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Archive 1

Commercial Terrorism

The opening section of the article ends with this sensational claim: "Support was also geared toward ensuring a conducive environment for American corporate interests abroad, especially when these interests came under threat from democratic regimes.[4][5]"

However, when reading the rest of the article, it did not seem to elaborate or back up this statement in any significant way. That definitely seems like an oversight. Either it needs to lay out the case for that statement, or it shouldn't be included in the opening section at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.88.165.61 (talk) 10:24, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The article is obviously incomplete, outlining only two examples - the Cubans and the Contras - and providing no real explanation why the U.S. government acted the way it did. TFD (talk) 15:59, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Recent revert

The difference between this article and the "state terrorism" article is that this one discusses support to non-state actors. The El Salvador case is support for state actors, however illegitimate they may have been. It belongs there. You can edit that page directly after you have a certain number of edits, or you could use the edit-semi-protected template as before (unclear why you deleted that). Vanamonde93 (talk) 00:18, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Um, ok when I have spare time I guess. But that page is just a bunch of arguments back and forth.--S0mewhat Damaged05 (talk) 00:22, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
Yes, you're right; but the solution is to fix that (easier said than done, I know!) rather than mess with the inclusion criteria elsewhere. Vanamonde93 (talk) 00:29, 4 June 2015 (UTC)
It is helpful when disputing an edit to provide a link. It is only state terrorism if it is carried out overtly by governments. Secret actions whether carried out by out-of-uniform or off-duty police or soldiers or by private civilians, even if sponsored by the host government, are not state terrorism. TFD (talk) 21:55, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

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Jundallah

The U.S. never provided material support to Jundallah. What actually happened is that Israeli Mossad agents supporting Jundallah presented themselves as CIA officers. See Foreign Policy:

"Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives—what is commonly referred to as a 'false flag' operation. The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah—a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. ... The report then made its way to the White House, according to the currently serving U.S. intelligence officer. The officer said that Bush 'went absolutely ballistic' when briefed on its contents. ... The debate over Jundallah was resolved only after Bush left office when, within his first weeks as president, Barack Obama drastically scaled back joint U.S.-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran, according to multiple serving and retired officers. The decision was controversial inside the CIA, where officials were forced to shut down 'some key intelligence-gathering operations,' a recently retired CIA officer confirmed. This action was followed in November 2010 by the State Department's addition of Jundallah to its list of foreign terrorist organizations—a decision that one former CIA officer called 'an absolute no-brainer.'"

The FBI did cultivate sources within Jundallah—which continued even after the CIA barred the most minimal contact with the group after the 2007 Zahedan bombings—but this was intelligence-gathering, not "state-sponsored terrorism." See The New York Times:

"Current and former officials say the American government never directed or approved any Jundallah operations. And they say there was never a case when the United States was told the timing and target of a terrorist attack yet took no action to prevent it."

Indeed, contradicting earlier reports, it seems Pakistan captured Abdolmalek Rigi and sent him to his death in Iran with U.S. support. Quoting Foreign Policy again:

"Rigi was turned over to the Iranians after the Pakistani government informed the United States that it planned to do so. The United States, this officer said, did not raise objections to the Pakistani decision. Iran, meanwhile, has consistently claimed that Rigi was snatched from under the eyes of the CIA, which it alleges supported him. 'It doesn't matter,' the former intelligence officer said of Iran's charges. 'It doesn't matter what they say. They know the truth.'"

If this belongs anywhere, it would be at Israel and state-sponsored terrorism.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 23:14, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Drug trafficking allegations

The article currently states:

Money was also raised for the Contras through drug trafficking, which the United States was aware of.[1] Senator John Kerry's 1988 Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems".[2]

References

  1. ^ National Security Archive. "The Contras, cocaine, and covert operations: Documentation of official U.S. knowledge of drug trafficking and the Contras". The National Security Archive/George Washington University.
  2. ^ "The Oliver North File". George Washington University. Retrieved 17 August 2011.

@Rgr09: Can you provide some feedback? That sounds just vague enough to give a slanted impression of what actually happened. Should the first sentence say "raised by" instead of "raised for"? Also, my impression is that Oliver North floated the idea of using drug money to support the Contras, but that it didn't actually happened. The relevance to this article is a bit lost on me, too. -Location (talk) 17:46, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I'll get back to you on that. Rgr09 (talk) 22:44, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

La Repubblica and Operation Gladio

This paragraph is one example of what bothers me about the article;

"In 1998, Milan judge Guido Salvini indicted U.S. Navy officer David Carrett on charges of political and military espionage for his participation in the Piazza Fontana bombing et al. Salvini also opened up a case against Sergio Minetto, an Italian official of the U.S.-NATO intelligence network, and "collaboratore di giustizia" Carlo Digilio (Uncle Otto), who served as CIA coordinator in Northeastern Italy in the sixties and seventies. The newspaper la Repubblica reported that Carlo Rocchi, CIA's man in Milan was discovered in 1995 searching for information concerning Operation Gladio."

Keep in mind that la Repubblica is traditionally a radical-left paper, so naturally, they're going to go along with the Soviet line that and tell people that it was a false flag terrorist plot by the CIA, rather than the anti-communist stay behind organization that it truly was. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 12:34, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

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NPOV

There's no substance to any of this. a) If there is controversy over US involvement supported by reliable sources, that should be added to the article; no such attempt has been made. b) "USA involvement is debated is not terrorism" Aside from being ungrammatical: Wikipedia doesn't care what you have to say about this. We present what reliable sources say. Do you have any sources that contradict what's in the article? c) The article doesn't discuss the 1973 coup at all: have you even read it? The assassination of Schneider may or may not belong here; but that's a different discussion. d) "Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles is WP:UNDUE" Why? Do you have sources about them presenting a different narrative? e) Does something being a human rights violation preclude it from being terrorism? Again, it's the sources that matter. f) ditto. TL;DR: you've provided no sources at all backing up anything you say: you need to do that. Vanamonde (talk) 20:33, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Removing Rene Schneider Section/Fix Introduction

I added the following sentence to the first paragraph: "However, it is important to note that U.S. support for a terrorist organization does not mean the U.S. supports that group's terrorist activities; most groups below were supported for separate geopolitical reasons."

@Levivich: reverted the change, saying "unsourced analysis"

I added the sentence to the first paragraph to address continuous issues with balancing neutral POV. Part of the reason for this is that there is no widely accepted definition of terrorism (see Definitions of terrorism). Similarly, there is no widely accepted definition of what it means to be a state sponsor of terrorism. The article State-sponsored terrorism itself is highly deficient on the matter: the "Definition" section only discusses U.S. law, and the first line seems to be a definition but is not contained in the source given. Calling the U.S. a state sponsor of terrorism can easily connote something that the article is not describing in most instances. The intro has its own specific problems as well. It says the U.S. "at various times" has supported terrorist groups and also supported "numerous" authoritarian regimes. According to the article, U.S. support for terrorists has been "prominent," which implies a larger scale than evidence is provided for. Furthermore, it claims the U.S. has extensively sponsored terrorism in the middle east and southern Africa, but no examples are given in the entire article. These vague generalizations are problematic for balancing POV. Thus, I think the intro should be rewritten to provide a clearer overview of what the article is saying.

The analysis for my addition came from the article itself. The third paragraph says "Various reasons have been given to justify such support. These include destabilizing political movements that might have aligned with the Soviet Union during the Cold War..." The rest of the paragraph lists several other geopolitical reasons the U.S. have supported groups engaged in terrorist activities. I originally believed there was evidence in many of the sections as well, but having examined them all again I no longer believe this is the case. I agree with Levivich's reversion. It is possible to take the third paragraph the way I understood it, but that is not the only possible understanding of the third paragraph. I think the third paragraph is also vague and needs to be rewritten.

My last problem is mainly with the Rene Schneider section. It already has a mark indicating that its sources are problematic. The entire section only documents an attempted assassination. It fits much better under Human rights violations by the CIA#Assassination and targeted killing. The definition of terrorism article clearly states that legitimate targets (like a foreign leader) do not count as terrorism. Furthermore, it states that terrorism "reaches more than the immediate target victims and is also directed at targets consisting of a larger spectrum of society." Clearly, assassination does not count as terrorism. Under WP:TERRORISM, something should only be labelled terrorism if in the original source. The sources for the article do not at all label the incident as terrorism. Thus, labelling the incident terrorism is completely unsourced, the main article on definitions of terrorism specifically excludes it from being terrorism, and there is a third article which the incident fits significantly better.

I deleted the Rene Schneider section. I agree with the revision of my first edit, but the entire intro part should be rewritten entirely for both neutral POV and just to be a clearer and more specific introduction to the actual content of the article. There are other problems with the rest of the article with respect to neutral POV (I'll make a separate, shorter talk page section), but the intro doesn't provide an accurate representation either way.— Preceding unsigned comment added by ImVeryAwesome (talk • contribs) 04:15, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Idea for reworking the article

Instead of citing individual historical episodes, why not do it country by country? For example, Germany and Cuba etc INFJMcLovin (talk) 23:38, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

No. Like this is better. Episodes with reliable and notable sources.93.86.153.177 (talk) 13:23, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

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