A little-known fact, according to a once-secret CIA analysis, is that America has long been an exporter of terrorism. And if that phenomenon were to become a widely-held perception, it could damage relations with foreign allies, the agency analysis said, and dampen their willingness to cooperate in "extrajudicial" activities, such as the rendition and interrogation of terrorist suspects.
That is the conclusion of a three-page classified analysis produced in February by the CIA's Red Cell, a think tank set up after the 9/11 attacks by then CIA Director George Tenet to provide "out-of-the-box" analyses on "a full range of relevant analytic issues."
Titled "What if Foreigners See the United States as an 'Exporter of Terrorism'?" the leaked paper, released Wednesday by the Web site WikiLeaks, cites the example of Pakistani-American David Headley, among others, to make its case that America is a terrorism exporter. This year Headley pleaded guilty to conducting surveillance in support of the 2008 Lashkar-i-Taiba attack in Mumbai, India, that killed more than 160 people. The militant group facilitated his movement between the U.S., Pakistan and India, the agency paper said.
Such exports are not new, the paper said. In 1994, an American Jewish doctor named Baruch Goldstein emigrated from New York to Israel, joined the extremist group Kach and killed 29 Palestinians praying at a mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, it said. That helped trigger a wave of bus bombings by the extremist Palestinian group, Hamas group in 1995, it noted.
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