sitting there and aren't ever going to be worn. Well, I've got good news for you. This is exactly why Vintage was created. Vintage is a second hand marketplace app that facilitates the process of helping normal people sell their clothes and earn some extra dough in the process. No one likes having clothes that just sit there. So take the opportunity to not only give yourself more space, but give your clothes a new life that they otherwise wouldn't have. And you've got to also understand that Vintage has no seller fees and that the app is totally

9:27free to download. And beyond this, listing items on Vintage is quick and simple. And once an item sells on the marketplace, Vintage creates the prepaid shipping label just for you. So if you're ready to clean out your closet, make some extra money and give your clothes a second life with someone who will love them, download the Vintage app today for free. You'll be able to start selling and again, there's no seller fees, so you keep everything you earn. And the notion being just to put a fine point on it, that it becomes a tool of state craft in a almost systematic sense. And so how does this change after World War I with sort of the conceptual transformation of assassination as it becomes, you know, you use the Viberian monopoly of legitimate violence. So how does that play into what's going on? So the backfavor, you know, kind of when he wrote the essay, Pulse It's a Vacation,

10:351919, is impacting an assassination cauldron, which is post-war Germany. He's specifically in Barve area, which has broken away from Germany at that point. And so he gives this lecture about Pulse It's a Vacation It's Aimed at an individual called Karl Reisen. He's the leader of the Breque-Barve area in Republic. And then Icedner responds, then Icedner is assassinated. It's sort of that Karl Viber is assassinating. When it's revised publication, it's in the aftermath of the collapse of the Barve era in state and Icedner's assassinated. So historically, a lot of it is about assassinating. What sort of Viber is saying in the most famous line is a state is a successful human community which claims the monopoly of a physical violence in a given territory.

11:39So we've got legitimacy, we've got physical violence and we've got borders. Assassins transgress all three. So they undermine legitimacy, they challenge the states monopoly on physical violence and they cross borders. You know, because those borders are incredibly permeable borders. So the state craft element is states might be doing the assassinations, but it's also the states who are responding and it's the response which is in many ways the important things. So statesmen after the First World War knowing the enormous effect an assassination can have, you know, part of their state craft is the response and they know that they will have to respond that these assassinations will occur. And so where they're consciously or unconsciously, sometimes it's consciously, sometimes not,

12:40they adopt a Viberian way of thinking. So again, we're in a very modern age, you know, it's Viberian by large everybody understands the rules of the road, they're new and they're going to have to live with them. Isn't there a tension though between the assassination being so transgressive and it becoming a tool of state craft? How is that reconciled or is it just like in the German drunken politics, it just is accepted the push and pull? So the in terms of assassination aimed at states, it's that, you know, it is a, regardless of what you're saying. So there's a inevitable form of political violence. It's not welcome, but almost ubiquitous because even if we think outside Europe, if we think

13:40about the rest of the world, you know, the, the, the major states are also major empires and empires have a, there's a lot of assassination in various European, indeed, you know, in the US fear as well. There is a change about assassination being a tool of state craft in terms of democratic or at least constitutionally stable states engaging in assassination rhetorically and by a large impractice in the interwar period, the major states don't involve themselves in assassination. But in the late 1913s, both conceptually and practically, they start to accept that the predatory totalitarian states, Italy, Nazi Germany, Soviet Union have this right and that

14:44Western democratic states need the ability to assassinate. And so that's when they start building up capability to do that. Now this is all sub-roser. So it's still conspiratorial even though it's in the state. They don't necessarily either say that they want to do this, but they are definitely building up capability and during the Second World War, Western democratic states definitely involve themselves in the assassination conspiracy, exactly indeed in actual assassinations. This has virtually no effect on the outcome of the Second World War, but it has a huge effect on the history of assassination. So the Second World War affects the assassination more than assassination affects the Second World War definitely. Well, we'll get to that in a second, but before I do, there is that's with intergrade power relations, but there is this notion of colonial management, particularly that the British Empire, so as usual, as we're seeing, as we've seen in our own society and American society

15:47in the last 25 years, things that go abroad oftentimes don't just stay abroad. They come home. But could we talk about a bit British imperial management and assassination in that context? Yeah. So Britain had had an assassination problem from the pre-First World era and it's indicative of the very different responses. In 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire thought the assassination is the heir to their throne was so important they had to attack another sovereign state, Serbia, and that had knock on effects. The British also have assassinations aimed at their leadership or at least at officials in London and in India, Delhi, New Delhi, UK, and the capital of India at a very high level, but they're not going to panic. Their view is that this is the endemic to the situation they find themselves in a period

16:49of situation and you don't want to overreact. So the pre-war and early First World War Prime Minister asked with after an assassination in 1909, says in a public speech, it follows through in policy, we have to accept there are assassination conspiracies aimed against us. I'm not going to see this as the tip of the volcano. These assassinations conspiracies, the people involved are small in number, they're not necessarily representative of greater forces, but they are dangerous because of the violence of their methods. This is dangerous, we can't underestimate it. And so the British response is really a policing and intelligence response is that you build out systems both in Britain and around the world because you're often dealing with diasporas and specifically in India itself that you deal with lots of assassinations, you

17:56deal with them calmly, you find the assassins, you arrest them, you execute the actual assassins, you have prison, the conspirators. But this is a continuing process and it takes the British some 30 years to get on top of assassination in India through these methods. But at those stage do they involve themselves in sort of the destabilising mass violence of their own. They do engage in destabilising mass violence but in India is ready to do with assassinations. The obvious outlier to that is island where they do respond to assassination with mass violence and that's destabilising. It's very destabilising. It is. Yeah, but it's also aberrant.

18:59It's not what the British is doing. So we think about bloody Sunday here in late 1920 the IRA assassinate a number of British intelligence officers who are working on counter terrorism. The response of the British army in the moment is to go to the symbolic centre of Irish republicanism, which is a sports stadium called Croke Park in Dublin, so shooting people. And this is acknowledged fairly quickly as having been a very bad idea. Kelly behind the scenes, what the British do is they actually return to their established strategy of building out their intelligence system. So they rebuild the intelligence system which have been damaged and it had been seriously damaged by the IRA assassinations and start hunting down IRA assassins and the leaders of the IRA with some success in a much more scientific way, which has a big impact on

20:04the fact that the IRA or parts of the IRA and the British come to a settlement in 1920 what and there is a political settlement to the Irish troubles. So kind of the massacre is unusual and doesn't really help, but after the massacre the British authorities regroup and do what they do elsewhere in the empire which is to pursue scientific police work and intelligence work against assassin. What explains that that brief mistake in late 1920 is that just like a motion got the better of them and they quickly. Yeah, it's it's an incredibly emotional situation and so there's a big scholarship as you know about imperial panic. That is the example of imperial panic where your best practices are overridden by the moment

21:08and you cause a lot of damage to yourself. So you do things which are self harming. Yeah and that in many irrational things which are self harming that really is the definition of imperial panic. There is such things as imperial panic but I think the phrase is over you since it was coined. That everything that the imperial states do is imperial panic. But in the British case panic is quite rare and is notable when it happens. The to use another they bearian phrase by and large imperial politics is slow boring on hard boards. And successful empire and Christian empire recognizes this is not to say that the British empire, the Christian periods are nice people. They are not nice people. No, no, no, no, no. I really blown my mind here.

22:12We're a pro-Brakentan podcast. The British are ruthless imperialists but there's a difference between being an effective ruthless imperialist and a panicking ruthless imperialist who in fact damages their own position and you do see this in empire is quite a lot. You don't see it too much in the British empire although the points of imperial panic are easy the ones which are remembered now. Yeah, I mean they were quite stable for quite a long time. So it didn't make sense. All right, let's return to this second world war two moment because I think what you're saying is very consonant with a theme that we have in this podcast and really the origins of Cold War liberalism which to my mind are defined by the embrace of consciously a liberal methods with the basic justifying logic that first the other enemy is going to do it and then second ones we defeat that enemy will return to normal.

23:13And I think the history of the 20th and 21st centuries is that you actually don't return to normal. So this is this is this moment in the second world war. So you had a great phrase before that is assassination didn't have much of an effect in the second world war but the second world war had an effect on assassination. But can we talk about what happened during the war and how this sets the stage for how the North Atlantic world the what what we'll be called the free world in the 1950s begins to think of assassination going forward. It kind of from the late 1930s on which the the bridge first you did this is both other states as well but you know kind of in many ways the the British are in the lead of this. So they're thinking about either sort of irregular warfare and assassination is what they see is one of the techniques of a regular warfare as soon as in some ways before the second world war starts opposed but certainly soon the second world war starts they start building organizations for irregular warfare and within these organizations assassination is regarding

24:23the possibility. And certainly the assassination is quite hard to do if you either in wartime conditions especially if you want to maintain some deniability and you know you can it is hard to do so take some time to do it but but by 1941 and particularly after the Nazis turned on the Soviets and the and the Soviets begin an assassination campaign in Nazi occupied territory the British think we should get in on this act and so the the famous successful in the terms of an assassination was planned from beginning to end and a high profile figure is killed is the assassination of Reinhard Hyderick kind of second of command of the SS effectively various jobs including being ahead of the SS intelligence services is assassinated in Prague by a combined

25:32mission of the Czech intelligence services in exile and Britain and a British organization called the special operations executive so the British parachute them in they quit them they trained them the Czechs provide the assassins they go into Czechs the back year in the beginning of 1942 they're parachuted in from British bomber and then they lay low and they assassinate Reinhard Hyderick in baby 1942 now Reinhard Hyderick is very famous now as the actual architect of the Holocaust you know he's the man who chairs the Vonse conference so nobody now would shed any tears for Reinhard Hyderick so I think we can by and large agree that he was a bad man unfortunately the effects of the assassination are a Nazi massacres but also the essentially the wiping out of the Czech resistance which are being quite effective so operational success definitely

26:36an amazing act of heroism and planning showing that an assassination could be carried out thousands of miles away from where it starts by a democratic state however the British become less enthusiastic about assassination after that because of the effects on regardless particularly positive for the organization carried it out however by this time the British SOE are in close contact with the American OSS which is developing and the British and the Americans combine and so lots of bridge thinking goes into the OSS and the OSS kind of picks up a media of the kind of bridge thinking bridge techniques and adopts it into its own methodology why do you think the Americans were so into assassination at this time well there I mean there are kind of short term and long term answers today if the Americans have

27:41their own assassination tradition there's be it clear which in certain many ways is different from the British but it's not that the Americans come into the Second World War you know say oh we're kind of so innocent you know you know you know the English imperialist of teacher is nothing you tricks it's not that you know but organizationally you know the Americans can pick up many techniques from the British so for instance here's a direct link you know which is well known to people in the film the assassination center of the world in the 1930s is Shanghai and the body which has to deal with those assassinations is so called is called the Shanghai Minister of Police which is an international police force it's largely run by the British but the Americans are you know they also the imperialist in the Shanghai international settlement their members of it

28:45so it's a it's a multinational enclave and the the people who fight assassination in Shanghai then come home when it becomes too dangerous for the the Japanese takeover the best known kind of two SMP officers called Fair Bear and Sikes and they teach their fighting techniques including assassination to the OSS and the SOE so the kind of Fair Bear and Sikes method becomes part of OSS trailing manuals so you can see the these very direct influences of 1930s assassination feeding into the SMP but actually I think you Danny gave the answer initially it is this liberal response totalitarianism and this idea that the guys in white hats sometimes will have to fight dirty

29:52and they can do that we don't kind of perfectly to plumb because they're backing resistance movements against Nazi Germany you know of course it's it yeah it's a good so it enters the bloodstream through that and as you say never really goes away so let's talk about the role of assassination in the Empire's post-war war two yeah as the British Empire the French Empire these are these are going away and as you write in the book it's not so much that assassination change assassination remain much the same but Empire change yeah and the idea being like it it it looks a lot less attractive I think to be assassinated the defense of a dying Empire and then it may have looked exactly prior to this when the empires were still going it's so talk a little bit about how this dynamic I mean the the geopolitical change is as it's well established that both the superpowers I know there were three superpowers and one of those imperial in 1944 William Fox came up with it

30:57but you know Gavin R way of talking the two superpowers the Soviet Union United States are both overtly anti-imperialist and are not going to necessarily help empires as a form of political organization at the same time you know there has always been in these both British French empires and others violent kind of opposition to imperial rule which has often been expressed in terms of assassination a classic form of both protest and destabilization now in in the bridge case certainly in India they've gone on top of that the people who catch the assassination are usually the the new leaders of decolonized countries notably Gandy is assassinated by the same bunch of the British have been fighting in the 1930s by the late 1950s when it's clear that the

32:01major imperial powers are going to cut and run as you say it becomes much less attractive to die in the cause of imperialism then it never been attractive to die but you know it seems utterly pointless by the late 1950s and so you then you definitely do get examples of the kind of imperial panic which there hadn't really been in the 1930s and in the bridge case you you might see with as well reds for these more country but in their their colony of Niasa lands which is now below we the essentially the bridge governor hits the panic button and says I'm going to be assassinated our leadership is going to be assassinated we have to declare martial law he does to declare martial law and then there are series of inquiries after that which established that there

33:06isn't much of an assassination threat that he panicked and that they have a colonial authority massively overreacting and so you start to get examples of that in the by the 1950s so I think what many of our listeners are thinking about is the assassination of JFK really let's turn let's turn to the United United States which this will be good for an hour or so all right so who killed JFK and why no just kidding how did the CIA in particular become this hub of international assassination ideology whatever one might call it on one hand and I don't mean to be glib about it something in my mind is just like you have a bunch of semi insane veterans from world war two gathered high on their own supply of American dominance and they really did do something great in world war two with the defeat of the Nazis in imperial Japan and now they're going

34:10to govern the world and they're going to do whatever the hell it takes and you have like jet bergs everywhere cold the cold bees of the world and we're we're going to do it so let's talk CIA let's talk American assassination first abroad and then let's talk about the big 360s which are JFK MLK and RFK okay so as all listeners I'm sure though the CIA is the direct successor organization of the OSS the OSS is discontinued by President Truman in 1945 and then an organization called the Central Intelligence Agency is re-created under statute in 1947 but there are a number of traditions which go into the to the new CIA the first thing to say is that CIA as created is not really a special forces you know covert operations you know is it is it is an intelligence

35:11analysis and to an extent intelligence gathering that's what it's supposed to be and the covert bit of the CIA isn't even under the control of the director of the CIA you know it's been run from the State Department you know by George Kenner and who wants to fight the Cold War so we have so we have the fighting the Cold War we have people who have been involved in the OSS and that we also have what might call the Latin American south of the border tradition which in some ways comes in from the FBI which parts of which are integrated into the new CIA so the the the hot spots for assassination in Latin America had been Mexico Cuba and Puerto Rico you so the Americans got plenty of experience of a kind of assassination destabilizing regimes

36:15sometimes regimes that they're trying to support in Latin America so you you have those traditions there and it really comes together under fighting the Cold War doing you know the Soviets you know their assassination you know kind of organization special tasks under various you know controllers you know had survived you know had been there they vetted in the 1920s been there throughout the 1930s and gone through the 1940s and continues all the way through but has a particularly rich period in the in the 1950s so it's going on already and so these things come together initially it's all focused on you know kind of on Latin America from 54 onwards but also the Middle East 53 rainy coup which isn't assassin nation but it involves as assassination plans

37:17again in the Middle East they're doing it with the British in Latin America is all by themselves so the Americans are indeed trying to find resistance groups who will assassinate leftist leaning that in American central and American leaders and so they're at it to quite happily so that's you know carried and in 1961 the CIA creates a specific assassination organization say all these bits and pieces that put together organization near the 1960s Hey procedure's Danny here I'm excited to tell you about our new sponsor Kozy Earth if there's one thing you guys know about me it's that I love sleeping anytime day or night I'm always down for a good sleep I've actually been hearing about Kozy Earth for a while and was stoked to try out their new sheets and I've got to say they're amazing I love them it's like sleeping

38:17on a cloud of marshmallows the sheets are made from viscous from bamboo and they're soft and extremely comfortable I already don't like getting out of bed and these sheets make it even harder to do that especially given that Seattle gets pretty cold in the fall and winter if you're looking for new sheets I hardly recommend Kozy Earth and the best part is you get to try them out Kozy Earth has a 100 night sleep trial so for some reason you want to send them back and frankly I don't think you will returns are easy and of course Kozy Earth stands behind everything they make so they've got a 10 year warranty so head to kozyearth.com and use the code prestige for up to 20% off that's code prestige for up to 20% off home and sleepwear and if you see a post purchase survey please be sure to mention that you heard about Kozy Earth right here that actually really helps us. Hey prestige heads Danny here one of our sponsors for today's episode is vented a second hand marketplace

39:18app and we're very happy to have them on board if you're like me and my family you've got to closet full of clothes that you never wear anymore and what's worse you need that space either you want to refresh your wardrobe or you just feel kind of guilty that all of these great clothes are just sitting there and aren't ever going to be worn well I've got good news for you this is exactly why vented was created vented is a second hand marketplace app that facilitates the process of helping normal people sell their clothes and earn some extra dough in the process no one likes having clothes that just sit there so take the opportunity to not only give yourself more space but give your clothes a new life that they otherwise wouldn't have and you've got to also understand that vented has no seller fees and that the app is totally free to download and beyond this listing items on vented is quick and simple and once an item sells on the marketplace vented creates the prepaid

40:19shipping label just for you so if you're ready to clean out your closet make some extra money and give your clothes a second life with someone who will love them download the vented app today for free you'll be able to start selling and again there's no seller fees so you keep everything you earn so a couple of questions was the notion that you assassinate a leader I mean this is also relevant to what just went on with the dooro is the notion that you assassinate a leader and then the government falls you assassinate a leader and then you install someone friendly to the united states is it is it like that simple it seems like a rather unsophisticated understanding of how government is pretty unsophisticated the kind of it with regard to Guatemala the the CIA right there first assassination manual in 1952 which is yeah kind of available in the CIA or guys you want to read it I mean it's not a sophisticated document although they you know some of it is quite interesting

41:25and they should perhaps have played more attention but what it will tell you is that the best assassinations are where you if you throw somebody from a tall building onto a hard surface and there's all kind of diagram showing you know kind of how high it's going to be and how hard the surface you know that's great yeah this is probably you know this is the ultimate plausible assassination now there are very few assassinations which are carried out like that but yeah as a breeding ground for paranoia to this day if every time somebody has a fall you think it's an assassination but the the the best way to carry out the yeah the the thing that professionals do if in this era if they want to assassinate someone you have to get within about three yards or so and shoot them repeatedly in the head you know assassinations using bombs tend to kill lots of people but often miss the intended target sni-cri-falls yeah much beloved of certain CIA you know kind of

42:32of you know it's very hard to do a sni-cri-d to get close to them and kill them and so the assassinations of the 1960s the ones which they're serious about is get a resistance organization provide them with some decent usually automatic weapons you know they'll get close to the leading you want to overthrow they'll kill him and then you know they'll be a military coup and so whether that's quite a mile a Dominican Republic Vietnam yeah that's essentially the method of that you don't do it yourself you'll be a training bit of supply you know sort of you know that that's how you're going to do that however that is going to you know kind of have quite a lot publicity you can't keep that entirely secret you can keep your mainly secret but you know bits of that are going to leak and they're going to be picked up by novelists journalists

43:32act to this you know your former employees if they become disgruntled mafioso famously the keeping case you sort of the mafio might uh yeah which is a real thing absolutely a real thing you mafia yeah kind of the idea that they'll kill castrate so the heat of assassination is going to be much greater than the actuality yes it's going on it's a technique sometimes it works in the verticombers in the sense that somebody dies sometimes it doesn't but it is going to create a fee-brother atmosphere which is certainly as what has happened by the late that by the early 1960s both on JFK is assassinated maybe we could talk a little bit about the the other parts of the US government here that are pushing assassination as policy as you said this the CIA handbook like the person who wrote it seems a lot more interested in like which

44:33gun is the best one to do yeah yeah yeah yeah or how it is the building have to be that you're shoving this guy off of the killing yeah like it's it's it's a very technical document that doesn't seem to want to reckon with any of the potential ramifications of carrying out a policy of assassinated as you get like the state department really pushing out of the political aspects of this or other you know parts of the government so one of the oversimplifications of the post war and this isn't just America it is any state you know kind of sophisticated democratic if not democratic we'll talk about democratic states they have multiple agencies you know kind of in their bureaucratic states they're very big again if you like they're they're very bureaucratic states they have multiple the British have multiple age intelligence agencies the Americans have multiple intelligence agencies they have multiple armed forces you know they have various bits of the state doing diplomacy so you'll never and what this is you you're meant to build Colby who is

45:39who is later involved in Vietnam we were very large assassination program but he said was you when he's that DCI he said well of course the CIA wasn't involved with it well no because it you know he was secondited to another agency there's always you know it's always even when I was talking about the second world war and hydric you know that was a combination of their experienced British agencies and a Czech agency it's there's always multiple plays it's never just the CIA and yeah in in the early 1960s you know the department of defense is say you see IAO useless we want to take over assassination of all we're much better and so so you know kind of we're we'll take it from here guys and so you have the continuation of the the CIA operations but you also have depart the defense operations and yeah these are not rogue operations that's important the none of this is rogue you know this is all you know all coming from people it's coming

46:46from the Secretary of State and the President I mean they're not necessarily doing the operational details but they know exactly what's going on you know they've created the environment they want people to get on with it and get some results are there assassins like who is doing the assassination so it's mostly just careers Oliver North type figures funneling exo Guatemalan resistance movements or you know the Vietnamese generals who took out zm in late November 63 or are there actual trained assassins in the American government there are people that they call trained assassins who specialize in and we see the documents for that if you want you know correctional historical documents were to be released is a Fr. Chilli 1970 when you know Cub Nixon is thinking of a you know kind of what there's told the CIA he wants a coup you know he

47:52prefer it if the the their the the constitutional authorities would prevent a left wing take over but if not we did plan B and plan B is a series of assassinations much other things it's documented that you know the the the the CIA and this is true of other cases sent in covert operatives who who would specialize in assassination you know to help trade and supply and organize the coup plotters to to carry out assassinations however it should be noted that on very few occasions does anyone need the CIA's training because the people that they are dealing with for instance Latin American militaries at least in militaries however you know kill people a lot you know they you know they they they are not strangers to assassination they do not need a Yankee to come and tell them how to put a pistol against a man's head and pull the trigger you know it's sort of

49:00either it's sort of one feels that many of the people that American intelligence deals with are looking at least for sub-rosal legitimization it's not that they couldn't do these things themselves but by getting America's hands dirty they feel that there is some corporeal guarantee that the Americans will back them politically that it's not just all words if if if American individuals or American equipment or American money has been involved then that's that's a token of reality rather than just being all words all right so we can't move beyond the JFK it was funny I was I was talking to some fellow historians and they're like at this point like I don't think Oswald did it alone I think it's interestingly becoming consensus amongst younger historians that there's enough smoke there that it's unlikely that

50:02there's fire it's such a strange story so someone who's actually studied assassinations um I'm just what do you think about the JFK thing I mean and these are like professional sober historians yeah I agree it's one when you dig into it you're like what is going on here and then plus plus there's the forestal strange death in the late 40s in the mind there's like which is out of going out of a window you know the vote is Jimmy forestal who I've written about in a different book you know had had a mental breakdown and was being you know in a hospital you know because of that mental breakdown the cool he committed suicide by jumping out of a window but if you if you're writing a manual saying well throwing people out of windows is a good way of assassinating them every kind of defeneration whether it be self-defendantialational so JFK

51:04there is an enormous amount but smoke however that doesn't and if you're looking for a conspiracy in which a small group of you know supporters of Lee Harvey Oswald helped him and indeed you know kind of if if if you if you go on to MLK that you know because that's probably you know so there is technically a conspiracy probably it's not a lone gunman although there's only one gunman uh but that doesn't make it you know sort of anything more than that the what the CIA are trying to cover up in the JFK assassination is a fantastic intelligence operation they had going with the Mexican secret service against the Soviets so essentially the Mexicans had fully bugged

52:08communications from the Soviets in Mexico City and the CIA are getting the life feet that's much more important and you know there's Oswald stuff in that life but that's much more important than than the assassination the assassination of JFK doesn't last very long he shot in Dallas the Soviets send a very high level uh uh presidium member to his funeral he tells the American government look we didn't do it they believe him that's the end of it as an international crisis everything else is just you know so yeah can is there an assassination conspiracy i a few people round Oswald this is my dear yes are there a series of assassination conspiracies not to assassinate JFK about that assassination more generally which he gets intertwined with yes most definitely but you know as an assassination it's actually pretty

53:12simple you know kind of and you know a guy can shoot a rifle gets lucky hits the president you know we've seen them with rifles you know kind of quite recently shooting people usually they miss luckily it's not a good way of doing it but anyway he gets lucky and and then it then it you know kind of as an international crisis it's nothing as a touchstone of American culture and politics well it becomes a great deal that would be my yeah so so i mean it's also because the boomers were children and they dominated American culture for a decade so you don't think Clinton Clinton administration is most obviously you know but not just them i just you know obsessed with it and you know as you know congress power is part of this legislation about releasing the files most of them have been released great great archive you know thank you national archives

54:16for your digital you know i've said i think i read it but if i didn't write it i've said it many times either you know the JFK archive which has been released by the national archives is fantastic if you want to study assassination it's completely useless if you have some kind of Kennedy you know it's it's great on everything you know as a release of classified documentation except if you want to prove some point about Kennedy she isn't really there so just final thing on that you don't think there's any like JFK CIA thing going on there post Bay of pigs and the cleansing of the intelligence I've got a right there so there's definitely a JFK CIA thing of hostility between the president and as I've said you know the president is bringing in let's say hey department of defense would you like to assassinate Castro you know so so you know there's plenty of

55:20before his death DMs him get over you know which is a CIA AD military coup so there's plenty of this stuff going on there's there's so much smoke it's kind of bellowing out of every aura of this but that doesn't mean that either an official you know it's not Dick Helms or or Eddie kind of disgruntled you know CIA octets say oh we're going to assassinate you know you can no JFK is assassinated by a committed communist trained by the US military and longing to emigrate to the so that you get where he'd once lived so let's talk about the mid 70s it's in 76 I believe we're afford basically outlaws assassination coming in the wake of the church committee so what's happening at that moment and how does the history of assassination proceed from that okay so the

56:21as you know there are a number of investigations the church committee is the Senate investigation there's a House of Representatives investigation there is also president the Rockefeller Commission these things are either published church or they are heavily boudalorized House of Representatives and Rockefeller but you know can then leaked and they will say the same thing that between oh 1950 broadly and 1970 really early 1970s United States definitely is in the assassination business that kind of they also realize the United States isn't very good at assassination you know kind of there are lots of plots which don't get you know kind of a lot of it is about plots which according to these commissions what usually happens is the CIA or another American agency plots

57:23of assassination and then somebody else does it you know kind of so it's but anyway it's a thing it's out there there's huge amounts of documents you can't ignore them and this is all based or a lot of the documentation is based on the CIA's own investigations of itself internally the late 1960s because by the late 1960s so much information is leaking that they and they even believe one of the leakers is the former head of their assassination unit from Maccall Bill Harvard so they're investigating themselves so so the investigation has been done by the time these you know congressional and presidential investigators get there so the story is out there and you know Ford you know kind of in the you know he's taken over Nixon you know obviously his political fortunes don't seem to

58:24be going very well deals that he has to make a gesture and so the executive order is a sort of for public relations exercise because you can't say that America hasn't been involved in assassination we're saying yeah can we okay we you know sort of let's let by God's way by God's it's fine we're not going to do it in the future right let's move on let's stop talking about it please not that anybody does stop talking about it but it's a domestic political stop if you like but assassination in that decade remains very much a life political issue oh yeah so what what is happening as Ford is declaring the US will never assassinate what is a political assassination yeah other economic and cultural assassination those are fine yeah the US is never assassinated anybody since then it's we've all lived happily ever after yeah well I mean what you do is you just you they kind of need to redefine assassination and and put certain you know kind of but what is going on is that these investigations so the

59:32the Congressional inquiry into assassination of 1978 is the most expensive Congressional which is JFK and MLK. It's the most expensive congressional investigation of the of the 20th century you know it's sort of and you know kind of by these 14 volumes it runs to our the image all freely available you know so they're you know there's just an enormous amount out there so yeah you know kind of the Americans the Americans state can't run away from it even if the late 1970s isn't it's you know it's for various reasons isn't it so in peak assassination period you know other people are stepping into the breach there and so maybe just take a we've kept you a while but what happens in the 80s and the 90s in terms of the United States's

1:00:34relationship to assassination and where do we find ourselves today in the 21st century right I've got a question you know can that's a bit like a Colombo question is just one more thing right let's get let's get yeah let's get to the beat a bit so it's not just the United States there is a world revolution in how assassinations are dealt with in the 1980s and I would say the two one attempted one an actual assassination which brings you know kind of crystallizes things which would be in happening around the world are the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher and then a few weeks afterwards the actual assassination of the Indian Prime Minister in dear Ugandy so here we have the world's two most famous female leaders and they get a lot more attain not only is kind of Britain a country which the Americans take a lot of interest in but

1:01:36India is the world's biggest democracy and is geopolitically vital to to the West better now and so kind of all democracies or with some very small exceptions start building systems which rather like the system that the Americans had built after Bobby Kennedy's assassination so kind of taking intelligence agencies taking counter assassination seriously but more specifically specialist organizations to create a ring of protection against what the Indians call them I think it's a very useful kind of a sociopolitical term very very important people so from the 1980s it's possible to say you can tell if somebody is important because they have protection it's very simple

1:02:36if you go into a room from the 1980s but it's still the case today I can tell you if you don't have state provided protection you're not important you are not a player that's why so many people want it and in the British case it might should see in America so that's why Prince Harry who is a for your listeners they don't know is a minor British royal currently living in united stones and he wants he wants the British state to provide his protection he doesn't need it for practical purposes he you know he can get a product protection is fine you know Taylor Swift has got a great protection I'm sure I don't know about Miss Swift's or Mrs Kelsie's actual arrangements but I'm actually sure they're fine but it's not you know kind of he's not part of the political and you know kind of Prince Harry wants to be important so he's but you know he got a security

1:03:40review which has just been put on hold because Britain currently has nine living prime ministers former prime ministers the most ever you know kind of we've had a fast turnover in prime ministers and they're not dying as young as they used to so you know the British state has got money their import yeah their import ex prime ministers import ex heads of government but there's ever expanding state it kind of is integrated so always security systems the Americans and the British and the Indians and all of the Germans and the British they all talk to each other they all know each other's techniques you know that's like organizational differences but essentially it's a transnational community of security which has was created in the 1980s and keeps Greg Greg so most recently I know Derek you kind of you kind of you keep your eyes on you know kind of up to date stuff through the newsletter but you know kind of you kind of July now you know it's the supreme court

1:04:48of the United States you know they're unhappy with their security so they're doubling you know kind of the supreme's of course security service and they're getting rid of the US Marshall service you know because you know that's not good enough to the supreme court they you know kind of if you you can't be important without this protection it's a signifier it's not just practical although there are very practical reasons where you might want it but you know it defines the political elite state protection you're a member of the political elite no state protection you're not a member of the political elite so this is true of the entire western world and I would argue that this would this defines the current aid to the assassination which began in the 1980s it's assassination security of course you know it's sort of modern states have from 2000 onwards have massively

1:05:49increased their potential technological potential to assassinate people this is usually you know it's sort of under the heading of drones but drones aren't really the important bit what you need is a massive intelligence system human yes but signals image intelligence geospatial intelligence you know the US intelligence community I currently I believe has 18 separate agencies yeah most of whom will have some input into assassination the US federal protective community less famous than the intelligence community has over a hundred agencies you know kind of just in the US federal government protecting people so yes there's been a massive increase in capability and under Barack Obama if we're talking about the American case a farmer wanted to regularize what he would call targeted killing having got his lawyers to say it's not assassination

1:06:52so you can sign the the executive order but he regularize this and he starts talking about it and again as you will you know you know you know you know it will be following you know every so often you get a boring press release from a US military command usually sent caught saying yes we've just killed a leader of ISIS so the most the two most recent ones where there's what in Nigeria I think in May and there's one being one in July in Syria so this goes on you know the US kills people individuals for political reasons and just announces it you know nobody takes any notice it just happens but the the book ends death order ends kind of I finished writing it in the end of 2024 but it's a deal I keep abreast of things and I'm going to stick by my conclusion is that the ability

1:07:52of Western democratic states to assassinate people in considerable numbers with very high tech methods tends to limit their strategic imagination and we can see this in Iran so Donald Trump said you know there's been regime change you know we killed them all and yeah by and large you know kind of the United States and Israel did kill you know starting with a stream leader and working downwards however that has not solved their Iran problem you did because what's happened is it Iran turns us how the decentralized leadership is is very aware assassination because it it carries it out so much and so the people now in charge of Iran are people who are very used to assassination carrying it out and being potential targets

1:08:55and have devised you know kind of a god awful state which is very good at you know kind of dealing with assassination both dealing it out and taking it and and so more assassination isn't your your answer you can't answer the question you you have to find some other military if you're if you're the government of the United States we thankfully do not have to find the answers to this is that you have you have to find some answer which isn't more assassination because yeah you've got all the the technique you can do it yeah kind of it you know sort of it's a well loyal machine a killing machine you know kind of that's what Stanley McRistle said I have built a killing machine for the US government and you're right it's been there since about two thousand sublets very good just it won't solve strategic problems well for for status reasons I've been

1:09:55petitioning this secret service to assign me a protected detail but I can't see you have to work up you know it's there are over over a hundred you know kind of members of the you know the the the the federal protective community and so okay so I just started a lower level all right I get it so it's good advice hey Rick Kissinger for instance you know kind of was absolutely unwilling to have state you know kind of there is a you know kind of a state department for pleasure and he was utterly unwilling to have that uh when he became uh secretary of state because he wanted you know his secret service detail because he knew so so many ways the most important achievement of Henry Kissinger's tenure a secretary of state was keeping his secret service protective detail which he spent quite as much time on as you know trying to get the US involved

1:11:01in a covert war and anger for instance so it sounds like assassination doesn't work but it's here to stay if there's another yeah there's a more apt description of the American empire I know one move in mind but uh assignment thank you so much for joining us everyone check out the book link in the show notes we'd love to have you back again thank you so much great be here thank you very much oh mr president my company formed the explosion on our rea on October 2 causing massive water displacement and triggering the tsunami they all heat the blame all me tom cruise is digger donner center this mess and digger is gonna dig us out

1:12:03something director of bird man and the revenant what would happen if I stop with great power comes great deniability i'm not the earth daddy digger see the tree long on only in the years of tober second rated R under 1790 without parent is polo tequila it arrives in a cloud of feathers with a cry to wake the dead is polo tequila balanced delicious perfect for nights out nights in and people who like to drink tequila just add ice lime and your mouth then hold on time 100% a coffee 0% ego is polo tequila for a real margarita ride the rooster is polo tequila 40% alcohol by volume 80 proof copyright 2026 compel the american you'll be or drink responsibly