[Monitor]

But until the Digest investigation, published in July 1998, just weeks before the twin Africa embassy bombings, bin Laden had been presented as a relic of the U.S-backed mujahedin in Afghanistan, an exotic but safely distant product of "blowback" left over from the CIA's alliance with Pakistan's much-feared Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

An interesting article, but not entirely true.

Dispelling the CIA-Bin Laden Myth

[optimistically_conservative]

Thanks for correcting the record, but it is true in 1998 that many in government considered bin Laden a terrorist financier that had benefitted from the mujahedin fight against the USSR.

Bin Laden - oddly - did benefit quite a bit from being part of the Arab Afghan fight. He did it within an organization that had Arab backing rather than US backing.