For some reason, Bill Gates decides that he wants George Bush dead. He’s willing to use up to $50 billion to accomplish this task. Could he, with no current spy/assassin knowledge and contacts, assemble the manpower/intelligence/resources he needs to kill the President? Would his team be able to succeed? Would he be able to keep this scheme quiet until the deed is done? Finally, would he be able to get away with it?
I know nothing about the world of assassination beyond what I’ve seen in movies, so I am quite curious as to how even the richest person on Earth could go about it.
I’d say he could relatively easily. One guy with a rifle killed Kennedy, and some crazy guy almost got Reagan. Luckily for the President the intersection of people that are crazy enough to want to kill him, and those that are sane and intelligent enough to do so is very small. Gates is certainly a smart guy, and there is little doubt that he could get it done.
Well, theoretically he could – but how do you go about lining up an assassin without word of what you’re up to getting out? He may be within six degrees of separation of a hired killer – but might not one of those six degrees say something about the fact that he’s looking?
I’d say that Bill Gates trolling for competent hitmen would be less likely to succeed than the average psycho who gets himself a gun or a homemade bomb. Unless Gates already has connections to those circles of criminals (and I don’t think he does), he’d have to develop them. And the government has many ears listening to those channels. He’d likely get found out and caught before ever finding someone willing to take the contract.
Here’s my $0.02, carefully stolen from “Minority Report” the film.
Find some terminally ill guy who has no life insurance and has spent most of his family’s savings on medical care. Ask him to kill the President on the promise that his family would be financially looked after when he’s gone.
Gates could offer him plastic surgery so he wouldn’t be identified (and his family traumatised after his death) and then discretely pay up into a bank account with the odd wad of cash here and there.
Also based on a drunken idea that death scenes in films could be acted out for real using terminally ill patients, but that one wasn’t mine either.
What? You want your grandmother die like some bird in hospital room. Her translucent skin so thin you can see her last heartbeat works its way down her blue veins. Or do you want her to meet Chuck Norris?
And here I was going to say that he could hire some poor and corrupt country to stage a sharp, but small-scale and temporary, invasion of Washington that would just happen to catch the President in its clutches…
My first instinct is no, as there are already plenty of people out there with the will and large resources at their disposal (albeit not 50 billion). The Secret Service gears up for these sorts of things, and keeps an eye out already.
But how many of them can arrange a meeting with the Prez? I daresay that if Billy really wanted to arrange a meet (for nefarious reasons or not), he could do it with a minimum of phone calls. Privy to the details of the meeting, it would be much simpler to arrange an “accident” or some such non-traceable event. That is, simpler than starting from scratch with the President as your target.
When I was a kid, I used to wonder if dangerous movie stunts were performed by death row inmates. “Okay, Ted, you have a choice between sitting in the electric chair, inhaling lethal gas, or appearing in the new Clint Eastwood movie by driving this Corvette off a cliff and exploding.”
There was a CBS radio Mystery Theater similar to this that took place “in the future.” Criminals were sentenced to a certain amount of time in the movies. They’d be cast as soldiers in war flicks mostly, given weapons and told to fight. The ones who did really well and survived would get better weapons or situations in their next film. Eventually, if you lived long enough, you’d get your freedom.
As for the OP, Bill could probably do it and I have a few ideas how but damned if I am going to make a permanent record of it.
I’m not sure how long this is going to be in GQ, but anyway. Anybody as rich and powerful as Gates has contacts. That’s a big part of what power is. I’ve got no doubt he can call up somebody who can put him in touch with somebody who can put him in touch with somebody who can put together a team of former SAS commandos who could get through the Secret Service and get the job done. What I can’t believe is that he could guarantee everybody would keep quiet once all investigations started.
What constitutes “getting away with it”? Gates could undoubtedly accomplish the task of getting anyone he wants killed and has the resources to leave the United States and reside permanently in a country without extradition laws. Does living free in another country for the rest of his life count as “getting away with it”?
Nah, it’s much more fun to imagine Gates calling up the White House (because you know a guy at his level has some direct-dial power), arranging to drop by the Oval Office (because Bush can’t ignore a meeting request), walking in, extending his grip for a handshake, and then suddenly shanking him with like a sharpened toothbrush or something. Way more entertaining.
Of course, your average convict might or might not have the acting ability one would demand even of an extra or walk-on. Applying the concept to a reality show would work better.
