Content warning: this episode describes the events of 11 September 2001 in detail.
What if the deadliest terror attack in history began with an American chequebook?
What if the men who carried it out had once been armed, trained and celebrated by the West as freedom fighters?
And what if the whole thing was set in motion more than twenty years earlier, on Christmas Eve?
Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan begin the story of 9/11 two decades before it happened, in the mountains of Afghanistan.
July 1979: Jimmy Carter signs off half a million dollars of covert aid to Afghan rebels, and a CIA programme called Operation Cyclone begins. By 1987 it is running at $630 million a year, matched dollar for dollar by Saudi Arabia. Among the thousands who answer the call to fight the Soviets is the softly spoken son of a Saudi construction billionaire. Twenty-two years later, nineteen men walk through airport security in Boston, Washington and Newark carrying box cutters that nobody had thought to ban. This is the first of three episodes marking twenty-five years since 9/11 — where al-Qaeda came from, what happened on the day, and the moment almost the entire world stood with America.
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[0:00] The story doesn't start in New York — it starts in the mountains of Afghanistan
[2:17] Christmas Eve 1979, and Soviet transport planes land at Kabul airport
[4:04] Operation Cyclone: Carter, Brzezinski, and a plan to build Moscow its own Vietnam
[7:48] Romanticised as freedom fighters — and the Saudi billionaire's son who answers the call
[12:01] Afua puts it to Peter directly: did the CIA fund bin Laden?
[16:38] The Soviets leave, the West loses interest, and bin Laden names his new organisation
[23:32] A cloudless blue Tuesday, and a primary election in New York
[29:39] Two and a half hours, nineteen men, and the deadliest terror attack in history
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Explore more from Peter and Afua — essays, sources, and ideas:
Substack: peterfrankopan.substack.com | afuahirsch.substack.com
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