Report: Afghanistan Used CIA Money to Pay Off Al Qaeda for Hostage

After the Central Intelligence Agency sent about $1 million to the presidential palace in Afghanistan as part of a secret fund, Afghan officials used that money in the spring of 2010 to help free one of its diplomats who was held hostage by Al Qaeda, the New York Times reported.

Undated file photo of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. (Image source: AP)

Other countries chipped in an additional $4 million, and suddenly Al Qaeda's coffers were replenished — even as CIA drone strikes in Pakistan crushed much of the terror group's personnel, the Times said.

“God blessed us with a good amount of money this month,” Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, Al Qaeda's general manager, wrote in a letter to Osama bin Laden in June 2010, the Times reported. Al-Rahman suggested the funds could be used for weapons and other operational necessities.

More from the Times:

Bin Laden urged caution, fearing the Americans knew about the payment and had laced the cash with radiation or poison, or were tracking it. “There is a possibility — not a very strong one — that the Americans are aware of the money delivery,” he wrote back, “and that they accepted the arrangement of the payment on the basis that the money will be moving under air surveillance.”

The C.I.A.’s contribution to Qaeda’s bottom line, though, was no well-laid trap. It was just another in a long list of examples of how the United States, largely because of poor oversight and loose financial controls, has sometimes inadvertently financed the very militants it is fighting.

Read the entire New York Times article here.

(H/T: New York Times)

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