The President's Kill List

From Fidel Castro to Qassem Soleimani, the US government has been involved in an array of assassinations and assassination attempts against foreign leaders and officials. The President’s Kill List utilises extensive and often recently declassified archival material to unveil the history and politics of assassination in US foreign policy. It reveals how the US government has relied on a variety of methods, from the use of poison to the delivery of sniper rifles, and from employing hitmen to simply laying the groundwork for local actors to do the deed themselves. It shows how policymakers talked about assassination – often through euphemisms and innuendos - how they decided on it, and the level of Presidential control over these decisions. Tracing the history of the US government’s approach to assassination, the book analyses the evolution of assassination policies and, for the first time, reveals how successive administrations - through private justifications and public legitimations – ensured assassination remained an available foreign policy option.

Political science · History · Torture, Ethics, and Law