Thierry Meyssan, the French conspiracy theorist, went so far as to claim that Osama bin Laden is a fabrication of the CIA, and works for the U.S. Secret Service. The claim originates in another book, Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam, by Swiss journalist Richard Labévière. More commonly, theories abound that the U.S. provided support to Bin Laden during the Soviet War in Afghanistan in the 1980s, with the U.S. now seeing "blowback."
This claim by Labeviere is far fetched, but, there also is confusion regarding whether or not the CIA financed and aided bin Laden during the 1980s in Afghanistan, in resisting the Soviets. It was suggested in a 1998 article in Jane's Intelligence Review,[1] that the CIA provided funding to bin Laden during the Afghan war. Peter Bergen says this is a "fundamental misunderstanding of the Agency's operations in Afghanistan."[2] Ayman al Zawahiri also rejects claims that Bin Laden and the Arab mujahideen were supported financially or trained by the CIA in his December 2001 book, Knights Under the Prophet's Banner.
In Holy War, Inc., Peter Bergen explains that:[3]
Excerpt from Steve Coll's book, The Bin Ladens:
| “ | At Offley Chase, his estate outside London, Salem summoned Dietrich [a German friend] to his room. "We need to help my brother," Salem told him, as Dietrich recalled it.
"You’ve got many of them." Salem talked about Osama; Dietrich had heard some about him but not a lot. "He is now very religious," Salem said. "He is now in Afghanistan, and the Russians are there. People are getting killed. And I know that you lived there, and you need to help him." Osama had identified two priorities: missiles that could shoot down helicopters, and equipment that would allow Arab volunteers to manufacture ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles, by filling spent shells with new rounds. The war was intensifying. After a policy review in the spring of 1985, the United States decided secretly to escalate its support for the Afghan mujaheddin; for the first time, the U.S. identified victory over the occupying Soviet army as an objective. The CIA rapidly increased the quantity and quality of the weapons it sent in through Pakistan. The Soviets introduced more aggressive tactics as well, ordering elite helicopter-borne Special Forces units, called Spetsnaz, to Afghanistan; these assault troops flew raids against rebel supply lines and wreaked havoc along the Pakistan border. To thwart the Spetsnaz, the CIA agreed in 1986 to send heat-seeking U.S.-made Stinger missiles to the Afghans; the missiles were particularly lethal against helicopters. The initial shipments occurred during the first half of the year, just as Osama was moving with his family to Peshawar. An Afghan commander fired the first Stingers on the Afghan battlefield in September, at Jalalabad. The missiles destroyed several Soviet helicopters that day, and they quickly acquired an almost mythical reputation for potency among both the mujaheddin and the Soviets. Separately, at some point during this period (it is not clear when), the Reagan administration team supervising U.S. involvement with the Afghan war discussed whether to provide aid directly to the Arab volunteers based in Peshawar. The CIA ran most of the secret from day to day, but an interagency group at the White House, chaired by Assistant Undersecretary of Defense Michael Pillsbury, decided on the war’s broader policies. Twice Pillsbury flew by helicopter to the Afghan frontier to review training facilities and to meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, two rebel leaders who were particularly close to the Arabs. During these meetings, Pillsbury asked about the military effectiveness of the Arab volunteers. He concluded, he recalled, that the Afghan commanders didn’t want aid or supplies to be diverted to the Arabs; the Afghans saw these relatively small bands of shaheen, or "martyrs," as righteous warriors but also as sacrificial pawns of marginal military value. The Afghans wanted all the weapons for themselves. After he received Osama’s requests, Salem made several attempts to contact the Pentagon to see if he could arrange to supply Osama with portable missiles, according to a business partner who participated in these inquiries. Salem tried to locate the right person in the American defense bureaucracy, but he was unsuccessful, the partner said. It is not clear whether the Reagan administration ever made a formal decision to refuse to supply weapons to the Arab volunteers--no such document or account has ever surfaced--but conclusions such as those formed by Pillsbury after his inquiries in Pakistan clearly influenced American thinking about the matter. Pillsbury said he knew of no explicit decision to refuse aid to the Arab volunteers and that he would have known if such a decision had been made; still, they were not a priority. Salem felt he had no recourse but to use the private arms market, according to interviews with Dietrich and two other individuals in the private sector who joined discussions with Salem about supplying arms to Osama. Salem did receive some financial support from the Saudi government, according to these individuals, but he received no known aid from the United States. As Dietrich recalled it: "The problem was there was no clearance from any of the Western governments" to supply the Arab volunteers "with anti-aircraft missiles."[4] | ” |
In a December 1993 interview, Robert Fisk asked about American support for mujahadeen operations in Afghanistan. Bin Laden replied, "Personally neither I nor my brothers saw evidence of American help."[5]
Osama's response to the question, in an interview with Al Jazeera:
| “ | It’s an attempt to distort by the Americans, and praise be to God that He has thwarted their conspiracy…As for their claim that they supported the jihad and the struggle against the Soviets, well, this support came from Arab countries, especially from the Gulf…The Americans are lying when they claim they helped us at any point, and we challenge them to present a single shred of evidence to prove it. In fact, they were a burden on us…We were doing our duty, which is supporting Islam in Afghanistan, even if this did coincide with American interests. When the Muslims were fighting the Byzantines, during the fierce war between the Byzantines and the Persians, no one in their right mind could say that the Muslims were fighting as agents of the Persians against the Byzantines. There was merely a common interest…Unintended confluence of interests does not mean there is any kind of link or tacit agreement.[4] | ” |