Sixty thousand U.S. special operations forces now conduct assassinations, night-raids, training missions, joint operations and exercises in 120 countries around the world, twice as many as when Obama came to power, with deployments in about 70 countries at any given time.
But as the longtime Libyan intelligence chief and foreign minister, Mr. Koussa is widely believed to be implicated in acts of terrorism and murder over the last three decades, including the assassination of dissidents, the training of international terrorists and the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
But as the longtime Libyan intelligence chief and foreign minister, Mr. Koussa is widely believed to be implicated in acts of terrorism and murder over the last three decades, including the assassination of dissidents, the training of international terrorists and the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Others still at the much-criticized detention camp there include prisoners who the government says were trained in assassination and the use of poisons and disguises.
The camp brought non-Iraqi Arabs from Persian Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, Mr. Khodada said, and gave them training "on assassinations, kidnapping, hijacking of airplanes, hijacking of buses, hijacking of trains, and all other kinds of operations related to terrorism".
The CIA's planning included serious talk of assassinating some of Arbenz's loyalists, and it even drew up a training manual on assassination, all the more grotesque for being written in vapid bureaucratese: "The specific technique employed will depend upon a large number of variables, but should be constant in one point: Death must be absolutely certain".
Powerful and notorious in equal measure, for decades the ISI has operated behind a dense veil of secrecy, impervious to allegations of election rigging, terrorist training, abduction and assassination.
On one side of the camp, these men said, young Iraqis who were members of Fedayeen Saddam, or Saddam's Fighters, were trained in espionage, assassination techniques and sabotage.
Be it the Godhra train burning, the assassination of his ex-home minister and arch rival Haren Pandya to the Akshardham case, the suspects who were picked up by the police were poor local Muslims, who by virtue of a strong judiciary were acquitted after having served jail sentences.
From there, it was just another short, unreflective step to becoming a Navy SEAL, and still more sophisticated training in sabotage and assassination.
