The CIA undertook a program of recruitment and toured people like Osama bin Laden and Sheik Azzam (the spiritual leader of the mujahedeen and one of the founders of the Palestinian group Hamas) around the region. Azzam also traveled the length and breadth of the United States, visiting twenty-six states. The men recruited through such activity were then trained at various military locations in the United States.

XREF: Connects to the broader history of US involvement in the Afghan-Soviet war and the later emergence of the mujahedeen as a host of Islamist extremism.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 253