Political Murder Quotes
The “execution” to which she refers was the famous speech given to communist party leaders by Nikita Khrushchev where he publicly revealed the worst crimes of Stalin and Stalinist Russia. Prior to that, publicly Stalin was godlike in the Soviet Union. Decades of disillusionment with Stalinist Russia set the stage for the fall of the Soviet Union which was also accompanied by massive corruption, economic chaos and a diminution of the standard of living of most Russians. Some, including many of the younger people who had not lived through the Stalinist horrors, were resentful that the great era of Soviet military, scientific, and political greatness and dominance was completely overshadowed by the revelation of the purges, gulags, terror and murder. Prudnikova represents that school of thought.
The assassination of Chilean Dissident, Orlando Letelier occurred in 1976 in Washington, D.C. Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet had been suspected, but the information that the CIA had, was classified secret and hidden from the world until President Barak Obama finally declassified documents from this era, It is hard to determine why it had been suppressed for so long.
The murder to which he was referring was the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He had been very active in trying to negotiate a peace treaty with the Palestinians. A minority of right wing, religious fundamentalists were opposed to any peace treaty that would give the Palestinians control over the land that the fundamentalists believed was given to the Jews by God. Israel’s political system was so fractionated with minority parties having so much influence that Rabin was the only leader on the horizon who was influential and powerful enough to transcend the party politics, Since his assassination the peace process has been stalled, and the murder paid off.
See Robert F. Kennedy for a later expression of this sentiment. 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Referring to President Andrew Johnson:
The meeting was about the Congo. Patrice Lumumba was an extremely popular Congo leader who had just led the independence fight against Belgium and been elected Prime Minister and one of the few African leaders at the time who was not corrupt but he was a socialist. The mineral rich Katanga Province then seceded just a few weeks after Independence. Lumumba asked the UN. for supplies and trucks to allow him to keep the country together but the UN was bogged down in debate where the US thought that he might become, Russia then unilaterally offered the aid. Thinking that the Congo might become part of the Soviet Bloc, President Eisenhower called the meeting. Lumumba had not only claimed that he was not a communist but stated that Communism was just as bad as colonialism. A few weeks later the CIA engineered a coup of the Congo Military which had previously been organized and led by Colonial Belgium. The coup deposed Lumumba in favor of a corrupt incompetent Army Officer, Joseph Mobuto. Lumumba was arrested, and the UN Secretary General demanded that he be treated properly while Russia demanded that he be released as he could not have committed any crimes as he had been in office such a short time. While under "arrest" Lumumba was mysteriously murdered. The United States denied that America had anything to do with the murder. Johnson gave similar testimony under oath before the Senate Church Committee Investigating the Intelligence Agencies.
The motivations and willingness to die of the suicide bomber is not unique to Islamic terrorists. On occasion our CIA has used the technique. Official CIA instructions on “lost assassination” were distributed within the agency and sometimes to our “allies” who we were training.
