Terrorism from above involves covert and overt use of political violence conducted from a position of established authority to maintain and defend positions of power against actual or perceived enemies of the state. This includes empowered government and religious leaders who use terror to maintain power, suppress those desiring to change or reform, and implemented racist and discriminatory policies to enslave and vanquish people because of their ethnic or religious background.
For example, the colonial era clergy would falsely teach slaves that they were created slaves to serve white masters and any act against their master was an act against God, which was a moral way of suppressing the slave uprisings at the same time it was an institutionalized terrorism. This is an example of overt operations where by parties’ involved claim it’s not a terrorist act.

An example of a covert act f terror is when a government interferes in another nations political unrest like the British government's involvement in the overthrow of Dr. Milton Obote’s regime in Uganda and replaced him with General Idi Amin Dada who gave the Western Societies headache in later years. Likewise, the US involvement in overthrowing the democratically elected governments in Guatemala, Iran, etc; eventually "shaped the attitudes and stratagems of an older generation of radicals, for whom this experience signaled the necessity of armed struggle and an end to illusions about peaceful, legal, and reformist methods," according to historian James Dunkerly.
The Iraq war can also be put in this category because there were no WMDs or a link between Al Qaeda and 9/11 attacks that justified the US invasion in 2003. But I'll leave that to readers to take their own stand.