This article from 1989, but I am posting to show 30 years later the agenda never changes.
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C.I.A. Seeks Looser Rules On Killings During Coups
By Stephen Engelberg, Special To the New York Times
Oct. 17, 1989
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/17/world/cia-seeks-looser-rules-on-killings-during-coups.htmlWilliam H. Webster, the Director of Central Intelligence, called today on the President and Congress to consider giving the Central Intelligence Agency greater latitude in supporting potentially violent efforts to overthrow foreign dictators.
Mr. Webster, in an interview, said a longstanding Presidential executive order barring American involvement in assassinations had been interpreted to prohibit American assistance to any coup that could lead to the death of a country's leader, even in the heat of battle.
Asked if he would like to see this interpretation relaxed, Mr. Webster said, ''I don't think you're misreading me.'' Order Adopted in 1976
The executive order was adopted in 1976 by President Gerald R. Ford after Congressional investigations in the mid-1970's detailed the Central Intelligence Agency's role in assassination plots against President Fidel Castro of Cuba and others. It is the cornerstone of legal restrictions on American covert action abroad. The order was strengthened by President Jimmy Carter and adopted without change by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
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Mr. Webster, in his first extensive discussion of the agency's role in the failed coup attempt in Panama on Oct. 3, said he now detected a willingness in the Bush Administration and Congress to reinterpret the order in a way that would give the C.I.A. greater freedom to deal with coup planners like those in Panama, while preserving the prohibition on assassination plots.
''The United States does not engage in selective, individual assassination,'' Mr. Webster said. ''But the United States has other important overriding concerns about security and protecting democracy in areas of the world where it has a legitimate claim of interest. And when despots take over, there has to be a means to deal with that short of making us to be hired killers.''
Mr. Webster said the agency was ''looking at this hard and fast, right now, fast and hard.''
Administration officials said that various drafts of a new intepretation had been circulated but none had been adopted, and senior officials anticipate lengthy discussions about the issue with the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.
Mr. Webster said: ''We all need to look at that and say, 'Have we pushed this beyond a practical effectiveness? Have we extended the executive order beyond its intended original meaning by both the White House and Congress?' ''
Administration officials said that when the dissident Panamanian officers said this month that they were plotting a coup, C.I.A. officers in Panama were essentially barred from providing advice because of the possibility that the coup might lead to the death of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the country's leader. May 'Make a Difference'
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Mr. Webster said he wanted to formulate rules so that C.I.A. officers' authority was so clearly defined that ''they can go right up to the edge of that authority and not worry if they or their agency is going to get into trouble.'' He added, ''When you have deliberate blurring, it puts a terrible and I think unacceptable pressure on the people who have do the work.''
Asked if such guidelines would have made a difference in Panama, he said: ''I'm not certain it would have made a difference in this situation. But it could very well make a difference in the next one, because the likelihood of the next plotter planning that he may probably have to take Noriega out is real.
''If there was a lesson learned, it was that sending him into the bedroom and giving him a telephone was not the way to carry out a plot.''
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https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/17/world/cia-seeks-looser-rules-on-killings-during-coups.html