A highly-placed defector reveals that the Taliban “government” wasn’t just associated with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda—they were bought and paid for.

Within the secretive Taliban hierarchy that ran this country for five years, it was not hard to figure out how Osama bin Laden derived much of his influence. When the Saudi-born heir to a construction fortune called on Taliban officials, according to a former minister, he often brought wads of cash and distributed it freely — sometimes taking out $50,000, even $100,000 at a time. …

Khaksar said he had no warning about the Sept. 11 operation to crash airplanes in Washington and New York and did not know if Omar or any other top leaders did. But like many Americans, he immediately had no doubt in his mind who was responsible. The day after the attacks, senior Taliban officials, except for Omar, met in a palace in Kabul to discuss what to do.

“I told the other ministers, ‘I told you before the guy would do something bad, and now it will have a bad effect on Afghanistan,’ ” Khaksar said. “They told me: ‘You’re going crazy. You shouldn’t speak so much.’ They said Osama hasn’t done such a thing, but if he has done it, it’s a good thing that he did. I told them these civilian people who died and these two buildings, they were God’s creation. They weren’t military soldiers; they were civilians. God will be angry that this was done.”