well, first, fox said it isn't true, so it must be.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98115,00.htmland then this article, which is jam-packed with links to supportive documents, showing that it went a little beyond training on launching a stinger. This all affirms the memories of numerous other sources I've read through the years, but as I don't have a photographic memory, I can't cite them:
http://www.futurepower.net/paz/cia_trained_bin_laden.htmThe CIA trained Osama bin Laden and other Arabs in the techniques of terrorism.
Most Americans have no idea of the extent of the activities of the secret agencies of the U.S. government. For example, the 1998 MSNBC article, Bin Laden comes home to roost. [msnbc.com] says that Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA. Osama bin Laden was linked to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, on February 26, 1993, and is assumed to be the leader behind the second bombing.
In a report called Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. Helped Midwife a Terrorist [public-i.org], the Center for Public Integrity [publicintegrity.org] provides excerpts from the book, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. The author, Ahmed Rashid, discusses CIA involvement in Afghanistan in more detail. The book was published by Yale University Press in 2000. The ISBN number of the paperback is 0-300-08902-3. It costs $14.95
Jane's, a company solely devoted to providing news about military events throughout the world, published an article on September 14, 2001 that provides another explanation of CIA involvement: Why? An attempt to explain the unexplainable [janes.com]. The article says,
The trainers [in terrorism] were mainly from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, who learnt their craft from American Green Beret commandos and Navy SEALS in various U.S. training establishments. Mass training of Afghan mujahideen was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan Army...
Note that both this article and the one linked below called Blowback Chronicles say that Arabs were brought to the U.S. for training in terrorism.
About four minutes into the September 18, 2001 edition of the NBC TV show, "Today", in the U.S., an expert who spoke on the show said that the CIA chose the Taliban to lead Afghanistan when the Soviets left the country. There was no discussion of the fact that a secret agency of the U.S. government chose the form of government of another country. The Taliban government is now hostile to the United States, and is supporting Osama Bin Laden.
The CIA has engaged in every activity that is considered terrorism. For example, see this quote from the 1979 Atlantic Monthly story, Inside the Department of Dirty Tricks [theatlantic.com]:
"We're not in the Boy Scouts", Richard Helms was fond of saying when he ran the Central Intelligence Agency. He was correct, of course. Boy Scouts do not ordinarily bribe foreign politicians, invade other countries with secret armies, spread lies, conduct medical experiments, build stocks of poison, pass machine guns to people who plan to turn them on their leaders, or plot to kill men such as Lumumba or Castro or others who displeased Washington. The CIA did these things, and more, over a long span of years.
(If you are not a citizen of the U.S., you may not know that the "CIA" is a secret agency of the U.S. government called the "Central Intelligence Agency". The Boy Scouts fact page [bsa.scouting.org] explains that the Boy Scouts of America [bsa.scouting.org] is an organization that helps young boys become responsible young men. The organization has a very good reputation for encouraging moral behavior. When the former head of the CIA said that the CIA was "not in the Boy Scouts", he was saying that the CIA does things moral people would not do. There is also an organization in the U.S. called the Girl Scouts.)
On September 15, 2001, The Guardian [guardian.co.uk], one of the largest newspapers in England, published a review of books about U.S. government involvement with Afghanistan, called Blowback Chronicles [guardian.co.uk]. Here are some quotes:
"Delighted by his impeccable Saudi credentials, the CIA gave Osama free rein in Afghanistan, as did Pakistan's intelligence generals."
Bin Laden and a man named Mustafa Chalaby, who ran a jihad refugee centre in Brooklyn [New York, U.S.A.], were both protégés of Abdullah Azzam. A formative influence on bin Laden, the charismatic Azzam was killed in a car-bomb in 1987: according to some rumours he was killed by the CIA. Others claim he was himself a CIA agent.
At the Farm and other secret camps, young Afghans and Arab nationals from countries such as Egypt and Jordan learned strategic sabotage skills. Passed down to the younger jihad generation which filled the ranks of the Bin Laden organisation, these skills would come back to haunt the United States. [The "Farm" is a commonly used name for the CIA's training center in Virginia, U.S.A.]
This is a remarkable statement. This and other sources say the CIA brought Arabs to the U.S. and trained them to be terrorists.
Here is another quote:
[U.S. President George W. Bush is] the son of a man with close ties to the oil company Unocal, which wanted to put a pipeline across Afghanistan. Among their partners in the venture were BP and the Saudi royal family.
The pipeline across Afghanistan [unocal.com] was cancelled due to the Taliban government there. This is an official Unocal document. (If you view the link, do a search for the word "route", then find the route on a map of Afghanistan [afghana.com]. Or, see this alternative map [pathfinder.com].) On February 12, 1998, the vice president of Unocal provided testimony [house.gov] about this to the U.S. House of Representatives. Unocal Vice President John J. Maresca said, in part, "CentGas cannot begin construction until an internationally recognized Afghanistan government is in place." This is an official U.S. government document, from a U.S. government web site. BP is the large oil company British Petroleum.
Unocal was called "ethically bankrupt" for its scheme to charge royalties on automobile fuel sold in the U.S., without actually providing anything new. See the article, It's the Regs, Stupid! [nationalreview.com]
Before George Bush senior was elected president, he was head of the CIA.
(If you are not a U.S. citizen, you may not know that the father of the present President of the U.S. is George Bush, senior. He also was elected President of the United States.)
There have often been books, and articles in magazines and newspapers, that indicate that the secret agencies consider themselves above the public parts of the U.S. government. Here is another quote from Blowback Chronicles [guardian.co.uk]:
Hindered by Congressional interference, the CIA covertly sought Mrs. Thatcher's help - in one incident, during the Falklands war, they curried favour by handing over an illegal supply of Stinger missiles to British officials in a Washington car park.
If seems reasonable to say that few U.S. citizens realize the extent to which secrecy has corrupted the U.S. government.
The CIA [cia.gov] is a huge secret U.S. government organization that has two main parts. The About the CIA [cia.gov] page explains that the Directorate of Intelligence is the analytical branch of the CIA. This branch provides information to the U.S. government. (There seems to be no evidence that there have been problems caused only by collection of information.)
It is the CIA's Directorate of Operations that advances secret purposes. The job description is something like this: You will often be away from home. Your job may be very dangerous. You will be allowed and even encouraged to do things that are illegal. You may sometimes arrange the killing of foreign leaders.
It is easy to imagine what sort of person is attracted to that kind of job.
"Blowback" is a word invented by the CIA to refer to situations in which people, whom the CIA trained in violence and sneakiness, turn against the United States. Blowback is not necessarily viewed by the CIA as a terrible thing, since more trouble for the U.S. means more money for the CIA. However, for the U.S. citizen, "blowback" is the equivalent of the Biblical saying, "You harvest what you plant."
