Wrong. We never gave anything to bin Laden. We gave weapons and supplies to other freedom fighters, but not him.
Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden - Wikipedia
The Central Intelligence Agency helped Osama bin Laden build an underground camp at
Khost, which bin Laden used to train Mujahideen soldiers.
[4] The United States would later attack this camp when bin Laden was held responsible for the United States embassy bombings in Africa.
In a 2004 article entitled "Al-Qaeda's origins and links", the
BBC wrote:
During the anti-Soviet war Bin Laden and his fighters received American and Saudi funding. Some analysts believe Bin Laden himself had security training from the CIA.
[5]
Robin Cook,
Foreign Secretary in the UK from 1997–2001, believed the CIA had provided arms to the Arab mujahideen, including Osama bin Laden, writing, "Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the '80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage war against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan."
[6]
In conversation with former British
Defence Secretary Michael Portillo, two-time Prime Minister of Pakistan
Benazir Bhutto said Osama bin Laden was initially pro-American.
[7] Prince
Bandar bin Sultan of
Saudi Arabia, has also stated that bin Laden once expressed appreciation for the United States' help in Afghanistan. On CNN's
Larry King program he said:
[8]
Bandar bin Sultan: This is ironic. In the mid-'80s, if you remember, we and the United - Saudi Arabia and the United States were supporting the Mujahideen to liberate Afghanistan from the Soviets. He [Osama bin Laden] came to thank me for my efforts to bring the Americans, our friends, to help us against the atheists, he said the communists. Isn't it ironic?
Larry King: How ironic. In other words, he came to thank you for helping bring America to help him.
Bandar bin Sultan: Right.
[9]
I'll just skip ahead to the parts that are not in dispute.
Sir Martin Ewans, noted that the Afghan Arabs "benefited indirectly from the CIA's funding, through the ISI and resistance organizations,"
[25] and that "it has been reckoned that as many as 35,000 'Arab-Afghans' may have received military training in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $800 million in the years up to and including 1988."
[26]
Some of the CIA's greatest Afghan beneficiaries were Arabist commanders such as
Jalaluddin Haqqani and
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who were key allies of Bin Laden over many years.
[27][28] Haqqani—one of Bin Laden's closest associates in the 1980s—received direct cash payments from CIA agents, without the mediation of the ISI (
Charlie Wilson described Haqqani as "goodness personified"). This independent source of funding gave Haqqani disproportionate influence over the mujahideen, and helped Bin Laden develop his base.
[29]
Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, an associate of Bin Laden's, was given his visas to enter the US on four separate occasions by the CIA.
[30] Rahman was recruiting Arabs to fight in the Soviet-Afghan war, and Egyptian officials testified that the CIA actively assisted him. Rahman was a co-plotter of the
1993 World Trade Center bombing.
[31][32]
One allegation not denied by the US government is that the U.S. Army enlisted and trained a former
Egyptian soldier named
Ali Mohamed, and that it knew Ali occasionally took trips to Afghanistan, where he claimed to fight Russians.
[33][34][
page needed]According to journalist
Lawrence Wright who interviewed U.S. officials about Ali, the Egyptian did tell his Army superiors he was fighting in Afghanistan, but did not tell them he was training other Afghan Arabs or writing a manual from what he had learned from the
US Army Special Forces. Wright also reports that the CIA failed to inform other US agencies that it had learned Ali, who was a member of
Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was an anti-American spy.
[34][
page needed]