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State sponsored terrorism can provide significant foreign policy benefits, but terrorist organizations are regularly observed to act in opposition to their sponsor’s interests. Previous scholars have analyzed sponsorship using the principal-agent framework, describing undesired behaviors as agency loss or shirking. However, there is currently no large-N empirical study evaluating the behaviors of sponsored groups. In this paper, I evaluate agency loss and agency success through organizational behaviors, using newly developed data to examine a wide range of sponsorship observations. I find that contractual obligations, such as sponsorship exclusivity and types of support, and direct monitoring by sponsors influence the targeting and number of terrorist attacks by sponsored groups. The results offer insights into the dynamics of the sponsor-terrorist relationship and how weaknesses in these relationships can develop.