At various points in his career, Joe Biden expressed hesitance about U.S. global assassination programs. In 1998, during a Senate debate about the possibility of greenlighting assassinations of terrorist leaders, Biden was reticent, telling FBI Director Louis Freeh that he “would very much like a legal memorandum from the FBI, stating whether or not the prohibition against assassination of heads of state applies to organized crime units, and/or terrorist units.”
During a 1998 TV appearance, he was asked why, instead of launching cruise missiles at Afghanistan, the U.S. did not conduct a surgical mission to kill Osama bin Laden. “It’s against American law to assassinate,” Biden shot back. Biden was not technically correct. While every president since Gerald Ford has maintained an executive order prohibiting assassination, Congress has intentionally never legislated such a ban.
While every president since Gerald Ford has maintained an executive order prohibiting assassination, Congress has intentionally never legislated such a ban.
Congress’s failure to take a stance has allowed several presidents to conduct assassinations while framing them as justifiable and lawful, most prominently President Barack Obama through his targeted killing drone strike campaigns.
In 2009, as Obama’s vice president, Biden reportedly authorized a short paper that promoted a “counterterrorism plus” strategy for fighting Al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, supporting drones and special forces raids as a primary means of carrying out war in the region. Biden was a noted skeptic of proposals from U.S. generals to ramp up large-footprint deployments of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Biden opposed the 2011 raid authorized by Obama to kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, expressing reservations at the time about the odds of success. He later praised the raid, saying, “You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan.” He also opposed President Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. Biden did not cite the illegality of the strike but rather labeled it a “self-defeating” action that he said would make the region more dangerous in the long term.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
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IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
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I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
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