Assassination, according to Franklin L. Ford, "is the intentional killing of a specified victim or group of victims, perpetrated for a reason related to his (her, their) public prominence and undertaken with a political purpose in view." It is usually an answer to an alleged political crime, the latter being generally defined as an offense by which the criminal betrays his allegiance to principles or persons that bind the political order, or by which the criminal challenges or hinders the political authority.

Early modern societies were predominantly Christian, thus it might seem strange to find so many instances of assassination during that time. After all, murder is prohibited under divine, and humane, law. But there were religious motives behind many of these killings. Assassinations were partly justified by arguments taken from the Old Testament, in which many kings accused of tyranny were killed: Eglon, Absalom, Joram, Holophernes, to name a few. Works of famous Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, and medieval theologians, such as John of Salisbury or Thomas Aquinas, were also used to vindicate political murders.

It would be an exaggeration to say that every assassination that occurred during 1450–1789 was religiously motivated. For instance, in 1483 in the last stages of the War of the Roses, Richard Duke of Gloucester murdered the twelve-year-old Edward V and his younger brother and was himself crowned Richard III. In 1762, Tsar Peter III was killed, which allowed his wife Catherine to come to power. But more often than not, from 1500 to 1650, when the mortality rate among political leaders was very high, religion played a central role in the events.

During the era of religious wars, many theorists from both sides alleged that a prince who embraced a false religion forfeited his subjects' allegiance. According to the radical George Buchanan, when war was declared between a ruler and his people in such a manner, everybody has the right to kill the enemy. Early in the fifteenth century, the French theologian Jean Petit said that it was "lawful for any subject, without any order or command, according to moral, divine, and natural law, to kill or cause to be killed a traitor and disloyal tyrant." Catholics—one of them a monk—stabbed to death two French kings, Henry III in 1589 and Henry IV in 1610, because they thought the kings were secretly working for the victory of the Protestant cause. In 1634, sectarian hatreds also played a role in the assassination of Albrecht von Wallenstein, a Protestant turned Catholic who had become the supreme commander of the imperial forces during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). His reluctance to implement religious measures designed to strengthen the grip of Catholicism in Germany created some suspicions. Convinced of his treason, the emperor Ferdinand II ordered that he be caught dead or alive. On the night of 25 February 1634, von Wallenstein was stabbed to death, along with his closest collaborators.

The early modern political scene was therefore quite violent, especially in comparison to the medieval period, when Christians made every effort to control political violence. Religion was no longer used to forbid assassination. On the contrary, it became an excuse to murder. Popes celebrated the deaths of Protestant princes such as William the Silent, who was killed in 1584 in Holland. Jesuit theologians such as Juan de Mariana and Francisco Suárez wrote texts in which they defended tyrannicide. Protestant leaders like John Calvin and Elizabeth I also resorted to violence when they wanted to be rid of an enemy. The years 1500–1650 witnessed a great number of civil wars. The end of these wars and the consolidation of states meant that, generally speaking, Damocles' swords were no longer lingering over the princes' head. This quiet came to an end with the revolutionary era of the 1790s.

Bibliography

Ford, F. L. Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism. Cambridge, Mass., 1985.

Minois, G. Le couteau et le poison: L'assassinat politique en Europe (1400–1800). Paris, 1997.

Mousnier, R. The Assassination of Henry IV. London, 1973.

—MICHEL DE WAELE

Intelligence Encyclopedia: Assassination

Assassination is a sudden, usually unexpected act of murder committed for impersonal reasons, typically with a political or military leader as its target. Although assassination gained its name from that of a fanatical Near Eastern sect in the Middle Ages, the practice of assassination goes back to ancient times, and extends to the present day. At one time, the most widely used tool for assassination was a knife or dagger, whereas modern assassinations more often use guns or bombs, while poisons have long been a means of political killing.

Assassination in History

The first significant assassination victim was probably the Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhet I, who established the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty in 1986 B.C. Amenemhet gained his power by an act of usurpation, thus perhaps setting an example for a group of courtiers who conspired in his killing. Six centuries later, Horemhab, a general who competed with the grand vizier Aya for the hand of Tutankhamen's widow (and hence for the political legitimacy to be gained by marrying a queen), was likewise a victim of assassination—in this case, by his rival.

The list of assassination victims in ancient times is far too long to recount in detail. Roman history alone is studded with acts of murder. Long before and after the most famous assassination in Rome's history—that of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.—the dagger proved a far more common instrument of political change than the ballot. The assassination of Domitian in A.D. 96, and that of Commodus in 192, serve as virtual bookends to the golden age of the empire, after which the western portion fell into a slow, but steady decline. During the half-century that began in 235, no fewer than 20 men held and lost the seat of Roman power, more often than not at the hands of assassins.

Assassination plots, or rumors of them, have sometimes had the effect of neutralizing a ruler indirectly. Some of the greatest and most despicable men of ancient times—Hannibal on the one hand, and Nero on the other—killed themselves rather than let assassins do the job. And Chandragupta, founder of the Mauryan empire of India in the third century, feared assassination so much that in 301 he left his throne, joined the Jain sect, and later died of starvation.

On the other hand, rulers secure in their power usually dealt severely with would-be assassins. Such is the case with the ruthless Prince Cheng of China's Ch'in state during the third century B.C. Many people wanted the tyrant Cheng dead, and the crown prince of the rival Yan kingdom set in motion assassination plans. It was a mark of the terror Cheng commanded that the king of Yan killed his own crown prince in the hope that it would please the Ch'in ruler. Although history does not record Cheng's response to this favor, the event marks one of those junctures in which assassination could or would have altered history: Cheng went on to unite China, which today still bears the name of his dynasty, commenced the building of the Great Wall, and established an empire that would continue for more than two thousand years.

The cult of the Assassins. Assassinations continued throughout the Middle Ages in western Europe and the Byzantine empire, as well as in the Muslim caliphates. It was in the Islamic world, in fact, that the first true assassins appeared on the stage. The Crusades created the political framework in which the cult of the Assassins, led by the Iranian Ismaili Hassan-i-Sabah, gained their infamous reputation, but Hassan founded the sect in 1090, a decade before the first crusaders arrived in the Holy Land, and throughout their existence, the Assassins were more apt to target Seljuk Turkish leaders than Christian invaders.

Two centuries later, Marco Polo, known for his tendency to weave fantastic tales, created a legend still believed by many today. According to Marco, Assassin leaders would ensure their men's loyalty by drugging them and taking them to a garden where they could enjoy all manner of earthly delights—pleasures which, they were told, would await them in the afterlife if they died on the field of battle. Contemporary Ismaili sources, however, contain no mention of the "Garden of Paradise." On the other hand, it is true that the word assassin comes from hashshash, or "one who chews hashish"—a reference to the Assassins' use of the drug.

Hassan was known as the "Old Man of the Mountain," a title that passed to each successive Assassin leader. Operating from a castle in a valley stronghold, the Assassins conducted acts of terrorism and political killing throughout the Muslim world, but particularly in Iran and Iraq. Because the Seljuks happened to be in power at that time, they were the primary target, and all attempts to uproot the Assassins proved fruitless. During the Crusades, Assassins in Syria terrorized both Turks and Christians, but combined attacks by the Mongols and Mamluks in the mid-1200s brought about the end of the sect.

Assassination in modern times. If the roster of ancient and medieval leaders killed by assassins was too lengthy to recount in any detail, such is true many times over where the modern world is concerned. Abraham Lincoln in 1865 became the first American president killed by an assassin's bullet, followed by three others: James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, and John F. Kennedy in 1963. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan were all targets of unsuccessful assassination attempts.

The roster of political murders in the twentieth century is lengthy. The assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914 precipitated World War I, and the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler by his generals 30 years later very nearly ended World War II. Not only Mohandas K. Gandhi in 1948, but Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (no relation) in 1984, and her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, fell victim to assassins' bullets. Leaders on both sides in the Middle East have been killed by assassins: King Abdullah of Jordan in 1951, President Anwar Sadat of Eygpt in 1981, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Interestingly, each of these leaders was killed by extremists on their own political side. On the other hand, extremist leaders are as likely as any to become targets of assassins. Senator Huey Long of Louisiana in the 1930s, and Malcolm X 30 years later, both fell to assassins' bullets. So too did George Lincoln Rockwell, leader of the American Nazi Party, and Pim Fortuyn, founder of a radical anti-immigrant party that stunned the Dutch electorate by finishing second in the 2002 parliamentary elections.

Targets of assassination are not necessarily national leaders, formal office-holders, or even political leaders. When a Turkish assassin attempted to shoot Pope John Paul II in 1981, it was clearly a political act even though the pope is not a political leader per se. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, both assassinated in 1968, were political leaders, but King held no formal office and Kennedy, although he was a senator and presidential candidate, symbolized a larger cultural atmosphere of optimism and activism. Furthermore, his status as John F. Kennedy's brother added greatly to the symbolic impact of the event.

Assassination By Stealth

Many of the assassinations mentioned in the preceding paragraphs were public acts, committed in crowded areas where the loud crack of a fired gun served as a signal of a murder in progress. Assassination committed by modern security organizations and other government-controlled response teams, however, is of a quite different nature. Indeed, assassination, whether undertaken by governments, nongovernmental organizations, or individuals acting alone, is most effective when performed in stealth.

Such was the case with an act of political murder that occurred at the outset of the modern era, during the French Revolution. As depicted in a famous painting by Jacques-Louis David, the radical leader Jean-Paul Marat was in one of the most vulnerable places—his bath—when young Charlotte Corday, a supporter of the opposition Girondists, caught up with him on the night of July 13,1793. Corday entered Marat's private chambers under the pretense of being a journalist there to conduct an interview. More than two centuries later, the Muslim terrorist organization al-Qaeda used exactly the same pretext to gain an audience with Ahmad Shah Massoud. The leader of the rebels in the Northern Alliance, and widely regarded as the most popular opposition figure in Afghanistan, Massoud posed the principal threat to the ruling Taliban, who provided asylum to al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Two Arab al-Qaeda operatives, posing as journalists with a camera, met with Massoud in private on September 9, 2001—just two days before al-Qaeda launched its infamous terrorist attacks on the United States. As the interview began, their "camera" exploded, killing both Massoud and the two assassins.

SMERSH and Trotsky. An excellent example of stealth assassination undertaken by operatives working for a modern government was the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940. Trotsky had long been a rival of Josef Stalin, who recognized that Trotsky's role in launching the Bolshevik takoever of Russia alongside V. I. Lenin gave him much greater revolutionary legitimacy. Stalin had Trotsky exiled, but still wanted him dead. For more than a decade, agents of SMERSH (SMERrt SHpionam or "Death to Spies"), the KGB assassination team, tracked him.

The individual who finally gained Trotsky's confidence was Ramón Mercader, whom Trotsky granted a private interview. Unbeknownst to Trotsky, however, Mercader had been recruited by SMERSH in Spain during its civil war. Using the cover identity of Jacques Mornard, a French journalist, Mercader had gradually worked his way into Trotsky's inner circle, in part by seducing an American named Sylvia Agelof, who had close connections to the radical leader.

Mercader worked patiently, meeting Trotsky on several occasions before mentioning that he had written a paper on Trotsky's political philosophies, and wished to have the master himself read it. Undoubtedly flattered, Trotsky agreed to meet with him on August 20, 1940. On the appointed day, Mercader arrived bearing the putative manuscript—which was actually gibberish—along with the concealed tool necessary for his mission: a 13-inch dagger, a pistol, and an Alpine mountain climber's ice ax. After Trotsky began to read the manuscript and realized that it was only a prop, he looked up at his guest, whereupon Mercader split his skull with the ice ax. Trotsky did not immediately die, and prevented his bodyguards from killing Mercador because "He has a tale to tell." Within 24 hours, Trotsky was dead in a hospital room, and Jacques Mercador was in the custody of police. Mercador maintained his false identity as Mornard throughout his trial, where he claimed that he had killed because he was jealous that Sylvia had an intimate relationship with Trotsky. Sentenced in 1943, Mercador served 17 years in a Mexican prison. After his release, he went first to Prague and then to Moscow, where the Kremlin awarded him the Order of the Soviet Union.

Wrath of God and "Black September." Another instructive example of a government undertaking a careful and calculated plan of assassination is that of Israel in response to the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich. The killing had occurred at the hands of Black September, a terrorist group established by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a "deniable" action team—in other words, a group that could not be conclusively tied to its sponsors. In seeking to mete out justice to Black September, Israel in turn set up its own deniable counterterrorist unit, known as the Wrath of God.

Between 1972 and 1974, Wrath of God (nicknamed "Israel's long arm") allegedly killed more than a dozen Black September operatives. Wael Zwaiter, for instance, had the misfortune to find himself in a Rome elevator with what turned out to be two Wrath of God agents carrying. 22 caliber pistols. The group killed Mahmoud Hamshari with an explosive device on a telephone in Paris, and claimed Hussein Bashir in Nicosia, Cyprus, with a bomb under his mattress. An explosion also claimed Mohammed Boudia, who, after a night with his girlfriend in her Paris flat, started his automobile, only to discover too late that it had been rigged with a car bomb.

As efficient as the Wrath of God was, it made some mistakes. In Lillehammer, Norway, in 1974, Wrath of God operatives shot a man they believed to be Ali Hassan Salameh, operations chief of Black September. In truth, he was Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter carrying an Algerian passport. Five years later in Beirut, the Wrath of God finally eliminated Salameh with an explosive device. In the meantime, the Lillehammer incident provoked complaints from western European nations vexed at the Israelis for using their cities as hunting grounds, and Israel agreed to shut down the Wrath of God.

CIA. It is a truism of historically alleged assassinations carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other such organizations in the United States that the only operations of which the citizenry ever learns would be the botched ones. Such is the situation of an agency dedicated to covert action under the aegis of a government with a degree of openness before its polity—a problem with which SMERSH, for instance, did not have to contend.

The CIA has been publicly embarrassed by revelations of attempts to kill Fidel Castro by a number of fanciful means, such as poisoning his cigar. There have also been allegations that the agency either undertook or supported the assassinations and attempted assassinations of numerous world leaders from Chou En-Lai of China in the 1950s to Saddam Hussein in the 1990s.

These and other revelations, many of which emerged during the 1975–76 hearings led by Senator Frank Church (D-ID), helped bolster an atmosphere of public suspicion toward the CIA and NSA. From the 1970s onward, popular conspiracy theories emerged among the public that linked the CIA to almost every political slaying around the world, including the assassination of President Kennedy. Conspiracy theories aside, some trained CIA operatives possess extraordinary skill in assassination techniques. Some of those techniques are discussed in a CIA assassination manual, apparently written in the 1950s and released to the public in 1997.

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Etymology

Main article: Hashshashin

The term 'Assassin' is generally assumed to be derived from its connections to the Hashshashin, a militant religious sect of Ismaili Muslims, thought to be active in the Middle East in the 8th to 14th centuries. This mystic secret society killed members of the Abbasid and Seljuq elite for political or religious reasons.^[3]

Stories claim that these early assassins were drugged during their murders, often with materials such as hashish and opium. The name assassin is derived from either hasishin for the supposed influence of the drugs, and disregard for their own lives in the process, or hassansin for their leader, Hassan-i-Sabah.

Today it is known that hashishinnya was an offensive term used to depict this cult by its Muslim and Mongolian detractors; the extreme zeal and cold preparation to murder makes it unlikely they ever used drugs.

The earliest known use of the derived term "Assassination" is found in William Shakespeare's theatrical play Macbeth, first published in the year 1605.^[4]^[5]

Definition problem

The assassination of Alexander I of Yugoslavia was one of the first to be caught on film.

The formal definition of the term 'Assassination' varies between sources. For example, according to The American Heritage Dictionary, to assassinate is:

"...to murder (a prominent person) by surprise attack, as for political reasons."^[6]

However, the Oxford English Dictionary defines assassination as:

"The action of assassinating; the taking the life of any one by treacherous violence, esp. by a hired emissary, or one who has taken upon him to execute the deed."^[7]

There is also the problem regarding motivation: should the term include killings where the primary motivation is to attract attention to a cause, took place for purely personal reasons with the target itself being of secondary importance, or should the use of this term be restricted to murders where the victim is a political leader or public figure hostile to the agenda of the killer? One can take various positions on this definitional problem (note that this consideration is of necessity based upon language, not law), stating that an assassination is:

the killing of someone by treacherous violence (no matter the motivation or target)
the killing of someone in the public view (i.e. a politician or celebrity, no matter the motivation)
the killing of someone for political, moral, or ideological reasons (usually requiring a specific, connected target)

For the purposes of this article, the third definition predominates, even though it is likely that the second is most popular, and the first would often be found in colloquial use.

Another less known definition of an assassin, is 'the murderer of someone who is know, either by their celebrity or infamy, by the communications expert Lee McNamara'. This has been been widely disputed as a definition and is yet to be supported by any internationally recognised institution.^[2]

Use in history

Main article: History of assassination

Ancient history

Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics, dating back at least as far as recorded history. Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar can be noted as famous examples. Emperors of Rome often met their end in this way, as did many of the Shia Imams. The practice was also well-known in ancient China like Jing Ke's failed assassination of Qin Shi Huang. The ancient Indian military advisor Chanakya wrote about assassinations in detail in his political treatise Arthashastra.

In the Middle Ages, regicide was rare, but with the Renaissance, tyrannicide - or assassination for personal or political reasons - became more common again. Rulers like Henry III and Henry IV of France as well as William the Silent of the Netherlands fell to it.

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, artists depiction from 1865. Assassin John Wilkes Booth on the right.

Modern history

As the world moved into the present day and the stakes in political clashes of will continued to grow to a global scale, the number of assassinations concurrently multiplied. In Russia alone, four emperors were assassinated within less than 200 years - Ivan VI, Peter III, Paul I, and Alexander II .

In the USA, Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy died at the hands of assassins, while many other presidents survived attempts on their life. Most of these assassinations however turned out to have no more than nebulous political backgrounds, adding a new threat - the mentally deranged assassin.

In Europe the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serb nationalist insurgents finally triggered World War I after a period of building conflicts, while World War II saw the first known use of specifically trained assassination operatives since the original Assassins^{[citation needed]}. Reinhard Heydrich was killed by British-backed killers, and knowledge from decoded transmissions allowed the US to carry out a targeted attack, killing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while he was en-route in an airplane. Adolf Hitler meanwhile was almost killed by his own officers, and survived numerous attempts by other individuals and organizations.

Cold War and beyond

During the Cold War, there was a dramatic increase in the number of political assassinations, likely because of the ideological polarization of most of the First and Second worlds, whose adherents were often more than willing to both justify and finance such killings.

Nawabzadah Liaquat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan was assassinated by Saad Akbar a lone assassin in 1951. Conspiracy theorists believe his conflict with certain members of the Pakistan military (Rawalpindi conspiracy) or suppression of Communists and antagonism towards the Soviet Union, were potential reasons for his assassination.

During the Kennedy era, Cuban President Fidel Castro narrowly escaped death on several occasions at the hands of the CIA. At the same time, the KGB made creative use of assassination to deal with high-profile defectors and Israel's Mossad used them to eliminate Palestinian guerrillas and Palestinian political leaders.

Most major powers were not long in repudiating Cold War assassination tactics, though many allege that this was merely a smoke screen for political benefit and that covert and illegal training of assassins continues today, with Russia, Israel and other nations accused of still regularly engaging in such operations. In 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered the Operation El Dorado Canyon air raid on Libya where one of the primary targets was the home residence of Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi escaped unharmed, however his adopted daughter Hanna was one of the civilian casualties.

On August 17, 1988 President of Pakistan Gen. M. Zia ul Haq died along with his staff and the American Ambassador to Pakistan when his C- 130 transport plane exploded in mid-air because of an on flight bomb. The CIA, KGB and Indian secret service RAW all have been implicated by various conspiracy theorists.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the United States also struck many of Iraq’s most important command bunkers with bunker-busting bombs in hopes of killing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Various dictators around the world, such as Saddam Hussein, have also used assassination to remove individual opponents, or to terrorize troublesome population groups.^{[citation needed]} In return, in post-Saddam Iraq, the Shiite-dominated government has used death squads to perform countless extrajudicial executions of Sunni Iraqis, with some alleging that the death squads were trained by the U.S.^[8]^[9]^[10]

Since the rise of al-Qaeda and similar organizations, who themselves often engage in assassination tactics, both the US administrations of Clinton and Bush have backed assassinations, mostly directed against terrorist leaders like Osama bin Laden, but also against elected political leaders and opponents like Mullah Omar. Most of these attempts were undertaken with remote-controlled missiles and similar tactics, often using remote surveillance for the decision where and when to strike as well. One of the most well-known examples of recent assassinations carried out by the United States was the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman, both killed as a result of two guided bombs on a safe house outside of Baghdad.

See also: War on Terrorism

Outside of the larger-scale conflicts of Cold War and the War on Terrorism, assassinations stemming from internal or historical conflicts did not cease either. For example, in India, two Prime ministers, Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi, were both assassinated for political reasons in the 1980s.

Further reasons

As military doctrine

Assassination for military purposes has long been espoused - Sun Tzu, writing around the time 500 B.C.E. argued in favor of using assassination in his book The Art of War. Nearly 2000 years later Machiavelli also argued assassination could be useful in his book The Prince. In medieval times, an army and even a nation might be based upon and around a particularly strong, canny or charismatic leader, whose loss could paralyze the ability of both to make war. However, in modern warfare a soldier's mindset is generally considered to surround ideals far more than specific leaders, while command structures are more flexible in replacing officer losses. While the death of a popular or successful leader often has a detrimental effect on morale, the organisational system and the belief in a specific cause is usually strong enough to enable continued warfare.

There is also the risk that the target could be replaced by an even more competent leader or that such a killing (or a failed attempt) will "martyr" a leader and support his cause (by showing the moral ruthlessness of the assassins). Faced with particularly brilliant leaders, this possibility has in various instances been risked, such as in the attempts to kill the Athenian Alcibiades during the Peloponnesian War. There are a number of additional examples from World War II, the last major total war, which show how assassination was used as a military tool at both tactical and strategic levels:

The American interception of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto airplane during World War II, after his travel route had been decrypted.

The American perception that Skorzeny's commandos were planning to assassinate Eisenhower during the Battle of the Bulge played havoc with Eisenhower's personal plans for some time, though it did not affect the battle itself. Skorzeny later denied in an interview with the New York Times^{[citation needed]} that he had ever intended to assassinate Eisenhower during Operation Greif and he said that he could prove it.^[11]

There was a planned British commando raid to capture or kill the German General Erwin Rommel (also known as "The Desert Fox").^[11]

Use of assassination has continued in more recent conflicts:

During the Vietnam War, partly in response to Viet Cong assassinations of government leaders, the USA engaged in the Phoenix Program to assassinate Viet Cong leaders and symphatizers, and killed between 6,000 and 41,000 individuals, with official 'targets' of 1,800 per month.^[12]

Israel uses targeted killings of Palestinian political leaders to paralyze the activities of Hamas and other militant groups.

From 1991 till 2006, Russia targeted the top commanders of the separatist groups they were fighting in Chechenya, killing several of them (including Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev)

As tool of insurgents

Insurgent groups have often employed assassination as a tool to further their causes. Assassinations provide several functions for such groups, namely the removal of specific enemies and as propaganda tools to focus the attention of media and politics on their cause.

The Irish Republican Army guerrillas of 1919-1921 assassinated many RIC Police Intelligence officers during the Irish War of Independence. Michael Collins set up a special unit - the Squad - for this purpose, which had the effect of intimidating many policemen into resigning from the force. The Squad's activities peaked with the assassination of 14 British agents in Dublin on Bloody Sunday in 1920.

This tactic was used again by the Provisional IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland (1969-present). Assassination of RUC officers and politicians was one of a number of methods used in the Provisional IRA campaign 1969-1997. The IRA also attempted to assassinate British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by bombing the Conservative Party Conference in a Brighton hotel. Loyalist paramilitaries retaliated by killing Catholics at random and assassinating Irish nationalist politicians.

Basque separatists ETA in Spain have assassinated many security and political figures since the late 1960s, notably Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. Since the early 1990s, they have also targeted academics, journalists and local politicians who publicly disagreed with them, meaning that many needed armed police bodyguards.

The Red Brigades in Italy carried out assassinations of political figures, as to a lesser extent, did the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.

Middle Eastern groups, such as the PLO and Hezbollah, have all engaged in assassinations, though the higher intensity of armed conflict in the region compared to western Europe means that many of their actions are either better characterized as guerrilla operations or as random attacks on civilians - especially the technique of suicide bombs.

In the Vietnam War, assassinations were routinely carried out by communist insurgents against government officials and private individuals deemed to offend or rival the revolutionary movement. Such attacks, along with widespread military activity by insurgent bands, almost brought the Diem regime to collapse, prior to the US intervention.^[13]

For money or gain

Individually, too, people have often found reasons to arrange the deaths of others through paid intermediaries. One who kills with no political motive or group loyalty who kills only for money is known as a Hitman or Contract Killer. Note that by the definition accepted above, while such a killer is not, strictly speaking, an assassin, if the killing is ordered and financed towards a political end, then that killing must rightly be termed an assassination, and the hitman an assassin by extension.

Entire organizations have sometimes specialized in assassination as one of their services, to be gained for the right price. Besides the original hashshashin, the ninja clans of Japan were rumored to perform assassinations - though it can be pointed out that most of what was ever known about the ninja was rumor and hearsay.

In the United States, Murder, Inc., an organization partnered to the Mafia, was formed for the sole purpose of performing assassinations for organized crime. In Russia, the vory (thieves), their version of the Mafia, are often known to provide assassinations for the right price, as well as engaging in it themselves for their own purposes. A professional hitman is called "cleaner" in Russia; he is used to clean away the target. The Finnish as well as the Swedish underworld uses the word "torpedo" for a contract killer.

Psychology

A major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century came to the conclusion that most prospective assassins spend copious amounts of time planning and preparing for their attempts. Assassinations are thus rarely a case of 'impulsive' action.^[14]

However, about 25% of the actual attackers were found to be delusional, a figure that rose to 60% with 'near-lethal approachers' (people apprehended before reaching their target). This incidentally shows that while mental instability plays a role in many modern-age assassinations, the more delusional attackers are less likely to succeed in their attempt. The report also found that around 2/3rds of the attackers had previously been arrested for (not necessarily related) offenses, that around 44% had a history of serious depression, and that 39% had a history of substance abuse.^[14]

Techniques

Ancient methods

It seems likely that the first assassinations would have been direct and simple: stabbing, strangling or bludgeoning. Substantial planning or coordination would rarely have been involved, as tribal groups were too small, and the connection to the leaders too close. As civilization took root, however, leaders began to have greater importance, and become more detached from the groups they ruled. This would have brought planning, subterfuge and weapons into successful assassination plans.^{[citation needed]}

The key technique was likely infiltration, with the actual assassination via stabbing, smothering or strangulation. Poisons also started to be used in many forms. Death cap mushrooms and similar plants became a traditional choice of assassins especially if they could not be perceived as poisonous by taste, and the symptoms of the poisoning did not show until after some time.^{[citation needed]}

Modern methods

With the advent of effective ranged weaponry, and later firearms, the position of an assassination target was more precarious. Bodyguards were no longer enough to hold back determined killers, who no longer needed to directly engage or even subvert the guard to kill the leader in question. Additionally the engagement of targets at greater distance dramatically increased the chances for survival of an assassin. It is considered that William the Silent of the Netherlands was the first leader assassinated by fireams.

Gunpowder and other explosives also allowed the use of bombs or even greater concentrations of explosives for deeds requiring a larger touch; for an example, the Gunpowder Plot could have 'assassinated' almost a thousand people.

Explosives, especially the car bomb, become far more common in modern history, with grenades and remote-triggered landmines also used, especially in the Middle East and Balkans (the initial attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand's life was with a grenade). With heavy weapons, the rocket propelled grenade (RPG) has became a useful tool given the popularity of armored cars (discussed below), while Israeli forces have pioneered the use of aircraft-mounted missiles for assassination,^[15] as well as the innovative use of explosive devices.

A sniper with a precision rifle is often used in fictional assassinations. However, there are certain difficulties associated with long-range shooting, including finding a hidden shooting position with a clear line-of-sight, detailed advance knowledge of the intended victim's travel plans, the ability to identify the target at long range, and the ability to score a first-round lethal hit at long range, usually measured in hundreds of meters. A dedicated sniper rifle is also expensive and relatively rare, often costing thousands of dollars because of the high level of precision machining and hand-finishing required to achieve extreme accuracy.^[16]

However, many hunting rifles are accurate enough in the hands of an experienced marksman to fatally hit a target at up to 300 meters (330 yards) or more, such as the Savage Arms Model 111 rifle that was recently tested as having a calculated effective range on a human torso of over 500 yards (450 m).^[17] Modern hunting cartridges also have a flat enough trajectory to not require the shooter to compensate for bullet drop for targets up to about 250 meters (275 yards) and are powerful enough to penetrate most types of body armor with relative ease. The difficulty for an assassin lies thus more in gaining the required marksman skills, than in procuring a suitable weapon.

Despite their comparative disadvantages, easy-to-acquire and hard-to-trace handguns are much more commonly used. Of 74 principal incidents evaluated in a major study about assassination attempts in the US in the second half of the 20th century, 51% were undertaken by a handgun, 30% with a rifle or shotgun, while 15% of the attempts used knives and 8% explosives (usage of multiple weapons/methods was reported in 16% of all cases).^[14]

A 2006 case in the UK concerned the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko who was given a lethal dose of radioactive polonium-210, possibly passed to him in aerosol form sprayed directly onto his food. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, had been granted asylum in the UK in 2000 after citing persecution in Russia. Shortly before his death he issued a statement accusing Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, of involvement in his assassination. President Putin denies he had any part in Litvinenko's death.^[18]

Counter-measures

Early forms

One of the earliest forms of defense against assassins is without doubt the bodyguard. He acts as a shield for the potential target, keeps lookout for potential attackers (sometimes in advance, for example on a planned tour), and is literally supposed to put himself 'in harm's way' - both by his simple presence, forming a barrier in front of the target^[14]^[19] and by shielding the target during any attack. He is also, if possible, to neutralize an attacker as fast as possible, and thus often carries weapons (where legal or possible).

This bodyguard function was often executed by the leader's most loyal warriors, and was extremely effective throughout most of early human history, leading to attempts via subterfuge, such as poison (which was answered by the food taster).

Notable examples of bodyguards would include the Roman Praetorian Guard or the Ottoman janissaries - although, in both cases, it should be noted that the protectors often became assassins themselves, exploiting their power to make the head of state a virtual hostage at their whim or eliminating threatening leaders altogether. The fidelity of individual bodyguards is an important question as well, especially for leaders who oversee states with strong ethnic or religious divisions. Failure to realize such divided loyalties leads to assassinations such as that of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

Modern strategies

With the advent of gunpowder, ranged assassination (via bombs or firearms) became possible. One of the first reactions was to simply increase the guard, creating what at times might seem a small army trailing every leader; another was to begin clearing large areas whenever a leader was present, to the point where entire sections of a city might be shut down.

As the 20th century dawned, the prevalence of assassins and their capabilities skyrocketed, and so did measures to protect against them. For the first time, armored cars or armored limousines were put into service for safer transport, with modern versions rendering them virtually invulnerable to small arms fire and smaller bombs and mines.^[20] Bulletproof vests also began to be used, though they were of limited utility, restricting movement and leaving the head unprotected - as such they tended to be worn only during high-profile public events if at all.

Access to famous persons, too, became more and more restrictive;^[21] potential visitors would be forced through numerous different checks before being granted access to the official in question, and as communication became better and information technology more prevalent, it has become next-to-impossible for a would-be killer to get close enough to the personage at work or in private life to effect an attempt on his or her life, especially given the common use of metal and bomb detectors.

Most modern assassinations have been committed either during a public performance or during transport, both because of weaker security and security lapses, such as with US President John F. Kennedy or as part of coups d'état where security is either overwhelmed or completely removed, such as with Patrice Lumumba and likely Salvador Allende.^[22]

The methods used for protection by famous people have sometimes evoked negative reactions by the public, with some resenting the separation from their officials or major figures. One example might be traveling in a car protected by a bubble of clear bulletproof glass, such as the Popemobile of Pope John Paul II (built following an extremist's attempt at his life). Politicians themselves often resent this need for separation - which has at times caused tragedy when they sent their bodyguards from their side for personal or publicity reasons, as U.S. President William McKinley did during the public reception at which he was assassinated.^[21]

Other potential targets go into seclusion, and are rarely heard from or seen in public, such as writer Salman Rushdie. A related form of protection is the use of body doubles, a person built similar to the person he is expected to impersonate. These persons are then made up, as well as in some cases altered to look like the target, with the body double then taking the place of the person in high risk situations. Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein are known to have used body doubles.^[23] According to Joe R. Reeder, a former under secretary for the U.S. Army from 1993-1997 writing in Fox News, Fidel Castro had also used body doubles, though no details were specified.^[23]

In the final analysis, counter-measures can never be fully effective. If the assassin is committed beyond reason (i.e. insane) or without concern for his own for self-preservation (suicide attacker), then the task of protecting a person will be made much more difficult.

Notable assassinations and attempts

See also: List of assassins

The following is a list of some of the most notable assassinations and assassination attempts. It is not intended to be exhaustive.

Assassin	Year (AD format)	Target	Target	Comments
Jing Ke	210 BC	Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang	Survived	One of the earliest documented attempts.
Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, and others	44 BC	Roman Dictator Julius Caesar	Killed
Hassan-i-Sabah	1100	Various targets (assassinated by proxy)	N.A.	Founder of the Hashshashin sect.
Balthasar Gérard	1584	Dutch Stadtholder William the Silent	Killed	The first assassination carried out with a firearm.
Guy Fawkes	1605	King James I of England, Parliament of England	Survived	See the Gunpowder Plot.
François Ravaillac	1610	King Henri IV of France	Killed	Religious murder.
Charlotte Corday	1791	French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat	Killed	Later often seen as a patriotic act.
John Wilkes Booth	1865	US President Abraham Lincoln	Killed
Charles J. Guiteau	1881	US President James Garfield	Killed	Died 80 days following the shooting.
Ignacy Hryniewiecki	1881	Tsar Alexander II of Russia	Killed	Assassination plot concluded with bombs.
Frederick Russell Burnham	1896	Mlimo, the Ndebele religious leader	Killed	Effectively ended the Second Matabele War.^[24]
Leon Czolgosz	1901	US President William McKinley	Killed
Alexandros Schinas	1913	King George I of Greece	Killed	Possible conspiracy.