9/11: Why They Really Did It

By Matthew B. Robinson, PhD
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice
Appalachian State University
robinsnmb@appstate.edu


According to the 9/11 Commission, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM).  Based on interrogations with him (and other al Qaeda fighters captured since 9/11), terrorists attacked us on 9/11 for one simple reason: they are “evil-doers” (no, just kidding, but that is what many US officials, including President Bush, have said).  They did it, according to them, because of US foreign policy toward Israel and the Arab world.

The United States has a long and sordid history of foreign policy interventions in other countries.  It is not the intent of this document to outline the many interventions that were illegal, unnecessary, unwise, immoral, and/or that may have inspired hatred against the US.  It is also not the intent of this document to blame the US for the attacks.  Rather, here, the focus is on those interventions and actions noted by leading scholars that could possibly explain why the United States is so hated by some.  Additionally, some attention is paid to American actions taken prior to 9/11 in Afghanistan, as well some Arab countries, that could help us understand how the attacks of 9/11 happened.

In essence, it has been argued that the CIA partnered with the Pakistani  Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to help the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan of the 1980s.  The ISI then created the Taliban and helped it take over Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew their troops.  One means they achieved this was by facilitating contacts between the Taliban and al Qaeda.  The US allegedly did not oppose this because a stable Afghanistan would be good for advancing US interests in our war on drugs and in establishing access to Central Asian oil.  Then, of course, al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11:

•    According to White House Counterterrorism Czar Richard Clarke: “To understand why [a new international] movement has chosen American as its target and why America failed to see the effects of its own actions, we need to remind ourselves of some events of the last twenty-five years” (p. 35).  It started in 1979, when our greatest ally in the Middle East, the US installed Iranian government, was overthrown by radical Muslims and when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.  This got us further into the two regions.

•    According to Clarke, President Ronald Reagan’s policy actions in the 1980s included confronting the Soviets in Afghanistan, putting the US military in the Persian Gulf, and strengthening Israel for a southern flank against the Soviets.  The US insertion of Marines into Beirut in 1982 led to three bomb attacks by Iranian backed Hezbollah, including one on Marine barracks where 278 Americans died.  Reagan pulled out US troops without retaliation; Clarke maintains this taught terrorists they could hit us without consequences.

•    In the 1980s, Richard Clarke and others negotiated US military presence in Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia ... they asked for “access” agreements and the right to enhance existing facilities ... and the US moved large numbers of US contractors into Saudi Arabia.

•    According to Clarke, after Saddam Hussein launched a war on Iran in the 1980s, the US began working on plans to prevent an Iraqi loss.  Clarke, while at the State Department, learned that President Reagan did not want Iraq to lose to a radical, Islamist, anti-American Iranian regime.  In 1982, Reagan removed Iraq for the list of nations that sponsored terrorism.  This allowed them to request some loans from the US.  In 1983, Reagan sent a presidential envoy to meet with Saddam Hussein, and the man was now Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld!  According to Clarke, after this meeting, the US began sending intelligence to Iraq to help it “not lose” to Iran.  Then in 1984, the US resumed full diplomatic relations with Iraq, and Saudi Arabia and Egypt even began selling them US arms!

•    According to Clarke, in the 1980s, the US also got much closer with Israel.  In 1983, the Joint Politico-Military Group (JPMG), a US Israeli planning group, was formed (Clarke would become the US head of this group that worked on contingency plans to respond to a Soviet attack).  One outcome was the creation of an Israeli missile defense system and the deployment of US Patriot missiles.

∙    From 1982 until 1991, the CIA also allegedly sanctioned the use of drug running (opium) by the Afghani mujahedeen to raise money for its war with the Soviet Union.  Afghan opium production rose during this period from 250 tons to 2,000 tons.  The Pakistani ISI created a cell of agents to raise and use money to assist the mujahedeen and to weaken Soviet troop strength by getting them addicted to heroin.

∙    From 1984 to 1994, USAID and the University of Nebraska spent millions of dollars creating textbooks for Afghan children.  They include “violent images and militant Islamic teachings” as part of our covert effort to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.  Children are taught to count with pictures of “tanks, missiles, and land mines.”  These books are still being used up through 2001.

∙    According to Clarke, in 1986, the US arranged to have Kuwaiti tankers be “reflagged” with US flags so that they could be protected by the US Navy, which meant now the US Navy flocked to the Persian Gulf.

∙    The net result of these policies (that Clarke called “defensive” rather than “offensive” in nature) was to prevent Iran from gaining power and to check the Soviet power in the region.  Yet, it also resulted in inflamed feelings by some Arabs and Muslims in the region.  For some, our mere presence was enough.

∙    According to Clarke, our offensive effort came in Afghanistan after the Soviets invaded.  Analyses from 1985 showed the Soviet Union turning the tide in the war in their favor.  Clarke thus suggested providing the Afghani resistance fighters with US Stinger missiles, which the US smuggled in through Pakistan in 1986.  The US also arranged training of the mujahedeen in Pakistan.  With the help of the Pakistani ISI, the Afghani mujahedeen defeated the Soviet Union, forcing their withdrawal.  Although Clarke says he thinks Reagan’s Afghanistan policy was the right one, he also acknowledges that this could have “laid the seeds of al Qaeda” (p. 51).

∙    In March 1985, US made efforts to escalate the war in Afghanistan with the Soviet Union.  For example, the CIA, Britain’s M16, and Pakistan’s ISI, launched guerilla attacks from Afghanistan into parts of Soviet-controlled Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.  Also the CIA helped the ISI recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan mujahedeen.  About 35,000 men come from 45 Islamic countries to fight, with their main logistical base in Peshawar, Pakistan.  Tens of thousands more study in Pakistani madrases funded by the ISI and CIA.  In the late 1980s, Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto tells President George H. W. Bush (the first) “You are creating a Frankenstein.”  In 1993, Peshawar is under control of the mujahedeen.

∙    Also in the mid 1980s, ISI head Akhtar Abdul Rahman regularly meets with UBL in Peshawar, Pakistan.  They force Afghan tribal warlords to pay a tax on opium trade and allegedly split all the proceeds.

∙    In 1986, both the ISI and CIA helped UBL build the Khost tunnel complex in Afghanistan, and they and Saudis help UBL recruit fighters from around the world to resist the Soviets.

∙    From September 1987 to March 1989, the head US consular official in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Michael Springmann, says he is told to issue visas to unqualified individuals.  Even when he turns them down, he is overruled by his superiors.  After complaining, he is fired and the files on applicants are destroyed.  Springmann learns later that many fighters got visas to come to US to train against the Soviets.  He claims the Jeddah office is staffed almost entirely of CIA people.  15 of the 19 hijackers got their visas from this same office!

∙    Clarke says we made four mistakes during the Reagan era: 1) relying on the Pakistani ISI to deliver aid to Afghanistan; 2) assisting mujahedeen transport to Afghanistan and training to defeat the Soviet Union; 3) quickly pulling out from Afghanistan after the defeat of the Soviets (which allowed the Taliban to rise to power);  and 4) cutting aid to Pakistan rather than helping them deal with rising fanaticism.

∙    According to Clarke, the tribal chiefs, ISI officers, and Arab volunteers from all over the world who led the Afghanis to victory included UBL and Khalid Shiekh Mohammed (the masterminds of 9/11).  The US embassy left them in charge of large areas of Afghanistan.

∙    As noted by Clarke, in 1990, while President Bush (the first) was in office, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.  President Bush decided to defend the Saudi oil fields from a possible invasion by Hussein.  Then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney got the mission to convince the Saudi King that they should accept US forces.  When the King met with his advisors and members of the royal family, the translator was his ambassador to the US and his nephew, Prince Bandar.  Given President Bush’s promise to withdraw US troops as soon as the threat was over or whenever the King ordered, the Saudi King agreed to let US troops on Saudi soil.  UBL, now in Saudi Arabia, was outraged at our presence there.  Added to this was his slight when the King turned down his offer to use his own men to defend the Kingdom from Hussein’s forces.  The US built a coalition to defeat Saddam Hussein and it included seven Arab countries.  In its easy victory, the US even resorted to “turkey shoots” of retreating Iraqi troops (p. 64).  According to Clarke, President Bush ordered the bombing against Iraqi troops to stop, in part because they thought the military would oust Saddam anyway after the war.  The US did not occupy Iraq because Iraq’s Arab neighbors feared a Shi’a Muslim majority would take over Iraq and set up a pro-Iranian regime. [Bush himself wrote: “Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.” -- George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), pp. 489-90]

∙    According to Clarke, the US military stood by while Saddam Hussein used the Republican Guard to slaughter the Shi’a, the marsh Arabs in the south, and the Kurds in the north.  Clarke thus asserts we should have eliminated the Republican Guard.  Since we did not, Saddam Hussein stayed in power and the US kept forces in Saudi Arabia to defend it and Kuwait.  The US also stayed in other Arab countries, including Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.  Saudi Arabia also bought US arms and thus American contractors traveled there to make them work.

∙    According to Clarke, one of the Saudi dissidents who protested all this was UBL, and his family and their economic holdings were threatened.  UBL thus fled to Khartoum, Sudan in 1991 where he was welcomed by the Sudanese leader Hassan al-Turabi.

∙    Indeed, from August 1990 to March 1991, during the first Gulf War and spurred on by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, UBL offered the Saudi Arabian government the use of his mujahedeen to defend the country if they are attacked.  He is refused, and instead 300,000 US soldiers come to Saudi Arabia.  This angered UBL and his criticism led to his expulsion to Sudan in 1991.  He ultimately went Afghanistan after being pressured by the US and Sudanese to leave.  After the war ended, 15,000-20,000 US troops stay in Saudi Arabia permanently even though George HW Bush (the first) claims that all US troops have withdrawn.  The presence of the troops is not admitted until 1995 and has never been explained.  UBL statement says: “For more than seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim people.”

∙    According to Clarke, then, the fall of the Soviet Union was the event that led to increased hatred for the United States and ultimately the formation of al Qaeda.

∙    On July 15, 1991, the Bank of England shuts down the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the largest Muslim bank in the world.  This Pakistani bank laundered money for drug dealers, arms dealers, and terrorists.  The US and Britain knew about it for years and let the bank remain open.

∙    On February 26, 1993, the World Trade Center is bombed by van bomb, and both towers would have been toppled if the bomb was placed in the correct location.  Some of the bombers were trained by the CIA to fight in the Afghan war, and the CIA concludes that it is “partly culpable” for the bombing.  One bomber left a note, found by investigators, that said, “Next time it will be very precise.”

∙    In June 1998, Saudis have been pressuring Taliban head Mullah Omar to turn over UBL.  Head of Saudi intelligence Prince al-Faisal travels to Afghanistan to broker a secret deal.  Omar agrees but wants to talk about specifics.  Before the deal is set, the US bombs Afghanistan in August to retaliate for the US African embassy bombings.  This supposedly drives Omar and UBL closer together.

∙    On August 24, 1998, training camps are built by the US and Saudi Arabia, which gave Afghans billions of dollars to fight the Soviets in the 1980s.  Money went mostly through Pakistani ISI.  The ISI also created the Taliban in 1994 and helped the Taliban take over Afghanistan.  In so doing, they helped the Taliban and al Qaeda connect to assure victory.  The Taliban started in Pakistani religious schools.  The ISI also played a significant role in the 9/11 attacks.


Without trying to blame America, it appears that to understand why we were attacked, we must consider our own foreign policy.  No one can predict how terrorists would approach us if we were not in their lands, but they claim part of the reason they attacked us is because we are there.  That alone should justify a reexamination of our foreign policy.

Note that Senator Bob Graham, who held the highest Democratic position on the Senate Intelligence Community, and who co-chaired the “Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001" (9/11 Congressional Inquiry), paints the same picture as Richard Clarke and mainstream media sources.  He says: “In one of the tragic ironies of history, the enemy we know today as al-Qaeda was brought together largely by the actions of the United States” (p. 27).  One of the mujahedeen leaders against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was Mullah Mohammed Omar, who would rise to be the leader of the Taliban.

The US and Saudi Arabia provided them with money, weapons, and logistical support.  Our $3 billion went largely through Pakistan’s ISI.  UBL helped the cause too, raising money from Saudi Arabia to send to the fighters.  In 1985, the CIA and the ISI began recruiting Muslim fighters from around the world to fight the Soviets, totaling eventually roughly 35,000 fighters from 43 countries.  In 1987, UBL met the leader of Egypt’s Jihad group, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and in 1988, UBL formed a new group for organizational purposes called al-Qaeda.  UBL became known as the Good Samaritan or Saudi Prince.

When the Soviets began to withdraw forces from Afghanistan in 1989, UBL was greeted in Saudi Arabia as a hero.  When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, UBL offered the Saudi government thousands of his fighters to defend the Kingdom; instead, the Royal family let the US on its soil to defend against Saddam.  UBL criticized the government.  After the war, the US stayed and UBL became incensed.

UBL transferred to Sudan in 1991 and began a life of terrorism and backed radical leader Hassan al-Turabi.  UBL created training camps and linked up with al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (Somalian group), the Islamic Jihad Movement of Eritrea, and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad group.  UBL’s first attack on Americans is thought to have occurred in 1992 on a hotel in Somalia.

From 1989 to 1992, Afghanistan was led by a puppet Soviet government until it collapsed and then warlords battled for control.  The Taliban took hold in 1994 and by 1996 controlled 80% of Afghanistan.  In 1996, UBL was expelled from Sudan and went back to Afghanistan.  There, he formed a partnership with the Taliban – they gave him shelter and a place to operate and he have them money.  UBL’s money helped them capture the country.  Taliban leader Mullah Omar even married one of UBL’s daughters!

In August 1996, UBL issued a Declaration of Jihad against the US.  Its goals were to: 1) drive US forces from the Arabian peninsula; 2) liberate Muslim holy sites; and 3) support Islamic revolutionary groups around the world.  Graham points out that UBL may have been particularly interested in the USS Cole because it was on of the ships that launched cruise missiles against Afghan training camps in 1998.  That is, he attacks for revenge.