FW: Assassination euphemisms

[Victor Steinbok]

  Several early GB sources I checked, including Conde, identified "army
intelligence" as the source. Apocalypse Now uses a "civilian" that is
undoubtedly a CIA agent. I'll let you, guys, fight it out as to who
might have used it first and who merely borrowed it later.

But here's a bit more--likely the source of Gerald Cohen's story:

Green Berets .
St. Petersburg Times - Google News Archive - Aug 16, 1969
> Gregory asserted that officials in Washington were "telling bald-faced
> lies" in claiming that the slaying was carried out after the had
> revoked its original order to "terminate with extreme prejudice" the
> agent, meaning to kill him.

It's a little hard to tell who coined the phrase or even used it here,
as CIA initiated the kill order, but the instructions came through the
"Special Forces", and Gregory claimed he got it from an Army
intelligence officer. It's a little hard to figure out the context, as I
can't find the first part of the story from page 1-A, but, it seems, the
victim was a double agent (or, as Gregory tells it, "a double or triple
agent") who was killed and his body dumped into the South China Sea. In
fact, following at least two weeks of requests for instruction from the
CIA, the agent's execution was ordered, just a day before the word
finally came from CIA to "spare him".

     VS-)

PS: Another interesting bit from the same paper--one headline speaks of
"lie tests" in a story about the fire on QE liner. Within the text, the
identification is "lie detector test", but the headline is what jumps at
you.

On 7/14/2010 12:30 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> Is it possible that the phrase "terminate with extreme prejudice."
> was used first by the CIA (or some other nefarious organization), and
> thereafter found its way (in whatever, probably not very crucial,
> chronological order) into Congressional testimony, Vietnam War usage, and film?
>
> That would resolve any illogicalities or disputed "cuteness".
>
> Joel
>
> At 7/14/2010 12:44 PM, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>> The incident I related below occurred before any novels or films had been
>> written about the Vietnam War. And because of the context, I never saw
>> anything cute about the phrase "terminate with extreme prejudice."  I
>> assumed at the time (rightly or wrongly) that it was used as a sort of code
>> to confuse any enemy who might pick up the radio transmission while at the
>> same time conveying a clear message to the American soldiers what to do with
>> the captured Viet Cong.
>>
>>   The words "with extreme prejudice" might have been redundant, but they also
>> helped make crystal clear what the fate of the Viet Cong prisoner was to be.
>>
>> Gerald Cohen
>>
>> *   *   *   *
>>
>

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