According to a July 23, 1993, article in The Los Angeles Times, “The greatest problem Washington thought it still had in Afghanistan…was that the CIA had sent more Stinger surface-to-air missiles to the mujahedin than needed to defeat the Soviet forces, and these highly accurate weapons were starting to get out to the world black arms market where they could be picked up for devious purposes, such as shooting down a commercial airliner. So the CIA was authorized to buy them back at the taxpayers’ expense and did so over the next decade.”
– Bruce Riedel, The Search for Al Qaeda, Page 46