Wow... It Gets WAAAY Worse... 'Whom Can The President Kill ?' - TheNewYorker (We Are Now Nixon)

[OldDem2012]

11. This article states that the policy goes back to the Nixon Administration, but guess what?....

....The policy actually goes back to the Eisenhower Administration and the 5412 Group of which Nixon was the White House point-of-contact. This group was involved in covert actions throughout Central America, South America, and the Caribbean Basin, to include assassinations.

The CIA in JFK's Administration was involved in several clandestine and failed plots to kill Castro, and was becoming increasingly more involved as "advisers" in South Vietnam.

Operation Phoenix was launched in Vietnam in 1967 under LBJ's Administration. The program was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, terrorism, torture, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The program wasn't officially ended until 1972.

In addition to the program referenced in the OP's post and the continuation of Operation Phoenix, we all know the Nixon Administration was involved in a lot of additional clandestine ops, both foreign and domestic.

The Ford Administration may well have been involved in nothing of consequence.

The Carter administration authorized the shipments of arms to Afghanistan and whatever the CIA needed to conduct a clandestine operation in that country.

The administrations of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II all did their share to expand US clandestine ops, to include the introduction of drones under Bush II.

But hey, let's just blame President Obama for a program he inherited, right?