WASHINGTON – President Bush is ready to revoke the presidential order barring assassinations and quickly order a hit on Saddam Hussein if there’s “a clear shot” to get him, a Republican senator claims, recalling a private conversation with Bush.
The White House yesterday said Bush “doesn’t recall if he said it or didn’t say it,” but didn’t deny the account by Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) – although officials said the no-assassination order remains in effect and “nothing is planned to change.”
Fitzgerald touched off a furor by telling a suburban Chicago newspaper about a private chat he claims he had with Bush aboard Air Force One on Jan. 7 – a trip that Chicago reporters say he’s been boasting about for weeks.
“I have personally talked to the president about this, and if we had intelligence on where [Saddam] was now and we had a clear shot to assassinate him, we would probably do that,” said Fitzgerald, who is in his first term.
“President Bush would probably sign an executive order repealing the executive order put in place by President Ford that forbid the assassination of foreign leaders,” Fitzgerald told the Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
When the paper’s staffers raised eyebrows, Fitzgerald said, “I don’t want to betray any confidences of the president. I assumed [Bush] had said that somewhere else. But maybe if he didn’t say that anywhere else, I shouldn’t have said that just now.”
An executive order can be reversed by another president. Ford issued his in 1977, in a post-Watergate response to criticism of CIA-backed plots.
But if there’s war, Saddam and his henchmen are “legitimate targets under international law” because they head Iraq’s military “command and control” structure, added White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.
The no-assassination order doesn’t cover the hunt for Osama bin Laden, because that is part of the war on terror, legal experts say.
Last year, it was revealed that Bush signed an intelligence order to authorize killing Saddam under specific circumstances. It directed the CIA to try to topple the dictator and to use lethal force to capture him.
Fitzgerald yesterday refused further comment, and his aides wouldn’t say if he was rebuked by the White House.