The whistleblower organisation Wikileaks has released a classified CIA document asking what would happen if foreign countries began to view the US as an “exporter of terrorism”.

The document was prepared by the CIA’s “red cell”, a unit responsible for preparing analysis papers from an adversarial perspective.

It notes that a number of Americans have travelled overseas to commit violent acts, like David Headley, the Pakistani-American man who helped the Mumbai attackers in 2008; and Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish extremist who killed dozens of Palestinians in Hebron in 1994.

US citizens also provided “financial and material support” for armed groups in Northern Ireland: much of the funding for the Irish Republican Army, for example, came from Irish-Americans.

“Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon,” the report said.