![]() One of its most lethal components is called Ground Branch. ![]() The group that has the authority to conduct these lethal operations outside a war zone, on the ground, is the CIA’s Special Activities Division. The president’s guerrilla warfare corps kills enemies mano a mano, in close-quarters combat when necessary. ![]() Targeted killing is not limited to high-technology drone strikes. The same legal construct that allowed national-security advisors for Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy to plot to kill foreign leaders like Fidel Castro also allowed Presidents Bush and Obama to create a system in which prominent people can be placed on a kill-or-capture list, to be targeted and killed. ![]() With its ethos in unconventional warfare, the Central Intelligence Agency officers and operators who conduct covert action were originally called the president’s guerrilla warfare corps. The president’s third option was born in the wake of World War II, and those who created it did so to avert World War III. The most extreme of all hidden-hand operations involves killing a leader or prominent person, and this book focuses on that act. All covert action is classified, designed to be plausibly denied, and because of this it is sometimes called the president’s hidden hand. Some might say this is a book about assassination, but really it is a book about covert action, Tertia Optio, the president’s third option when the first option, diplomacy, is inadequate and the second, war, is a terrible idea. ![]()
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