“When the CIA ousted [the Soviet’s puppet President of Afghanistan, Mohammad] Najibullah, they walked away and left the door wide open for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, a group of radical Islamic fundamentalists, to walk right in. Bin Laden arrived by chartered…jet in May 1996, and by the summer of that year the Taliban, […]
5/11/1996
“In May [11] 1996 she [Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphel] told the US Senate, ‘Afghanistan has become a conduit for drugs, crime and terrorism that can undermine Pakistan, the neighbouring Central Asian states and have an impact beyond Europe and Russia.’ She said extremist training camps in Afghanistan were exporting terrorism.” […]
4/30/1996
“In its 1995 Patterns of Global Terrorism report [released on April 30, 1996], the State Department, for the first time, mentioned bin Laden, calling him ‘a major financier of terrorism.’ ” – Richard Miniter, Losing Bin Laden, Page 106 […]
4/24/1996
“The Department of State…keeps and annually reviews a list of nonstate foreign terrorist organizations designated by the secretary of state, as required by the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 [signed into law on April 24, 1996]. Under this law, members of and activists in these organizations are denied entry into the United […]
4/24/1996
“In April [24] 1996, President [Bill] Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism Act which allowed the US to block assets of terrorist organizations. It was first used to block Bin Laden’s access to his fortune of an estimated US $250-300 million.” – Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, Page 134 […]
4/20/1996
According to an Agence France-Presse story on April 20, 1996, during U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphel’s visit to Afghanistan (shortly before the rise of the Taliban), she remarked: ” ‘We are also concerned that economic opportunities here will be missed if political stability cannot be restored.’ “ Three days later, […]
4/18/1996
After Israel’s shelling of a UN compound in the Lebanese village of Qana on April 18, 1996: “Already burning with hatred for America and Israel, the pictures of headless Arab babies and other grisly photographs that appeared throughout the media were likely the final shove, pushing bin Laden over the edge and leading him to […]
4/15/1996
“…in April 1996 Sudan politely asked bin Laden to leave [the country]. …He chose [to head to] Afghanistan, where he knew he could rely on the support of his old comrades. Many of them now reorganized into the fundamentalist Islamic militia known to the West as the Taliban…” [The 15th of the month used for […]
4/15/1996
According to an April 1996 State Department report titled ‘1995 Patterns of Global Terrorism:’ “By 1995 the FBI and CIA were convinced bin Laden was heavily involved in terrorism. He had been linked ‘to numerous terrorist organizations’ and he was directing ‘funding and other logistic support through his companies to a number of extremist causes.’ […]
4/15/1996
“John P. O’Neill, the chief of the FBI’s counterterrorism section, said in a speech in April 1996 that the threat from Islamic radicals is ‘the greatest threat to us domestically in the United States. No longer is it just the fear of being attacked by international terrorist organizations–attacks against Americans and American interests overseas. …A […]