CIA document analyses US as ‘exporter of terror’

WIKILEAKS has released a CIA memo analysing the risks of terrorists operating from the United States.

The report, which highlights Irish-American funding of the IRA as well as attacks by US-based or US-financed Jewish and Muslim terrorists, questions how foreign perceptions of the US could change with continued attacks.

“Much attention has been paid recently to the increasing occurrence of American-grown Islamic terrorists conducting attacks against US targets, primarily in the homeland. Less attention has been paid to homegrown terrorism, not exclusively Muslim terrorists, exported overseas to target non-US persons,” the report says.

The memo, titled What If Foreigners See the United States as an Exporter of Terrorism?, concludes that if the US is perceived by other nations as an “exporter of terrorism”, those countries may be less willing to co-operate with the US in the detention, transfer and interrogation of suspects.

The CIA played down the release of the February memorandum, a so-called “red cell” analysis that is supposed to provide an alternative view to the spy agency’s leaders.

“These sorts of analytic products — clearly identified as coming from the agency’s ‘red cell’ — are designed simply to provoke thought and present different points of view,” CIA spokesman George Little said in an email.

Wikileaks is locked in a dispute with the Pentagon over the leaking of secret military documents on the Afghan war.

It published nearly 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan on July 23 and has said it will publish another 15,000 within the next couple of weeks.