By Jacob G. Hornberger
The Future of Freedom Foundation
November 9, 2026
Ever since the U.S. government was converted to a national-security state after World War II, the national-security branch of the government - i.e., the military and the CIA - has wielded the power of assassination. Mind you, there was no constitutional amendment authorizing the federal government to wield this omnipotent, totalitarian-like power. It just automatically came with the conversion to a national-security state, whose inherent powers include assassination.
The federal government's assassination power, as we have seen in recent years as part of the "war on terrorism," is ordinarily exercised against foreigners rather than Americans. For example, long before President Trump launched his illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran, the U.S. military assassinated Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
More recently, supposedly relying on secret information, the military has been assassinating hundreds of people in little boats on the high seas who have, the military says, violated the federal government's drug laws.
This power of assassination, however, is not limited to foreigners. It also encompasses American citizens - those who the national-security branch deems to be official enemies of America or a threat to national security. That's why the military establishment, for example, assassinated American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.
Ordinarily, the president, who represents the executive branch of the federal government, and the national-security branch of the government, as represented by the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, are on the same page when it comes to exercising the power of assassination.
But let's ask ourselves some interesting hypothetical questions: What would happen if the executive branch and the national-security branch disagreed on the particular direction that America should take in the future ? How would that disagreement get resolved ? How would Americans want it to be resolved ? What if many sessions of negotiation failed to produce an agreement between these two branches of the federal government ? What then ? Whose vision and direction should prevail?
I think most Americans would say that the president's vision should prevail. After all, he was democratically elected. The officials in the national-security branch were not.
But let's take the hypothetical one step further. Let's assume that the national-security branch concludes that the direction that the president is taking America constitutes a grave threat to national security. Let's even assume that the Pentagon and the CIA become convinced that if the president's new direction and policies prevail, this will, without any doubt, result in the destruction of the United States. Let's assume, however, that the president disagrees with this assessment and steadfastly continues in the direction that the Pentagon and the CIA contend threatens the very existence of the nation.
What then?
That's what happened in Chile in the early 1970s. In a democratic election, the people of Chile elected a Marxist named Salvador Allende. The U.S. government concluded that Allende posed a grave threat to national security in both the United States and Chile. If Allende was permitted to take office and remain in office before the next election, U.S. officials were convinced that Chile would fall to the communists.
Thus, U.S. officials, especially within the CIA, worked to destabilize Allende's government and encouraged conditions conducive to a military takeover. On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military launched a coup, bombed the presidential palace, and overthrew Allende, who died during the assault.
It's worth noting that when the overall head of Chile's armed forces, Gen. René Schneider, expressed opposition to a coup on the ground that it would violate the Chilean constitution, U.S. officials conspired to violently remove him from office through kidnapping. Schneider was later shot dead by a group trying to kidnap him. No one within the U.S. national-security branch was ever prosecuted for the conspiracy to kidnap Schneider or for his murder. That's because of the inherent power of the U.S. national-security state to kidnap or assassinate anyone who supposedly poses a threat to U.S. national security.
Was the Chilean assassination attempt against Allende and the Chilean military coup justified ? Not legally because the Chilean constitution did not permit assassination or a coup as a way to remove a president from office. Nonetheless, the argument was made that the Chilean constitution was not a "suicide pact." If violating the constitution was the only way to save the nation, then there was nothing wrong with violating the constitution.
The situation was no different in principle some ten years before here in the United States. President Kennedy and the U.S. national-security branch - i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA - had a conflict of visions with respect to the future direction of America. Kennedy had begun moving toward an entirely different direction in foreign policy - one aimed at ending the Cold War and establishing peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba rather than perpetuating the conflicts and hostilities that had characterized America's national-security state since its inception.
The national-security branch was convinced that Kennedy was being naive. In the minds of officials at the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA, there could never be peaceful coexistence with Russia, China, Cuba, North Vietnam, North Korea, and the rest of the communist world. In the eyes of hard-line national-security officials, Kennedy's movement toward peaceful coexistence threatened to undermine the very policies they believed were essential to America's survival.
It goes without saying that the stakes over whose vision - Kennedy's or the national-security branch's - was going to prevail were extremely high. If Kennedy's vision prevailed, that would mean the end of the United States as a free and independent country insofar as the national-security branch was concerned. If the national-security branch's vision prevailed, that would mean never-ending wars, conflicts, hostilities, and the ever-growing chance of all-out nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States.
In the midst of this conflict, Kennedy had become deeply distrustful of the CIA, especially after the Bay of Pigs disaster. He reportedly expressed a desire to splinter the agency into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. For its part, the CIA was not ready to go quietly into the night, especially since CIA officials considered Kennedy to be a coward, an appeaser, and an incompetent president who was leading America to doom.
Whose vision should have prevailed - the executive branch's vision or the national-security branch's vision ? Many Americans defer to the judgment of national-security officials when those officials declare that a particular policy threatens the nation's survival. But how far does that deference extend ? Does it include the power to override the judgment of a democratically elected president ? Does it even include the power to remove him from office by force?
What about the Constitution ? It doesn't delegate the power to remove the president from office on the ground that he has become a threat to national security. But remember: The Constitution is not a suicide pact, as we saw in Chile in the 1970s. If following the Constitution means that America will be extinguished as a free and independent country, then it would be folly, the national-security branch would say, to follow the Constitution. It is the responsibility of the national-security branch to protect national security, Pentagon and CIA officials would say, especially when a naive, incompetent, soft-on-communism, Russia-loving president is leading America to destruction.
The question naturally arises: If a president was really moving America in the direction that would, say, lead to a communist takeover of America, would Americans want the national-security branch to step in and protect national security through its power of assassination ? Or would Americans instead say: No, the Constitution requires the national-security branch to stand aside, even if that supposedly means the destruction of America as a free and independent country?
Equally important, who would Americans want to make the final determination on whether the president's direction and policies do, in fact, constitute a grave threat to national security ? Would they want the president to make that final decision ? Or would they want the national-security branch to have the power to make that determination?
These are not merely abstract or hypothetical questions. They go to the heart of the conflict between President Kennedy and the national-security establishment during the final months of his presidency. They also raise a profoundly disturbing question about November 22, 1963: Given that national-security officials became convinced that Kennedy's vision for America's future posed an existential threat to the United States, did they decide that his assassination was, in fact, a legitimate means of saving the nation ? And if they did make that decision, how many Americans would say that they did the right thing?
This article was originally published at The Future of Freedom Foundation.