I need some help here

(Sidebar: I'm still playing catch-up here, so a few of the items over the next or two will actually refer to bits that came up during my enforced absence. Like this one, for example.)

According to a forthcoming book by Thomas Reed, a former Air Force secretary and member of the National Security Council, as reported by The Age (Australia) for February 28, in 1982

Ronald Reagan approved a CIA plan to sabotage the Soviet Union's economy through covert transfers of technology that contained hidden malfunctions, including software that later triggered a huge explosion in a gas pipeline, according to a former White House official. ...

"In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds," Reed writes.

"The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." US satellites picked up the explosion.

Okay, what I need is for someone to explain to me, slowly and in careful detail, exactly why this was not an act of international terrorism.