NewsMax.com
Friday, February 09, 2001

According to a report Friday in the Washington Times:

There is little likelihood Congress will act favorably on restoring presidential authority to issue a James Bond-type "007 license to kill."

But Barr is deadly serious.

What's more, he says, his bill is intended to eliminate hypocrisy, that this is exactly what the United States does now – or tries to do – and what he wants to make legal and non-hypocritical.

"The United States already takes actions clearly designed to remove foreign leaders," Barr, a former prosecutor, said.

"In the 1980s, we took actions clearly designed to remove [Libyan President] Moammar Gadhafi.

"People may pretend that we don't do these things, but these are precisely the type of actions that we sometimes take. It is better policy to be more honest and recognize the president does and should have this authority."

Barr's bill, the Terrorist Elimination Act of 2001, would nullify several executive orders that prohibit political assassinations by U.S. employees.

On Feb. 18, 1976, President Gerald Ford first signed Executive Order 11905, which read:

"No employee of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in political assassination."

President Ronald Reagan tightened and extended the restrictions to the intelligence community.

Barr said that those current orders "arbitrarily limit the options available to the president when dealing with terrorists," and he wants to remedy that.

So far the bill has no co-sponsors, and a senior Republican staff member, who didn't want to be named, said:

"The House leadership from both parties will be very reluctant to step into a debate that so clearly involves the separation of powers and what is clearly a matter of presidential decision-making."