No, its not. What is revisionist is saying that OBL was "our man in Afghanistan", which has no basis in fact. It is pure fantasy.
en.wikipedia.org.
According to Peter Bergen, "there is simply no evidence for the common myth that bin Laden and his Afghan Arabs were supported by the CIA financially. Nor is there any evidence that CIA officials at any level met with bin Laden or anyone in his circle." [18] Bergen insists that U.S. funding went to the Afghan mujahideen, not the Arab volunteers who arrived to assist them. [19]
Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a former Afghan Arab fighter and suspected member of al-Qaeda states that, "t is a big lie that the Afghan Arabs were formed with the backing of the CIA, whose minions were Bin Laden and Azzam ... the accusation that bin Laden was an employee of the CIA [is false]." Former Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri wrote that "the United States did not give one penny to the [Arab] mujahideen. Is it possible that Osama bin Laden who, in his lectures in the year 1987, called for the boycott of U.S. goods ... is [a] U.S. agent in Afghanistan?" Abdullah Anas wrote, "I never learned, until my departure from Afghanistan, about the rumors concerning the CIA's involvement in the Afghan jihad through secret circles. I don't know, but what is known and clear is that the main supply depots for the jihad were in the bases of the Pakistani army in Peshawar." [6]
Marc Sageman, a former CIA Operations Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987 to 1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan's Mujahideen, states that no American money went to the Afghan Arabs, that "[n]o U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers," and that they "never crossed U.S. radar screens." [16]
According to Peter Beinart, quoting Vincent Cannistraro "who led the Reagan administration's Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987," the CIA "tried to avoid direct involvement in the [Soviet-Afghan] war," and that when Cannistraro coordinated Afghan policy, he never once heard bin Laden's name. [20] Both "Bill Peikney—CIA station chief in Islamabad from 1984 to 1986—and Milt Bearden—CIA station chief from 1986 to 1989 [...] flatly denied that any CIA funds ever went to bin Laden," with Peikney stating that "I don’t even recall UBL [bin Laden] coming across my screen when I was there." [21] According to Bearden, the CIA did not recruit Arabs because there were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight. [22]
Academic historian Paul Thomas Chamberlin wrote in 2018 that "[t]o date, no researcher has produced documentation of direct links between Washington and bin Laden or, for that matter, Zarqawi. The weight of evidence suggests that the CIA and the future leaders of Al-Qaeda and ISIS were not in communication with one another during the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan," but that "[n]evertheless, U.S. and Soviet operations in Afghanistan laid the groundwork for the rise of a global jihadist movement in the waning years of the Cold War." [23] |
