SpyTalk

CIA ground teams operating on the vaguely determined Afghan-Pakistan frontier are well aware of  the presidential executive order banning assassinations, says a recent returnee from the region's fighting.

The problem is that al Qaeda suspects and their Taliban supporters don't wear what's normally considered a uniform, which puts American hit teams in potential legal jeopardy for violating Executive Order 12333, which bans the CIA from carrying out assassinations.

The order was signed by President Reagan in 1981 following congressional investigations into alleged CIA assassination plots targeting foreign leaders.

So the teams in Afghanistan have a simple rule of thumb:  If the target "looks military," i.e., carrying a weapon or walking in the company of other armed men, he's a legitimate target.

If there's an absence of same, the target is considered a civilian, and the decision gets bucked up the chain of command for further deliberation.

Of course, this may be a distinction without a difference. The CIA-administered Predator drones have been targeting al Qaeda "civilians" for some time now.

On Sept. 17, 2001, President Bush said Osama bin Laden was "wanted dead or alive," prompting a flurry of questions about U.S. assassination policy.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that E.O.12333 remained in effect, The Washington Post reported at the time, noting that Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter had issued their own executive orders on the subject, numbers 11905 and 12306, respectively.

While the directives forbid assassination, they do not define the term, Post reporter Barton Gellman noted.

Fleischer declined four times to interpret the text, he reported.

"I'm going to just repeat my words and others will figure out the exact implications of them, but it does not inhibit the nation's ability to act in self-defense," Fleischer said.

UPDATE: The CIA ground team veteran had emphasized that the agency and its operatives took care to operate within the law, a point that could have been made more clear in the first version of this story.

A CIA spokesman, for example, thought it had portrayed the agency badly. 

"This report is truly bizarre, an apparent part of the cottage industry dedicated to portraying the agency as careless and slapdash," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said late Thursday.