CIA review of High Value Targeting Operations.pdf

Best Practices in Counterinsurgency:
Making High-Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Tool

WikiLeaks release: December 18, 2014

Author: CIA Office of Transnational Issues; Conflict, Governance, and Society Group
Date: July 07, 2009

This is a secret CIA document assessing high-value targeting (HVT) programs world-wide for their impact on insurgencies. The document is classified SECRET//NOFORN (no foreign nationals) and is for internal use to review the positive and negative implications of targeted assassinations on these groups for the strength of the group post the attack. The document assesses attacks on insurgent groups by the United States and other countries within Afghanistan, Algeria, Colombia, Iraq, Israel, Peru, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand. The document, which is "pro-assassination", was completed in July 2009 and coincides with the first year of the Obama administration and Leon Panetta's directorship of the CIA during which the United States very significantly increased its CIA assassination program at the expense of capture operations. It produces a chart for US officials to use in strategically assessing future operations and methods in HVT assassinations.

Available at: Wikileaks