The Indian intelligence community has accused the Biden administration of "utter hypocrisy" in its handling of the alleged plot by Central government to assassinate Patwant Singh Pannun Khalistani activist based out of New York.
The officials talks to by the FPJ pointed out that it was the Ronald Reagen administration which bombed the home of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi in April 1986 in retaliation for a bomb attack in a Berlin discotheque earlier. The Clinton administration targeted Al Qaeda leaders in a missle attack on the latters' camp in Afghanistan to extract revenge for the terror attacks on two U.S. embassy in east Africa. In May 2011, U.S. Navy Seals gunned down terror leader Osama Bin Laden in hideout in Abbotabad in Pakistan.
The sources pointed out that the US Executive Order 11905 issued February 19, 1976, by the then US President Gerald Ford prohibited officials from carrying out political assassination anywhere in the world. This order was issued when a CIA plan to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castrol in the 1960s. This order was effectively reiterated by both the Jimmy Carter government and the Reagen administration.
A senior IB official said these three orders did not prevent the US government from targeting Gaddafi, terror leaders in Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden.
Referring to a published document, an intelligence operative said following the September 2001 suicide bomb attacks on the U.S., the Congress authorised President George W Bush to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorised, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.” President Bush later enlarged the scope of Clinton’s endorsement of covert lethal activities by letting the CIA and U.S. special forces to kill anyone on a secret “high-value target list." As part of this campaign, several leaders of the Taliban and other terror organisations were neutralised by the CIA in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries. President Barack Obama further widened the scope of this policy of targeted killings, the IB official noted.
It is further pointed out that the U.S. has not yet handed over David Headly, one of the main accused in the terror attack on Mumbai in March, 1993. "Given this background we cannot but notice the double standards being observed by Washington DC," an official noted.
