According to the staff statement, ‘Overview of the Enemy,’ delivered to the 9/11 Commission on June 16, 2004: “Bin Ladin was a ‘significant player’ among the Arabs who traveled to Afghanistan to resist Soviet occupation in the 1980s. …’following the defeat of the Soviets in the late 1980s, Bin Ladin formed an organization called *The Foundation* or al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was intended to serve as a foundation upon which to build a global Islamic army.’ “ Al Qaeda served a role “as a source of ideas, inspiration, funding, and operatives for a more diffuse global jihad. …The staff statement detailed Bin Ladin’s years in Sudan from mid-1991 to 1996, where he decided to focus his efforts against the United States rather than Israel or Arab regimes because he thought the United States was ‘the head of the snake.’ He formed an organization that included several ‘committees’: a foreign purchases committee buying weaponry and equipment; a political committee issuing fatwas; a finance committee raising funds and allocating resources; a security committee in charge of intelligence; an information committee responsible for media and propaganda; and a military committee with subcommittees for training and the administration of training camps. An advisory council of Bin Ladin and his top associates ran the organization. While Bin Ladin built his organization, he also aided attacks on U.S. troops in Yemen in December 1992, and Somalia in October 1993.”
– Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, Without Precedent, Pages 239-240