“On May 19, 1996, UBL [Usama Bin Ladin] left Sudan, apparently of his own accord, and relocated to Afghanistan. In many ways this was the worst-case scenario for us. Afghanistan at the time was in the midst of extraordinarily chaotic fighting…that would soon leave the country in the hands of the Taliban, a brutal, backward band of fanatics. Inevitably, UBL was quick to form an alliance with Mullah [Mohammed] Omar and the Taliban rulers who had seized control of the country, and arguably, for the first time in history, we had something that was not ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ but rather a state sponsored by a terrorist group.”
– George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm, Page 103