Word: covertly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cautious when it comes to coups that may lead to assassination." In fact, the CIA has procedures for high-level review of operations that could violate the ban. And yet a clear distinction between coups and assassinations is not always possible. The ban was not originally meant to restrict covert political-action operations at all, recalls Helms. "A coup d'etat seems to be confused by some people with an immaculate conception," he says. "Coups involve violence, blood and killing, and they often go in unpredictable directions." That is precisely why the risk of assassination and U.S. national interest must...
...assassination goes back to President Ford in 1976. It followed the mid-1970s revelations about CIA covert attempts on the life of Fidel Castro and similar pranks, and is a distant echo of the reactions to the assassination of President Kennedy. But there is nothing in the order limiting the ban to covert action or to attempts on heads of state. It simply forbids "assassination." What is assassination? If the word just means killing someone, anyone, for political reasons, then it effectively bans the use of -- or even conspiracy to use -- lethal force. That would make America the first pacifist...
...dispatch American troops to snatch the dictator and spirit him back to the U.S., where he is wanted on drug-trafficking charges. The White House in turn scolded Congress for trying to micromanage a fast-moving crisis and for hypocritically turning hawkish after earlier rejecting Administration plans for covert action against the strongman. There is plenty of blame to go around...
...galvanized the troupe into some sharp political satire on the '88 campaign. In one inspired sketch during the Iran-contra affair, President Reagan (ah, that's Phil Hartman) puts on his familiar bumbling act in public, then turns into a whipcracking boss in private, directing every detail of the covert operation, down to computing interest on the money stored in Swiss bank accounts. The show's movie parodies have also had some shrewd twists: Carvey, for example, playing Dustin Hoffman's autistic savant in Rain Man -- who turns out to be giving gambling tips to Pete Rose...
Unfortunately, things go wrong, and word leaks out about the covert action. With the election months away, the administration panics and decides to cut its losses, covering up the operation and abandoning its para-military groups deep in the Columbian jungle. Sound really, really familiar...