HP106 Assassins
Welcome to history podcast episode 106. This episode is a request from Naif all the way Kuwait. He wants to know more about the history of assassins. Well unfortunately our world has had many assassins. We will talk about the history of the word and some famous assassinations.
According to the online etymology dictionary the word Assassin (with a capital A) comes from the Arabic word Hashhashin which describes a fanatical Ismaili Muslim sect of the time of the Crusades, under leadership of the "Old Man of the Mountains, with a reputation for murdering opposing leaders after intoxicating themselves by eating hashish. The historical existence of this practice is doubtful.
Here come some names that I will most likely mispronounce.
After the death of Fatmid caliph al-Mustansir in 1094, Hasan-e Sabbah and some Persian allies captured the hill fortress of Alamut near Kazvin, Iran. From this center by the end of the 11th century Hasan, as grand master or leader of the sect, commanded a network of strongholds all over Persia and Iraq, a corps of devoted terrorists, and an unknown number of agents in enemy camps and cities, who claimed many victims among the generals and statesmen of the Abbasid caliphate, as well as some caliphs. At the beginning of the 12th century assassin activities were extended to Syria. From Masyaf, the major castle in the Jabal Ansariyah, the Syrian grand master Rashid ad-Din as-Sinan, the legendary Shaykh al-jabal, ruled virtually independently of Assassin headquarters at Alamut.
Assassin power came to an end as the Mongols under Hulegu, grandson of Genghis Khan, captured Assassin castles in Persia one by one until, in 1256 Alamut itself fell. The Syrian castles were gradually subjugated by the Mamluk sultan Baybars I and placed under Mamluk governors. Henceforth the sect stagnated as a minor heresy. Its followers are still to be found in Syria, Persia, and Central Asia, with the largest group in India and Pakistan, where they are known as Khojas and owe allegiance to the Aga Khan.
The word assassin (lower-case) according to dictionary.com is a murderer, especially one who kills a politically prominent person for fanatical or monetary reasons. It was first used in The Tragedy of Macbeth (1605).
Some quick facts from assassinology.com, guns are the most used weapon of assassins between 1950 and 2000, used in 64.9% of high-profile assassination attempts, 9% of these were snipers, 68.3% of these attempts were successful. Guns are followed by bombs with 11.2% and poisoning at 7.9%. Pretty grim statistics.
US Policy on Assassination (from CNN)
In 1976, President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 to clarify U.S. foreign intelligence activities. The order was enacted in response to the post-Watergate revelations that the CIA had staged multiple attempts on the life of Cuban President Fidel Castro.
In a section of the order labeled "Restrictions on Intelligence Activities," Ford outlawed political assassination: Section 5(g), entitled "Prohibition on Assassination," states: "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination."
Since 1976, every U.S. president has upheld Ford's prohibition on assassinations. In 1978 President Carter issued an executive order with the chief purpose of reshaping the intelligence structure. In Section 2-305 of that order, Carter reaffirmed the U.S. prohibition on assassination.
In 1981, President Reagan, through Executive Order 12333, reiterated the assassination prohibition. Reagan was the last president to address the topic of political assassination. Because no subsequent executive order or piece of legislation has repealed the prohibition, it remains in effect.
The ban, however, did not prevent the Reagan administration from dropping bombs on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's home in 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. troops.
Additionally, the Clinton administration fired cruise missiles at suspected guerrilla camps in Afghanistan in 1998 after the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Following the September 11. 2001, attacks, the White House said the presidential directive banning assassinations would not prevent the United States from acting in self-defense.
According to an October 21, 2001, Washington Post article, President Bush in September of 2001 signed an intelligence "finding" instructing the CIA to engage in "lethal covert operations" to destroy Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization.
To round out this episode I would like to tell you about a very interesting story from a book I have mentioned before The Greatest Stories Never Told by Rick Beyer. This one is from 1881.
On July 2, 1881, President Garfield was walking through Washington railroad station when he was shoot at twice by a waiting Charles Guiteau. The second shot connected with Garfield piercing the first lumbar vertebra but missing the spinal cord.
Guiteau was a mentally disturbed lawyer that shot Garfield because he denied him a diplomatic post. The odd part of this story is that even though Guiteau shot Garfield it was not fatal, that is not until the doctors got involved. They spent 80 days working on Garfield, 80 days! Alexander Graham Bell even tried to help, with a recently invented metal detector, which had worked on every other patient he ever used it on, but because they failed to tell him that Garfield was on a spring mattress, which was new at the time, the metal detector did not work.
The first doctor to work on the president put a probe into Garfield where he thought the bullet had gone, but he was wrong, and more doctors worked on Garfield. And by trying to find the bullet they introduced an infection. What started as a 3 inch hole became a 20 inch hole, from all the poking and prodding. One of the doctors, a Dr. Willard Bliss had the dubious distinction of attending to 2 presidents who died in his care, Lincoln and Garfield. He and the other doctors who treated Garfield were publicly accused of malpractice. Dr. Bliss later apologized. Garfield finally passed away on September 14.
He was once quoted as saying, “Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning; and it is best not to worry about either.”
At his trial Guiteau made the doctors “incompetence the centerpice of his defense, saying he didn’t kill Garfield:” ‘the doctors did that. I simply shot at him.’ Correct as he might have been he was still found guilty on January 25, 1882. During the trial Guiteau had 2 assassination attempts on his life. He did try to appeal the decision, but was unsuccessful. He was hanged on June 30, 1882.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hashish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/11/04/us.assassination.policy/
How to Kill: The Definitive History of the Assassin
The Greatest Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_J._Guiteau
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1981/4/1981_4_30.shtml