The US has a long history of seeking to assassinate leaders who have challenged American interests. The plots, some of them farcical, have generally been unsuccessful or not implemented, though some targets have fallen in later US-inspired coups.
Achmad Sukarno of Indonesia In 1975 the US Senate Church committee, investigating the activities of the CIA, noted that it had «received some evidence of CIA involvement in plans to assassinate President Sukarno.» An agent had been identified who it was believed might be recruited for the job.
As a leader of the nationalist non-aligned movement, Sukarno was seen by the US as a dangerous irritant. He was overthrown in a bloody coup in 1965 and died under house arrest five years later.
Fidel Castro of Cuba The CIA hatched several plots to kill Castro between 1960 and 1965. «The proposed assassination devices ran the gamut from high-powered rifles to poison pills, poison pens, deadly bacterial powders and other devices which strain the imagination,» according to the Church report.
Patrice Lumumba of Congo President Eisenhower ordered the assassination of the country’s first prime minister in 1960. CIA chief Allen Dulles sent a CIA scientist to Congo with a lethal virus. But before the plan could be activated, Lumumba was deposed. He was later captured with CIA help and killed by rebel forces.
Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic The administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy, through the CIA, plotted the assassination of the dictator for several years before a group of dissidents shot him to death in 1961.
Salvador Allende of Chile President Nixon made it clear in 1970 that a CIA assassination of the new left-wing president would not be unwelcome. Allende was killed in a 1973 coup.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia He claimed that the CIA set up several plots to kill him in the early 1960s. He was deposed in a 1970 coup.
Muammar Gadafy of Libya After a Libyan terrorist attack in Berlin in 1986, US jets tried to kill Gadafy in bombings which included a strike at his personal compound. It killed his infant adopted daughter.
Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia The US targeted Milosevic during the Nato bombing campaign of 1999, narrowly missing him when his empty villa was hit by three laser bombs
Osama bin Laden After 9/11 President Bush issued an authority to kill Bin Laden and two dozen top aides if they could not be captured alive. Last November six suspected followers, including one of the principal strategists, Salim Sinan al-Harethi, were killed in their car by an unmanned CIA Predator plane in Yemen.
