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Home Front
Calls for end of ban on assassinations
2001-09-16
  • WASHINGTON (AFP) - Calls for an end to a 25-year-old US ban on assassinations grew here Sunday as officials said they were seeking sweeping changes to regulations governing military and intelligence operations in the wake of last week's terrorist strikes. With President George W. Bush ordering the country on a war footing to combat terrorism, officials and lawmakers said they believed US counterterrorism efforts were being hindered by burdensome restrictions that could have resulted in the September 11 strikes not being stopped.

    Attorney General John Ashcroft said the Justice Department would this week ask Congress for expanded powers to detain non-US citizens, intercept telephone communications and trace laundered money. "We need to upgrade and strengthen a number of laws," Ashcroft said, sketching out changes Washington wants to use against the prime suspect in the strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Osama bin Laden, and prosecute a wider war on terrorism in general. Ashcroft refused, however, to discuss a possible and highly controversial reversal of the ban on assassinations, but Secretary of State Colin Powell said "everything" -- including former president Gerald Ford's 1976 decision to forbid US personnel from killing foreign leaders -- would be reviewed.
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

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