ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Assassinationand Ronald Reagan were all targets of unsuccessful assassinationattempts.The roster of political murders in the twentieth centuryis lengthy. The assassination of Austrian ArchdukeFrancis Ferdinand in 1914 precipitated World War I, andthe attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler by his generals30 years later very nearly ended World War II. Not onlyMohandas K. Gandhi in 1948, but Indian Prime MinisterIndira Gandhi (no relation) in 1984, and her son andsuccessor, Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, fell victim to assassins’bullets. Leaders on both sides in the Middle East havebeen killed by assassins: King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951,President Anwar Sadat of Eygpt in 1981, and Israeli PrimeMinister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Interestingly, each of theseleaders was killed by extremists on their own politicalside. On the other hand, extremist leaders are as likely asany to become targets of assassins. Senator Huey Long ofLouisiana in the 1930s, and Malcolm X 30 years later, bothfell to assassins’ bullets. So too did George LincolnRockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, and PimFortuyn, founder of a radical anti-immigrant party thatstunned the Dutch electorate by finishing second in the2002 parliamentary elections.Targets of assassination are not necessarily nationalleaders, formal office-holders, or even political leaders.When a Turkish assassin attempted to shoot Pope JohnPaul II in 1981, it was clearly a political act even though thepope is not a political leader per se. Martin Luther King andRobert Kennedy, both assassinated in 1968, were politicalleaders, but King held no formal office and Kennedy,although he was a senator and presidential candidate,symbolized a larger cultural atmosphere of optimism andactivism. Furthermore, his status as John F. Kennedy’sbrother added greatly to the symbolic impact of the event.Assassination by StealthMany of the assassinations mentioned in the precedingparagraphs were public acts, committed in crowded areaswhere the loud crack of a fired gun served as a signal of amurder in progress. Assassination committed by modernsecurity organizations and other government-controlledresponse teams, however, is of a quite different nature.Indeed, assassination, whether undertaken by governments,nongovernmental organizations, or individuals actingalone, is most effective when performed in stealth.Such was the case with an act of political murder thatoccurred at the outset of the modern era, during theFrench Revolution. As depicted in a famous painting byJacques-Louis David, the radical leader Jean-Paul Maratwas in one of the most vulnerable places—his bath—whenyoung Charlotte Corday, a supporter of the oppositionGirondists, caught up with him on the night of July 13,1793. Corday entered Marat’s private chambers under thepretense of being a journalist there to conduct an interview.More than two centuries later, the Muslim terroristorganization al-Qaeda used exactly the same pretext togain an audience with Ahmad Shah Massoud. The leaderEncyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Securityof the rebels in the Northern Alliance, and widely regardedas the most popular opposition figure in Afghanistan,Massoud posed the principal threat to the rulingTaliban, who provided asylum to al-Qaeda and its leader,Osama bin Laden. Two Arab al-Qaeda operatives, posingas journalists with a camera, met with Massoud in privateon September 9, 2001—just two days before al-Qaedalaunched its infamous terrorist attacks on the United States.As the interview began, their “camera” exploded, killingboth Massoud and the two assassins.SMERSH and Trotsky. An excellent example of stealth assassinationundertaken by operatives working for a moderngovernment was the assassination of Leon Trotsky inMexico City in 1940. Trotsky had long been a rival of JosefStalin, who recognized that Trotsky’s role in launching theBolshevik takoever of Russia alongside V. I. Lenin gavehim much greater revolutionary legitimacy. Stalin hadTrotsky exiled, but still wanted him dead. For more than adecade, agents of SMERSH (SMERrt SHpionam or “Deathto Spies”), the KGB assassination team, tracked him.The individual who finally gained Trotsky’s confidencewas Ramón Mercader, whom Trotsky granted aprivate interview. Unbeknownst to Trotsky, however,Mercader had been recruited by SMERSH in Spain duringits civil war. Using the cover identity of Jacques Mornard,a French journalist, Mercader had gradually worked hisway into Trotsky’s inner circle, in part by seducing anAmerican named Sylvia Agelof, who had close connectionsto the radical leader.Mercader worked patiently, meeting Trotsky on severaloccasions before mentioning that he had written apaper on Trotsky’s political philosophies, and wished tohave the master himself read it. Undoubtedly flattered,Trotsky agreed to meet with him on August 20, 1940. Onthe appointed day, Mercader arrived bearing the putativemanuscript—which was actually gibberish—along withthe concealed tool necessary for his mission: a 13-inchdagger, a pistol, and an Alpine mountain climber’s ice ax.After Trotsky began to read the manuscript and realizedthat it was only a prop, he looked up at his guest, whereuponMercader split his skull with the ice ax. Trotsky didnot immediately die, and prevented his bodyguards fromkilling Mercador because “He has a tale to tell.” Within 24hours, Trotsky was dead in a hospital room, and JacquesMercador was in the custody of police. Mercador maintainedhis false identity as Mornard throughout his trial,where he claimed that he had killed because he wasjealous that Sylvia had an intimate relationship with Trotsky.Sentenced in 1943, Mercador served 17 years in aMexican prison. After his release, he went first to Pragueand then to Moscow, where the Kremlin awarded him theOrder of the Soviet Union.Wrath of God and ”Black September.“ Another instructiveexample of a government undertaking a careful and calculatedplan of assassination is that of Israel in response to61