Three former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency testified in a cavernous, nearly empty Senate hearing room yesterday about legislation to reform the nation’s intelligence community. Only one thought it ought to include a ban on assassinations.
The other two, George [HW] Bush, who headed the CIA in 1976 and E. Henry Knoche, who served as acting director for several months under President Carter, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that they feared too many restrictions on covert CIA operations.
…
The bill, introduced by most committee members in February after nearly three years of investigations and staff studies, would punish plots and attempts to assassinate foreign officials with life imprisonment and would prohibit a number of highly controversial activities. The ban would extend to covert operations such as those likely to result in “torture,” the “creation of epidemics or diseases,” and “creation of food or water shortages or floods.”
(excerpts)
George Lardner
The Washington Post
Apr06.1978
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