Bin Laden cia connection myth or reality?

[atomic-fly]

NEW YORK (CNN) -- CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen says the notion that Osama bin Laden once worked for the CIA is "simply a folk myth" and that there's no shred of evidence to support such theories.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/15/bergen.answers/index.html

or

NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998 — At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow.
...

As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.
What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.

http://tinyurl.com/f3hs4

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Well, the CIA has never officially denied that they trained/funded

bin Laden, so your pal Bergen is spewing lies.

[endarkenment]

2. It is not a myth that the CIA back, funded, trained islamic

groups fighting against the Russian backed Aghanistan government, and that bin laden was associated with these same groups. Of course there is no membership list, we don't get to see the CIA pay list, its all spook shit, all designed up front to be deniable. The evolution of the afghani jihadists into al qaeda, taliban, drug-funded warlords etc. is a classic case of blowback.

[Solon]

3. To be honest, I view the CIA as the biggest threat to our national...

security. I mean, seriously, what GOOD has it done? Can anyone name ONE damned thing the CIA has done that had a POSITIVE effect on our foriegn policy or national security?

[Supersedeas]

4. What exactly makes the smug Mr. Bergen a terror 'analyst' -- OR

which defense contractor did he or does he work for.

He certainly sounds like a * spokesperson with his tendance NOT to answer the question directly.

[atomic-fly]

5. seems like history is being re-written a lot these days nt

[SweetLeftFoot]

6. Bergen

is one of the few journalists to have met and interviewed Bin Laden.

FWIW - I think the Bin Laden/CIA connection is vastly overplayed.

CIA's links with Gulbuddin Hekmatyr is the real dirty story of the Russian jihad.