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Template:State terrorism The United States of America has been accused of funding, training, and harboring individuals and groups who engage in terrorism by legal scholars, other nations, and human rights organizations, among others. Some scholars, such as U.S. foreign policy critic, Noam Chomsky, argue that the U.S. has been legally found guilty of international terrorism based on the verdict by International Court of Justice in Nicaragua v. United States, which condemned the United States federal government for its "unlawful use of force". The claimants say the U.S. government is hypocritical because it regularly asserts a public image and agenda of anti-terrorism.

Definition of the term state terrorism

The definition of terrorism and state terrorism remains controversial. Among nations there is as yet no international consensus or treaty on this or on what distinguishes a "terrorist organisation" from a "liberation movement". The Britannica Concise states that terrorism is "Systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective.".

The FBI's definition of terrorism is found in the U.S. Code, Title 18, Chapter 113B, and reads as follows:

Domestic terrorism refers to activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.

International terrorism involves violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any state. These acts appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping and occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.

U.S. State Department Definition of Terrorism:

The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant1 targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

The term "international terrorism" means terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than one country.

The term "terrorist group" means any group practicing, or that has significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.

The US Government has employed this definition of terrorism for statistical and analytical purposes since 1983.

However, the United Nations has never agreed on a definition of terrorism, and instead has four proposed definitions. One, proposed by terrorism analyst Alex P. Schmid states that, "Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby - in contrast to assassination - the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought".

Application of the United States government's own definitions

Professor Noam Chomsky of the Institute for Policy Studies has referred to the tactics used by agents of the US government and their proxies in their execution of US foreign policy in such countries as foreign policy countries such as Nicaragua, Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Argentina, Colombia, Turkey, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as a form of terrorism. Chomsky has also described the U.S as "a leading terrorist state." Chomsky has in turn been criticized for ignoring or justifying terror by states that he has favored, such as Communist China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. After President Bush began using the term "War on Terrorism," Chomsky stated in an interview:

The U.S. is officially committed to what is called "low-intensity warfare...If you read the definition of low-intensity conflict in army manuals and compare it with official definitions of "terrorism" in army manuals, or the U.S. Code, you find they're almost the same.

Similarly Daniele Ganser, a military and security studies academic, has written that "the covert action department of the CIA" is, "according to the definition of the FBI...a terrorist organisation." Dr. Ganser argues that according to the FBI, "`Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objective'," and that the directive which created the covert actions section of the CIA clearly fits this characterization. The relevant document -- also quoted by Ganser -- is the 1948 U.S. National Security Council directive, 10/2, where the activity of the CIA covert (psychological) operations bureau is defined as follows:

Plan and conduct covert operations which are conducted or sponsored by this government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them. Covert action shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world. Such operations should not include armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage, counter-espionage, and cover and deception for military operations.

Ganser has in turn been criticized by the US State Department for being "fooled" by a Soviet forgery, the "US Army Field Manual 30-31B."

Allegations

Latin America

Cuba

Cuban government officials have accused the United States Government of being an accomplice and protector of terrorism against Cuba on many occasions. According to Ricardo Alarcón, President of Cuba’s national assembly "Terrorism and violence, crimes against Cuba, have been part and parcel of U.S. policy for almost half a century.” The claims formed part of Cuba's $181.1 billion lawsuit in 1999 against the United States on behalf of the Cuban people which alleged that for over 40 years, "terrorism has been permanently used by the U.S. as an instrument of its foreign policy against Cuba," and it "became more systematic as a result of the covert action program." The lawsuit detailed a history of terrorism allegedly supported by the United States. The United States has long denied any involvement in the acts named in the lawsuit.

The claims center around allegations of "concrete advance intelligence" the CIA had of operations against Cuba from the early Sixties to mid-Seventies, notably the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 in 1976 which killed all 73 people aboard and a series of attacks on tourist sites in the 1990s. For example, the FBI had multiple contacts with one of the bombers but provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities.

The allegations also claim U.S. involvement in the paramilitary group Omega 7, the CIA undercover operation known as Operation 40, and the umbrella group the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations. Cuban Counterterrorism investigator Roberto Hernández testified in a Miami court that the bomb attacks were "part of a campaign of terror designed to scare civilians and foreign tourists, harming Cuba's single largest industry."

In 2001, Cuban Ambassador to the UN Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called for UN General Assembly to address all forms and manifestations of terrorism in every corner of the world, including - without exception - State terrorism. He alleged to the UN General Assembly that 3,478 Cubans have died as a result of aggressions and terrorist acts. He also alleged that the United States had provided safe shelter to "those who funded, planned and carried out terrorist acts with absolute impunity, tolerated by the United States Government." The Cuban government also asserted that in the 1990s, a total of 68 acts of terrorism were perpetrated against Cuba.

The Cuban Government, its supporters and some outside observers believe that the group Alpha 66, whose former secretary general Andrés Nazario Sargén acknowledged terrorist attacks on Cuban tourist spots in the 1990s and conducted training sessions at a secluded camp near the Florida Everglades, has been supported by the National Endowment for Democracy, the US International Development Agency and, more directly, according to Cuba's official newspaper Granma, the CIA.

A secret plan, Operation Northwoods, was approved by the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff and submitted for action to the US Department of Defense. This plan included acts of violence on US soil or against US interests, such as plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities; blowing up a U.S. ship, and contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "The US could follow up with an air/sea rescue operation covered by US fighters 'evacuate' remaining members of the non-existant crew. Casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation." The plan was rejected by the Kennedy administration.

In 1998 the Cuban government charged The Cuban American National Foundation, which was founded in 1981 at the initiative of the Reagan administration and receives U.S. government funding with, according to the official government-controlled Radio Havana Cuba, the continued financing of anti-Cuban terrorist activities Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba, also reported that U.S. senator Mel Martinez was meeting with Cuban American terrorists and sponsoring them via CANF.

In 2006, a former board member of CANF, Jose Antonio Llama testified that leaders of the foundation had created a paramilitary group to carry out destabilizing acts in Cuba. The foundation’s general board of directors didn’t know the details of the paramilitary group, which acted autonomously, Llama said. He added that current CANF board chairman Jorge Mas Santos was never told of the plan. The plans failed after Llama and four other exiles were arrested in the United States territory of Puerto Rico in 1997 on charges of conspiracy to assassinate Castro.

The US has also been criticized for failing to condemn Panama's pardoning of the alleged terrorists Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon, and Gaspar Jimenez, instead allowing them to walk free on U.S. streets.

The Case of Luis Posada

The Cubans cite the admission by Luis Posada Carriles that he was recruited by the CIA into becoming a trainer of other paramilitary forces in the mid 1960s. Posada, alongside Orlando Bosch, is accused by Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Cuba and Venezuela of organizing the terrorist bombing of the aircraft Cubana 455, and is described by researcher Peter Kornbluh at the non-governmental research institute National Security Archive, "is a terrorist, but he’s our terrorist", referring to Posada's relationship with the U.S. government. In 2006, the U.S. Justice Department described Posada as “an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks on tourist sites.”

The Cubans also cite the involvement of FBI attaché Joseph Leo, who admitted multiple contacts with one of the convicted bombers of Cubana 455, Hernan Ricardo, before the attack.

On May 18, 2005, the National Security Archive posted additional documents that purportedly show the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner. The archive also alleges that while Posada stopped being a CIA agent in 1974, there remained "occasional contact" until June 1976, a few months before the bombing. The Cuban ambassador to the U.N. claimed that Posada had been "doubly employed by the Government of the U.S." both before and after the bombing of the Cubana aircraft. After escaping from prison in Venezuela, Posada, who has boasted of plans to to "hit" a Cuban airliner only days before the attack, went to work alongside CIA operative Felix Rodriguez under Richard Secord supplying the Contras.

After serving 10 years for his role in the Cubana bombing and other terrorist attacks, Orlando Bosch was released from jail in Venezuela and given permission to reside in the United States with the assistance of Otto Reich, then US ambassador to Venezuela.

On his arrival in Miami in 1988, Bosch was honored with an "Orlando Bosch Day" celebration by the city politicians in Miami. Despite decisions made by the justice department and FBI to deport Bosch, they were overruled by President George H. W. Bush and he was allowed permanent residency.

In a series of interviews with the New York Times, Posada claimed responsibility for the bombings at hotels and nightclubs in Cuba in 1997 in which an Italian tourist died and scores more were injured. Posada said his activities were directly supported by Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Posada stated "The FBI and the CIA don't bother me, and I am neutral with them," he said. "Whenever I can help them, I do." He later denied that he was involved, stating that he had only wanted to create publicity for the bombing campaign in order to scare tourists.

As more revelations were made public via declassified documents and testimonies from involved parties, journalist Robert Scheer wrote in a column in the Los Angeles Times "For almost 40 years, we have isolated Cuba on the assumption that the tiny island is a center of terrorism in the hemisphere, and year after year we gain new evidence that it is the U.S. that has terrorized Cuba and not the other way around."

In an interview in 2001, Cuban Vice President Ricardo Alarcón stated: "The most quoted phrase by President Bush or ever repeated by him refers to the same idea every time he speaks. "'Those who harbor a terrorist are as guilty as the terrorist himself'".

Posada was arrested in Miami in May 2005 and held for entering the US illegally. On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported because he faced the threat of torture in Venezuela. On May 8, 2007 U.S. district judge Kathleen Cardone dismissed seven counts of immigration fraud and ordered Posada's electronic bracelet removed. The ruling criticized the U.S. government's "fraud, deceit and trickery" during the interview with immigration authorities that was the basis of the charges against Posada.

Nicaragua

Following the rise to power of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Reagan administration ordered the CIA to organize and train the right wing guerilla group "Contras". Florida State University professor, Frederick H. Gareau, has written that the Contras "attacked bridges, electric generators, but also state-owned agricultural cooperatives, rural health clinics, villages and non-combatants." US agents were directly involved in the fighting. "CIA commandos launched a series of sabotage raids on Nicaraguan port facilities. They mined the country's major ports and set fire to its largest oil storage facilities." In 1984 the US Congress ordered this intervention to be stopped, however it was later shown that the CIA illegally continued (See Iran-Contra affair). Professor Gareau has characterised these acts as "wholesale terrorism" by the United States.

In 1984 a CIA manual for training the Nicaraguan contras in psychological operations was leaked to the media, entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War".

The manual recommended “selective use of violence for propagandistic effects” and to “neutralize” government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were taught to lead:

...selective use of armed force for PSYOP effect.... Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA , but extensive precautions must insure that the people “concur” in such an act by thorough explanatory canvassing among the affected populace before and after conduct of the mission.

The Guardian newspaper quoted a survivor of a Contra attack on Jinotega provence:

Rosa had her breasts cut off. Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had their arms broken, their testicles cut off, and their eyes poked out. They were killed by slitting their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit."

Former State Department official William Blum has written that "American pilots were flying diverse kinds of combat missions against Nicaraguan troops and carrying supplies to contras inside Nicaraguan territory. Several were shot down and killed. Some flew in civilian clothes, after having been told that they would be disavowed by the Pentagon if captured. Some contras told American congressmen that they were ordered to claim responsibility for a bombing raid organized by the CIA and flown by Agency mercenaries."

According to author William Blum the Pentagon considered US policy in Nicaragua to be a "blueprint for successful US intervention in the Third World" and it would go "right into the textbooks".

Nicaragua vs. United States

The Republic of Nicaragua vs. The United States of America was a case heard in 1986 by the International Court of Justice which found that the United States had violated international law by direct acts of US personnel and by the supporting Contra guerrillas in their war against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The Court ruled in Nicaragua's favor, but the United States refused to abide by the Court's decision, on the basis that the court erred in finding that it had jurisdiction to hear the case. The court stated that the United States had been involved in the "unlawful use of force". Noam Chomsky stated in an interview in Pakistan Television that:

The World Court considered their case, accepted it, and presented a long judgment, several hundred pages of careful legal and factual analysis that condemned the United States for what it called “unlawful use of force”--which is the judicial way of saying “international terrorism”--ordered the United States to terminate the crime and to pay substantial reparations, many billions of dollars, to the victim.

The ICJ used the Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare CIA manual as evidence in the case.

However, regarding human rights violations by the Contras, the Court in its voted on statements "Finds that the United States of America, by producing in 1983 a manual entitled Operaciones sicologicas en guerra de guerrillas, and disseminating it to contra forces, has encouraged the commission by them of acts contrary to general principles of humanitarian law; but does not find a basis for concluding that any such acts which may have been committed are imputable to the United States of America as acts of the United States of America".

Guatemala

Declassified CIA documents prove that the United States was instrumental in organizing, funding, and equipping the 1954 coup which toppled the democratically elected government of Guatemala. Analysts Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh note that "After a small insurgency developed in the wake of the coup, Guatemala's military leaders developed and refined, with U.S. assistance, a massive counterinsurgency campaign that left tens of thousands massacred, maimed or missing."

CIA staff historian Steven Haines has reported that already in 1952 -- from the very outset of planning -- the CIA organizers compiled lists of public and private Guatemalan citizens who were to be "eliminate immediately in event of successful anti-Communist coup.". While the CIA has officially reported that these plans were not implemented this is widely questioned because, as Doyle and Kornbluh report, "the declassifiers of this study, and other related documents, have deleted the names of the targeted individuals, making it impossible to verify that none of them were killed during or in the aftermath of the coup."

The CIA scrambled to convince the White House that it was an unqualified and all but bloodless victory, however. After Arbenz resigned, Eisenhower called the Director of Central Intelligence, Allan W. Dulles, and his senior covert planners into a formal briefing of the operation. Cullather's account now reveals that the agency lied to the president, telling him that only one of the rebels it had backed was killed.

In 1995 CIA aid was stopped. A 1996 report by the Intelligence Oversight Board stated that "Relations between the US and Guatemalan governments came under strain in 1977, when the Carter administration issued its first annual human rights report on Guatemala. The Guatemalan government rejected that report's negative assessment and refused US military aid." Relations between the two countries warmed in the mid-1980's the Reagan administration's covert funding of several wars in Central America. In December 1990, however, the Bush administration suspended almost all overt military aid."

According to the Center for International Policy, "The CIA established a liaison relationship with Guatemalan security services widely known to have reprehensible human rights records, and it continued covert aid after the cutoff of overt military aid in 1990. This liaison relationship and continued covert aid occurred with the knowledge of the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Congressional oversight committees. Contrary to public allegations, CIA did not increase covert funding for Guatemala to compensate for the cut-off of military aid in 1990."

In a series of 32 declassified documents spanning over 35 years (from 1966 to 1995), George Washington University historians Kate Doyle and Carlos Osorio show that U.S. policy funded, trained, and equipped the Guatemalan military and government despite frequent and recurrent evidence that death squads and "clandestine counter-terrorist units" were being used "to carry out abductions, bombings, torture, and summary executions."

In another series of documents from the same project , analysts present documentation of U.S. training, cooperation and political support of Colonel Byron Lima Estrada, despite U.S. Department of State and CIA knowledge of his frequent command of and/or participation in extra-judicial killings, kidnappings and civilian massacres. Colonel Estrada would eventually rise to command D-2, the Guatemalan Military Intelligence services who were responsible for many of the terror tactics wielded throughout the 1980's against the Guatemalan people.

In 1999, an independent Guatemalan Truth Commission named "The Historical Clarification Commission" issued a damning report which, among other things, clearly stated that the "government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some state operations." Among the report's conclusions were

...estimate that the Guatemalan conflict claimed the lives of some 200,000 people with the most savage bloodletting occurring in the 1980s. Based on a review of about 20 percent of the dead, the panel blamed the army for 93 percent of the killings and leftist guerrillas for three percent. Four percent were listed as unresolved....the army committed 626 massacres against Mayan villages.... "eliminated entire Mayan villages...completely exterminat Mayan communities, destroy their livestock and crops."

The report went on to term the Guatemalan military's campaign in the northern highlands a "genocide," and noted that besides "carrying out murder and "disappearances," the army routinely engaged in torture and rape. "The rape of women, during torture or before being murdered, was a common practice" by the military and paramilitary forces, the report found."

US Government funding and training of Guatemalan "Death Squads" came to light in the years 1990-91. US citizen and nun, Sister Diana Ortiz, took a US civil court case against General Hector Gramajo Morales, who was then attending Harvard University after having given that year's commencement speech at the SOA. Sister Ortiz stated that she was abducted by police officers under Morales' command and taken to a secret prison where she was tortured and raped repeatedly. A 1992 report to the United Nations General Assembly recounts her testemony,

Then she was lowered into an open pit packed with human bodies - the bodies of children, men and women, some decapitated, some lying face up and caked with blood. Some were dead, some were alive. All were swarming with rats. After hours of torture, Sister Ortiz was returned to the room of rape and interrogated where her ordeal continued. As her torturers began to rape her again, they said "Alejandro, join us and have some fun." Alejandro was a tall, light complexioned man, who spoke broken Spanish, but perfect North American English. They usually referred to him as "boss". He cursed, and ordered them to stop, because their victim was a North American nun, and her disappearance had become public. Several times Alejandro said that he was sorry about what had happened. Sister Ortiz asked what would happen to the other people she saw being tortured. He told her not to be concerned about them.

While at Harvard, Gramajo-Morales stated in his defense:

"We have created a more humanitarian, less costly strategy, to be more compatible with the democratic system ... which provides development for 70 percent of the population while we kill 30 percent. Before, the strategy was to kill 100 percent."

Professor Gareau argues that the School of the Americas, a US Army institution, where Morales trained as a young officer and taught in later life, is a terrorist training ground. He notes a UN report which states the school has "graduated 500 of the worst human rights abusers in the hemisphere." He further argues that people protesting against the school are frequently beaten and arrested, "By the year 2002, 71 demonstrators had served a total of 40 years of jail time for protesting in front of the School of the Americas". This includes an 88 year old nun. Gareau claims that by funding, training and supervising Guatemalan 'Death Squads' Washington was complicit in state terrorism.

In their 1998 "Report On Guatemala" Rolando Alecio and Ruth Taylor condemn the "legacy of state terror" the nation has inherited from the U.S.-backed and -trained military. Similarly, journalist Minor Sinclair, writing in the Sojourner, stated that

Recent disclosures have revealed the extent of U.S. support for the Guatemalan army despite its reputation as the most repressive military in Latin America. For years Guatemala's elite military officers have been trained in the United States, and at any given time dozens are on the CIA payroll.

Because of the controversy surrounding many of its graduates, the former School of the Americas has been reorganized and renamed to The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). It remains a passionately contended institution.

Middle East

Iran

Stephen Kinzer has written that in 1953 agent Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. oversaw Operation Ajax, which involved organised riots and the training of right-wing terrorist groups in a successful effort to overthrow the democratically-elected Iranian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq, and reverse the nationalization of Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later renamed BP). According to some sources, the United States believed that, by dissolving the parliament and working with the Communist Tudeh Party, Mossadeq was making probable a communist-inspired takeover.

According to an article in the Asia Times, "Sponsoring terrorist activities inside Iran has been a consistent feature of US regional policy over the past quarter-century."

Iraq

The New York Times reported that, according to former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA orchestrated a bomb and sabotage campaign between 1992 and 1995 in Iraq via one of the resistance organizations, Allawi's group. According to the Iraqi government at the time, and one former CIA officer, the bombing campaign against Baghdad included government and civilian targets. According to this former CIA official, the civilian targets included a movie theater and a school bus and children were killed in the bombing of the schoolbus. No public records of the secret bombing campaign are known to exist, and the former U.S. officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. "But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then."

Western Europe

On October 24, 1990 Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti told the Italian Parliament that NATO had long held a covert policy of training partisan in the event of a Soviet Invasion of Western Europe. Under Operation Gladio the CIA, British MI6 and NATO trained and armed partisan groups in NATO states to fight a guerrilla war if they were captured during a future Soviet invasion. It has been alleged that these groups and individuals in them were responsible for the strategy of tension in Italy which aimed at impeding the "historic compromise" between the Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which would have allowed the Christian Democrats to invite PCI members of parliament to serve as members of the governing coalition. This strategy of tension allegedly included the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and the Bologna massacre (1980) political assassinations in Belgium, military coups in Greece (1967) and Turkey (1980) and an attempted coup in France (1961). The supposed aim of this group was to prevent Communist movements in Western Europe gaining power.

In 2000, a report from the Italian Democratic Party of the Left (formerly the Italian Communist Party) concluded that the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI (Communist Party), and to a certain degree also the PSI (Italian Socialist Party), from reaching executive power in the country." The report stated that "Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence." The centrist Italian Republican party said the report was worthy of a 1970s Maoist group.

The US State Department has admitted the existence of Gladio only as a plan which was to be activated in the event of Soviet occupation of Western Europe during the Cold War, but has continued to deny it qualified as terrorism. The United States maintains that several researchers have been influenced by a Soviet Cold War forgery.

Quotes

One has to ask whether there was transparency in the invasion of Iraq. The world knows President Bush lied openly about Iraq having chemical weapons, They keep on bombing cities, killing children, they have become a terrorist state.--Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, 2005.

Actually, who is the terrorist, who is against human rights? The answer is the United States because they attacked Iraq. Moreover, it is the terrorist king, waging war. --Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz, 2003

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it. --Noam Chomsky

Further reading

• Gareau, Frederick H. (March 2004). State Terrorism and the United States : From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism. Clarity Press. ISBN 0-932863-39-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

See also

• Allegations of war crimes against U.S. officials
• American terrorism
• Command responsibility
• Foreign relations of the United States
• List of acts labelled as state terrorism sorted by state
• List of terrorist incidents
• US invasions
• List of United States military history events
• Torture manuals

External links

• Understanding Terrorism
• Bush nominee linked to Latin American terrorism
• Bush Terror Elite Wanted 9/11 to Happen

References

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39. ^ Cuba Statement to the United Nations 2001 since the Cuban revolution
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50. Life With Luis Posada. The Atlantic online.
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51. Cuban official demands action on Posada
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54. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB157/index.htm National Security archives
55. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/19/i_ins.01.html Jose Posada Carriles: Hero or Hardened Killer?.CNN.
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58. http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/98_columns/071498.htm A Startling Tale of U.S. Complicity.
59. No deportation for Cuban militant (BBC)
60. Judge throws out charges against anti-Castro militant cnn.com, May 8, 2007
61. Gareau, Frederick H. (2004). State Terrorism and the United States. London: Zed Books. pp. 16 & 166. ISBN 1-84277-535-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
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64. "Terrorism Debacles in the Reagan Administration". The Future of Freedom Foundation. Retrieved 2006-07-30.
65. The Guardian, 15 November 1984
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67. William Blum, p305
68. Official name: Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicar. v. U.S.), Jurisdiction and Admissibility, 1984 ICJ REP. 392 June 27, 1986.
69. Morrison, Fred L. (January 1987). "Legal Issues in The Nicaragua Opinion". American Journal of International Law. 81: 160–166.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: year (link) "Appraisals of the ICJ's Decision. Nicaragua vs United State (Merits)"
70. "International Court of Justice Year 1986, 27 June 1986, General list No. 70, paragraphs 251, 252, 157, 158, 233". International Court of Justice. Retrieved 2006-07-30. Large PDF file from the ICJ website
71. "On the War in Afghanistan Noam Chomsky interviewed by Pervez Hoodbhoy". chomsky.info. Retrieved 2006-07-30.
72. ^ ICJ Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America)
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74. Report on the Guatemala Review Intelligence Oversight Board. June 28, 1996.
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80. Michael Ratner. Civil Remedies for Gross Human Rights Violations
81. http://harvardwarcriminals.blogspot.com/2007/05/hector-gramajo.html
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85. http://harvardwarcriminals.blogspot.com/2007/05/hector-gramajo.html
86. Gareau, Frederick H. (2004). State Terrorism and the United States. London: Zed Books. pp. pp22-25 and pp61-63. ISBN 1-84277-535-9. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
87. Minor Sinclair. "Sorrow Lifted to the Heavens". Retrieved 2007-06-23.
88. "Teaching democracy at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation"
89. Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. "FAQ".
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91. "50 Years After the CIA’s First Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Foreign Government We Take a Look at the 1953 US Backed Coup in Iran", Democracy Now!, 08-25-2003.
92. "A Very British Coup", BBC Radio 4, 08-22-2005.
93. Shahrooz, Kaveh. "All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror" (Stephen Kinzer), Harvard Human Rights Journal, 08-01-2005.
94. Kinzer, Stephen (2003). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. John Wiley & Sons Inc. 0471265179. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
95. "Country Studies: Iran:Chapter 1 - Historical Setting:MOSSADEQ AND OIL NATIONALIZATION". Library of Congress. Retrieved March 7. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
96. Bhadrakumar, M K (2007). "Foreign devils in the Iranian mountains". Asia Times. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
97. Brinkley, Joel (June 9). "Ex-C.I.A. Aides Say Iraq Leader Helped Agency in 90's Attacks". New York Times. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
98. Vulliamy, Ed (1990). "Secret agents, freemasons, fascists... and a top-level campaign of political 'destabilisation'". The Guardian: 12. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
99. Würsten, Felix (2005). "Conference "Nato Secret Armies and P26": The dark side of the West". ETH Life Magazine. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
100. Richards, Charles (1990). "Gladio is still opening wounds". The Independent: 12. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
101. "Translated from Bologna massacre Association of Victims Italian website". Google.com. Retrieved 2006-07-30.Template:It icon
102. Floyd, Chris (2005). "Global Eye - Sword Play". The Moscow Times. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
103. Hans Depraetere and Jenny Dierickx, "La Guerre froide en Belgique" ("Cold War in Belgium") (EPO-Dossier, Anvers, 1986) Template:Fr icon
104. Selahattin Celik, Türkische Konterguerilla. Die Todesmaschinerie (Köln: Mesopotamien Verlag, 1999; see also Olüm Makinasi Türk Kontrgerillasi, 1995), quoting Cuneyit Arcayurek, Coups and the Secret Services, p.190
105. Pierre Abramovici and Gabriel Périès, La Grande Manipulation, éd. Hachette, 2006
106. "US 'supported anti-left terror in Italy'". The Guardian. 2000. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
107. Willan, Philip (2001). "Obituary: Paolo Emilio Taviani". The Guardian. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
108. "Chavez: US is a terrorist state". Aljazeera. 2005. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
109. "Indonesian VP: United States Is 'Terrorist King'". Reuters. 2003. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

• Foreign relations of the United States
• State terrorism