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Calls for end of ban on assassinations |
2001-09-16 |
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the Justice Department would this week ask Congress for expanded powers to detain non-US citizens, intercept telephone communications and trace laundered money. "We need to upgrade and strengthen a number of laws," Ashcroft said, sketching out changes Washington wants to use against the prime suspect in the strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Osama bin Laden, and prosecute a wider war on terrorism in general. Ashcroft refused, however, to discuss a possible and highly controversial reversal of the ban on assassinations, but Secretary of State Colin Powell said "everything" -- including former president Gerald Ford's 1976 decision to forbid US personnel from killing foreign leaders -- would be reviewed. |
Posted by:Fred Pruitt |