The current thread in which we are discussing the question of "Who killed the Tahoe assassins?" for the umpteenth time, prompts this question.

I figured I'd make it a separate thread, so those who are sick of the original question don't miss it

Were the would-be assassins even meant to escape in the first place?

Let's look at it from their POV.

The drapes are left open for them as they were told they would be. They lie in wait for Michael to enter the bedroom unprotected. They see him at the window and open fire. At the very same split second, Michael, smelling the danger, dives to the floor. Perhaps his dive to the floor was prompted by the fact that he actually saw the assassins. The assassins keep firing.

Question: How did they know that they missed? Their opening fire and Michael ducking happened so quickly that they could not have been certain that they weren't successful.

So they immediately begin making their way to their pre-planned escape route.

Which was what? A plan to walk out the front gate where a car would be waiting for them? Making their way to the dock, where a boat would be waiting for them?

Since the driver of the car (if there was one) or the pilot of the boat (if that was the plan) would have had no way of knowing if the hit was successful or not, shouldn't they have been there waiting for their passenger's arrival?

But in the thorough search of the estate after the shooting, neither the car nor the boat were discovered.

Which leads me to believe that it was Roth's intention to not have the assassins escape at all.

They were meant to be killed (and silenced) while still on the property.

Which brings us back to the original question: "By Who?"

Interesting (to me, at least) is Michael's comment to Tom in the boathouse:

"We're not gonna catch them. Unless I'm very wrong they're dead already. Killed by someone close to us...inside...very, very frightened they botched it."

With no viable escape plan for the killers, that would make Mike's observation at least partially incorrect. The assassins were not killed because the "botched" it. They were never meant to leave the property alive, and were killed to silence them.

Had the hit been successful, it would have been no less likely that they would have been caught while still on the property and made to talk.

So, I conclude that it was part of the original plan to kill the assassins.

Which means it could not have been Fredo who killed them, since he didn't know it was going to be be a hit in the first place, as evidenced by his late night telephone conversation with Ola.

Am I somewhat obsessed by this question? Sure. I think that one of, if not the main themes of GF II is the treachery within Michael's own family and Michael's quest to uncover who the traitor is.

Mike discovers that at worst Fredo is a traitor (or at best, a dupe for Roth), but the fact that the rest of the assassination plot is never uncovered, or at least revealed to the viewer, is, IMO, a major mis-handling of a key theme, and a major flaw in the film