Series of recent DOJ cases show foreign operatives plotting assassinations in U.S.

The U.S. Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 17. (Bloomberg via Getty Images)

It sounds like a fanciful script for a Hollywood thriller: foreign government agents plotting assassinations in the United States.

To be sure, there have been suspected state-sponsored killings in the past 20 years that have grabbed international headlines. Former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning with a radioactive isotope in London in 2006 is one example; the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi diplomatic facility in Istanbul in 2018 is another.