CIA Proved Insurgent Leaders Assassination Ineffective in 2009: WikiLeaks

WASHINGTON, December 19 (Sputnik) — US insurgent leaders assassination program was evaluated as unsuccessful by CIA back in 2009, the CIA report released by WikiLeaks proves.

“In its key findings, the report warns of the negative consequences of assassinating so-called High Level Targets (HLT), a prediction that has been proven right,” the Thursday press release reads.

The CIA report dates July 7, 2009 and is titled “Best Practices in Counterinsurgency: Making High Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Tool.” The report evaluates advantages and disadvantages of eliminating insurgent leaders in assassination plots.

“The potential negative effect of HLT operations include increasing the level of insurgent support… strengthening an armed group's bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group's remaining leaders, creating a vacuum, into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents,” WikiLeaks quotes the CIA review.

The CIA review also says that "capturing leaders may have a limited psychological impact on a group, if members believe that captured leaders will eventually return to the group… or if those leaders are able to maintain their influence while in government custody, as Nelson Mandela did while incarcerated in South Africa.”

WikiLeaks underscores, however, that after the CIA report was written, assassinations by drone strike escalated to an “all-time high.”

On Thursday, the Pentagon reported that during the US-led coalition airstrikes had successfully killed multiple senior and mid-level leaders of the extremist militant group Islamic State.