leader and it is Pakistan who can equally destroy him if he continues to misbehave." The CIA and State Department have been criticized for publishing textbooks intended to indoctrinate children with racism and hatred towards foreigners and towards non-muslim Afghans. The CIA and State Department have also been criticized for their direct relationship with Hekmatyar, beyond ISI contact, in spite of his being one of the leading heroin smugglers in the region. In the late 1980s, Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, concerned about the growing strength of the Islamist movement, told President George H. W. Bush, "You are creating a Frankenstein." Others have asserted funding the mujahideen may have played a role in causing the September 11 attacks. A number of political commentators have described Al-Qaeda attacks as "blowback" or an unintended consequence of American aid to the mujahideen. The lion's share of funding given to mujahideen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was also criticized, with one U.S. expert of the mujahideen telling the Washington Post: Allegations of CIA assistance to bin Laden Some have alleged that bin Laden and al Qaeda were beneficiaries of CIA assistance. This is challenged by experts such as Coll—who notes that declassified CIA records and interviews with CIA officers do not support such claims—and Peter Bergen, who argues: "It's worth mentioning here that there is simply no evidence for the common myth that bin Laden and his Afghan Arabs were supported by the CIA financially. Nor is there any evidence that CIA officials at any level met with bin Laden or anyone in his circle." Bergen insists that U.S. funding went to the Afghan mujahideen, not the Arab volunteers who arrived to assist them. However, Sir Martin Ewans noted that the Afghan Arabs "benefited indirectly from the CIA's funding, through the ISI and resistance organizations," and that "it has been reckoned that as many as 35,000 'Arab-Afghans' may have received military training in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $800 million in the years up to and including 1988." Some of the CIA's greatest Afghan beneficiaries were Arabist commanders such as Haqqani and Hekmatyar who were key allies of bin Laden over many years. Haqqani—one of bin Laden's closest associates in the 1980s—received direct cash payments from CIA agents, without the mediation of the ISI. This independent source of funding gave Haqqani disproportionate influence over the mujahideen. Haqqani and his network played an important role in