"Created Al-Qaeda" is certainly far too simplistic. There are unforeseen consequences to everything you do (or don't do). The alternative of leaving Afghanistan to their fate after the Soviet invasion also wasn't appealing. If you want to blame someone for Al Qaeda, then start with the Soviet Union and Pakistan.
These two examples also conflict by the way: in one instance they had to do more, and in the other less. It's easy to sit here in judgement decades after the fact, but at the time a lot of this was less clear.
What's always been funny to me about the CIA is if they didn't even do these things:
>"overthrow democratically elected leaders, torture innocents, run vile ph psychological experiments"
There probably would have been less - if any - of those terror attacks to worry about in the first place.
It always existed to provoke and to force varying degrees of military response from nations we antagonized. It was ALWAYS to justify a status quo propped by a military industrial complex - and to overstay the luxuries given to us by Pax Americana. We could have pulled off a peaceful era without bullying, I'm sure of it.
However, the big issue is that you can't argue the values of liberal democracy, the rule of law, elections, freedom of speech, but at the same time overthrow democratically elected leaders, torture innocents, run vile ph psychological experiments and keep people believing you.
I believe that the CIA has done more to destroy the trust in democracy and promote the rise of totalitarian regimes that we are seeing now, than any other single entity. Even if they prevented some terror attacks (and as we know they failed spectacularly to prevente several), that's not a price worth paying IMO.