Reissue a License to Kill : In This War, Lives of Narco-Terrorists Must Be at Stake, Too

Will Colombian drug lords begin attacking Americans now that we’ve declared war on them and begun to extradite their partners in crime?

The chilling answer from terrorism experts is “yes, if they want to.” Oliver B. Revell of the FBI testified before a Senate hearing last week that “if the cartels want to have blood running in the streets of America . . . I can’t give you assurances we would be in a position to preempt it.”

The question then becomes, how do we respond?

One thing we can do is reconsider the wisdom of Executive Order 12333, signed in 1975, which absolutely bars agencies of the U.S. government from ordering the killing of specific foreign individuals.

In other words, no matter how many acts of terrorism are ordered by leaders of the Medellin drug cartel or any other terrorists around the world, they can rest secure in the knowledge that their lives are safe from American reprisals or preemptive strikes.

The threat of narco-terrorism is quite unlike any we’ve confronted because of the unprecedented combination of greed, evil and money. It is a volatile mixture that has yielded deadly results. Look at the toll in Colombia: 70 judges killed in this decade, along with dozens of journalists, hundreds of police and a leading candidate for that country’s presidency. And look at the toll in America: thousands of lives--often the youngest and most vulnerable among us--ended or permanently damaged by the drugs these cartels ship to our shores.

Unlike terrorists based in the Middle East or Europe, narco-terrorists have a criminal infrastructure in place in America--hundreds of drug traffickers in virtually every city and region of the country--ready to respond to their commands. In 1987, the murder of Drug Enforcement Administration informant Barry Seal in Louisiana was believed to be on the orders of the cartel.

Narco-terrorists have the will and the means to attack not just innocent civilians, but the very institutions that form the foundation of our society. In that sense, they are more than lawbreakers. They are a threat to our national security.

We cannot officially declare war against a group that has no diplomatic status as a country. But we should respond to their behavior as if we were at war. Placed in the context of such a conflict, Executive Order 12333 is an unnecessary and unwise restriction on the President’s power to defend against a terrorist threat.

When confronted by such a threat, the President should have the widest array of options available to him. It does not make sense to wage war against terrorists with one hand tied behind our back. Nor does it make sense to telegraph to our enemies what tactics we have already ruled out by law.

Some will say that such a change in our policy would be immoral. I disagree. Is it more moral to let a terrorist carry out an attack that kills innocent civilians when the only thing preventing us from stopping him is an executive order? Is it more moral for us to launch a bombing raid on an area in which terrorists live, thereby threaten ing the lives of innocent civilians, because a covert mission targeted to those same terrorists cannot be authorized under our laws?

The occasions on which a President would find cause to order a strike against a terrorist would be limited. We should continue to attempt to prevent terrorist acts and bring terrorists to justice through normal channels, if possible. But Executive Order 12333 should be revised to account for those cases in which force is the only means we have to prevent a tragic attack against us. To safeguard against abuse, such action should be taken only with the approval of the President and the leadership of Congress and the intelligence committees, as is done now for other covert operations.

Changing Executive Order 12333 should not be seen as a panacea, but making terrorists susceptible to direct attack would signal the seriousness with which we view their acts and hopefully make them more hesitant to act against us.

As it stands, Executive Order 12333 represents a safe haven for narco-terrorists. While we deepen our involvement in the war against the drug lords, we must recognize that the price of that war will be exacted in blood as well as dollars. Should not their lives, as well as our own, be at stake?