...but we supplied them with money and weapons from their inception.
(snip) The origins of this group (at a later time given the name 'al-Qaeda' by the United States Department of Justice) can be traced to a few weeks after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when a cadre of non-Afghani, Arab Muslim fighters joined the largely United States Saudi Arabian and Pakistan-funded Afghan mujāhidīn anti-Soviet resistance movement (a guerrilla war against Soviet occupation forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government).
(snip) Al-Qaeda evolved from the Maktab al-Khadamat (Office of Services, MAK) — a Mujahidin organization fighting to establish an Islamic state during the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Osama bin Laden was a founding member of the MAK, along with Palestinian militant Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. The role of the MAK was to channel funds from a variety of sources (including donations from across the Middle East) into training Mujahidin from around the world in guerrilla combat, and to transport the combatants to Afghanistan. The MAK was mostly funded by donations from wealthy Muslim individuals but was also allegedly aided by the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and indirectly by the United States, which channeled most of its support and military hardware via the Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alqaeda