“Osama’s mentor, Abdullah Azzam, made the case for an extensive foundation from which believers could launch their struggle for a perfect Islamic world. In full agreement, Osama called for the planning meeting that would be named al-Qaeda al-Askariya, which translates to ‘the military base,’ and was later shortened to al-Qaeda, ‘the base,’ or ‘the foundation.’ […]
8/15/1988
In August 1988, “Bin Laden founds al Qaeda.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – Roy Gutman, How We Missed the Story, Page 263 […]
8/11/1988
“One fateful day in Peshawar [Pakistan], August 11, 1988, [bin Laden’s mentor] Sheikh Abdulla Azzam called a meeting to discuss the future of jihad. …One of Azzam’s objectives was to make sure that, in the event of an Afghan civil war, the Arabs were not involved. …He had come to agree with bin Laden about […]
8/11/1988
Regarding the formation of al Qaeda, “By the end of the Soviet occupation [of Afghanistan], an estimated 35,000 Muslim radicals from forty-three Islamic countries had joined the fight [against the Soviets]. …On August 11, 1988, bin Laden held a meeting in which he discussed the establishment of a new military group–al-Qaeda.” – Bob Graham with […]
7/3/1988
On July 3, 1988, “An American naval cruiser (USS Vincennes) shot down a civilian Iranian airplane (killing all 290 civilians on board) when crewmen confused it for a warplane, an explanation rejected by many in Iran.” – Richard N. Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice, Page 29 […]
7/3/1988
On the evening of July 3, 1988, National Security Advisor Colin Powell received a phone call from his deputy, John Negroponte, “relaying a Navy report that the USS Vincennes, escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers around the Iran-Iraq war zone, had just come under attack by an Iranian F-14 jet. The Vincennes had shot the plane down. […]
4/15/1988
“The Palestinian-Jordanian ideologue Abdullah Azzam conceptualised Al Qaeda in 1987. Defining its composition, aims, and purpose, he wrote in Al-Jihad, the principal journal of the Afghan Arabs [in April 1988]: ‘Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and, while focusing its way into society, puts up with heavy tasks and enormous sacrifices. There […]
4/15/1988
“In April 1988, nine years and four months after the Soviets first invaded Afghanistan, representatives of Afghanistan, the USSR, the United States, and Pakistan met to sign an agreement calling for the Russian army to pull its forces out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to stop interfering in the other’s political and military affairs. […]
4/15/1988
One of the first uses of the term al Qaeda comes from an article Abdullah Azzam wrote for the April 1988 issue of Jihad magazine, titled ‘Al Qaeda al Sulbah’ (‘The Solid Base’). ” ‘Every principle needs a vanguard to carry it forward and, while forcing its way into society, puts up with heavy tasks […]
4/15/1988
In April 1988, CIA Director William Webster “announced a redesigned Counterintelligence Center (CIC). Based in Langley [Virginia], its goal was to teach CIA and FBI agents how to recognize data that was useful to the other agency, and most important, to share it.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting purposes only.] – […]