Still in the air and probably always will be. You have some ex-CIA guys who says he was and some that says he wasn't.
I don't know about anyones payroll but I know from my time doing reports on the region for briefings he was our contact into Afghanistan during the war against the Soviets and arranged a lot of our weapons shipments in. It's unlikely we were paying him anything however as he has never needed money.
BTW, he wasn't a terrorist back then so there really was no reason for America to not work with him. AQ didn't even exist back then.