Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is renewing his claims that US secret services, under the Bush administration, conducted assassinations in "a lot of countries, including Latin America."

Hersh says it was part of an executive assassination ring that reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Seymour Hersh is a noted journalist. He was the first to expose the ‘My Lai Massacre’ conducted by the US military in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, and as such commands a weighty presence in the field of investigative journalism.

Some Republicans have gone so far as to call him a terrorist. The mere mention of Hersh’s name strikes fear in the hearts of US politicians.

The allegations that Hersh is making now are very serious. There is a general understanding that in the theater of war almost anything goes, and it is likely assassination orders were made.

However, Hersh claims the Bush administration abused this tacit wartime practice to sign assassination orders of people in Latin America and even such countries like Kenya in Africa.

If proven true, these allegations are highly illegal. In the 1970s then US President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, the outcome of which effectively barred the CIA from assassinating foreign leaders.

Therefore, if the contracts killings were indeed ordered, then it all happened above the heads of CIA officials as well as the US ambassadors. Hersh indicts former Vice President Dick Cheney as the one who signed these orders personally.

Some countries like Spain are trying to prosecute George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes. Allegations such as Hersh’s only help to sustain their accusations, and could make the pair even more enemies than the ones they have made in the Middle East.

Unlike its predecessor, the Obama administration has distanced itself from the former rhetoric and is trying to be much more transparent about its executive affairs.