Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency begins its own program to recruit Arab fighters from the Middle East to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, some two years after the invasion.
Pakistan and the United States had just concluded a $3.2 billion military assistance deal (including its current crop of F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters) and Pakistan began the largest covert operation in history, supplying anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan and building up an Arab fighting force.
The Saudis begin their own program in 1982, also spurred on by assistance from the U.S. and CIA assistance.

With the publication of a CIA report, “Intelligence Community Terrorist Threat Advisory”, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks reaches its highest level since the Millennium alerts of 1999.
Michael Morell, President Bush’s CIA briefer (and future acting director of the Agency) says that in the first three months of the Bush administration, there was “little to no specific threat reporting on what al Qa’ida [sic] was plotting.” That changed, he says, in the spring through early summer, when the volume of reporting increased and al Qaeda members spoke to each other of “very good news to come.” By July, the reporting “suddenly dried up,” Morell says, and it was during that period of “summer doldrums” that the famed August 6 President’s Daily Brief (PDB) – “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US” – was written to summarize what the CIA knew of any direct threats to the United States. (The Great War of Our Time, pp. 39–43)

The CIA begins supplying select Afghan mujahidin guerrillas with shoulder-launched Stinger surface-to-air missiles to help them attack Soviet forces and shoot down helicopter gunships. The missiles become legendary and falsely credit the missiles (and the United States) with turning the tide of the Afghan-Soviet war even though by 1986 the Soviet Army is exhausted and Soviet soldier deaths in Afghanistan is beginning to have severe domestic consequences back home.
The missiles, many of which go missing, will have other consequences though. In the fall of 1993, there are reports that bin Laden dispatches a team to retrieve Stinger missiles in Afghanistan and transport them to Somalia, where they are used against American forces. And in February 2000, the CIA begins receiving information about a possible al Qaeda plot to attack Air Force One with Stinger missiles when President Clinton was visiting Pakistan.

The CIA delivers two document drafts in response to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s request for a new series of authorities relating to covert action in Afghanistan and against Osama bin Laden.
The new presidential finding drafts are labeled “consolidation plus” and are to supersede the various Clinton administration findings. One addressing more assistance to anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, including the so-called Northern Alliance, Uzbek groups in the northwest and Pashtun groups in the souths. The other was a draft Memorandum of Notification, the formal name for a President finding on covert action, which included more open-ended language authorizing possible lethal action in a variety of situations. The findings were never signed before 9/11, put on hold until a regional policy direction was determined.

Osama bin Laden begins helping Abdullah Azzam, his mentor, to run the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), the “Office of Services,” which becomes a key node in the private funding network for the Afghanistan war and is the “precursor organization to al Qaeda.” (9/11 Commission Report, p. 89)
While living full-time in Pakistan, bin Laden also supports the building of six Arab-only training camps in Afghanistan, as well as create Arab combat units to fight the Soviets. The units would have non-Afghan Muslims (such as John Walker Lindh) and would also form the al Qaeda cadre.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright delivers a speech at Georgetown University in which she argues that sanctions likely will not end until Saddam is replaced. This no normalization without regime change is the policy adopted by two administrations and the roots of the second Gulf War.
A year earlier, the Center for Economic and Social Rights took Lesley Stahl and “60 Minutes” to Iraq to show them the effects that years of sanctions had had on the Iraqi civilian population. There had been multiple surveys concluding that up to 500,000 additional child deaths had occurred since Desert Storm. Stahl questioned Albright about whether she thought the cost of Iraq’s dead children, “more than died in Hiroshima,” was worth the price of sanctions. Albright said: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”
The “it” referred to Saddam’s supposed WMD and to have continued rule. But a little understood impact was also that Osama bin Laden noticed, and by 2001, spoke of the death of a million Iraqis as one of his indictments of the United States.

Saudi King Faisal (Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud) is assassinated by a member of the royal family, his killing ascribed to his program of modernization. His half-brother’s son shoots him point blank driven, the story goes, by Faisal’s support for television broadcasts. When first introduced in 1965, Faisal assuages the religious community by broadcasting prayers. But ultraconservatives still undertake violent protests. The assassin’s brother led an attack on a new television station and was killed in a shootout with police.

Osama bin Laden leaves Afghanistan for Sudan, partly because of the intractability of the Afghan domestic situation and the endless fighting amongst rival groups and partially because he is concerned for his own safety, with reports of Saudi-sponsored assassination attempts on his life being carried out by Pakistan. Bin Laden and Prince Turki, head of Saudi intelligence, supposedly have a fundamental break, bin Laden arguing that the Saudi’s were intent on having the Afghan factions keep fighting forever, not supporting the creation of a true Islamic state.
Though bin Laden’s passport had been confiscated by the Saudi state, he reportedly makes a deal to have it returned, on the proviso that he would not interfere with Saudi domestic politics or that of any other Arab country. Instead, bin Laden become a prominent financial backer of independent Islamic movements in Bosnia, Egypt, Kashmir, Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, and Yemen.
Bin Laden makes the move from Afghanistan to Sudan with his 25 wives and children as well as the core al Qaeda leadership team, including Ayman al-Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef. Eventually some two thousand “Afghan Arabs” loyal to al Qaeda would move to Sudan.

Mahmoud Abouhalima (Abu Halima) (“The Red”) is forcibly rendered to the United States, the first known extraordinary rendition.
Abouhalima had been implicated as an accomplice in the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in midtown Manhattan in November 1990 and was one of Ramzi Yousef’s assistants in the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Abouhalima fled to Egypt and was picked up by Egyptian authorities.
According to The Cell (p. 109): At the FBI’s request, the Egyptian intelligence service captured him and questioned him using some of the more indelicate techniques known to the trade. When they were finished, they notified the FBI that they could pick up their suspect… Abouhalima needed medical treatment upon his return. It seemed that during his interrogation in Egypt he had suffered second-degree burns to his testicles.”

From Hamburg, Germany, Mohammed Atta emails 31 different U.S. flight schools inquiring about taking flying lessons. He says he is writing on behalf of a small group of men from various Arab countries who, while lacking prior training, were interested in learning to fly in the United States to pursue careers as professional airline pilots. Atta requested information about the cost of the training, potential financing, and accommodations.