Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: Interim Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities

This 1975 Interim Report of the so-called "Church Committee" documented US plots to assassinate foreign leaders. While plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro are widely known, the book also discusses the details of US involvement in the murders of Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic), Rene Schneider (Chile), and Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam). Only Fidel Castro survived assassination attempts. While this report absolves the United States of actually having killed the other four leaders, ascribing their deaths to other enemies, the details and responsibility are murky in some cases. In part this is because of the system of "plausible deniability" which the Church Committee discovered was built into the assassination plots. In the end, the Committee was unable to categorically state whether any US President actually approved of these plots.