I have a sharp eye for these little cracks in the dam sustaining the received wisdom of the 9/11 attacks. See my March 30, 07 entry on a somewhat conspicuous erratum committed by the al Qaeda chronicler, Lawrence Wright. Reading his The Looming Tower - nominally projecting the official narrative - gives one the impression that Bin Laden's organization was something more along the lines of a Keystone Cops of jihadism.
Such an impression is what Robert Baer perhaps had in mind at the end of his assessment of the recently assassinated Hezbollah figure Imad Mughniyeh, for comparison's sake...

ROBERT BAER, former CIA officer: Oh, he was -- we considered him truly a master at terrorism and even military operations. The hijacking at TWA-847, subsequent hijackings were all done extremely professional. We were lucky to catch him at TWA-847. It's still classified how we did it.

But he was truly one of the best. It's what we call tradecraft in the business. He would never go out the same exit he came in. He changed his name often, his call signs on radios. He had a very cohesive group.

Compartmentation is the word we use. He was truly the best beyond anything we see in Qaida

(sic)

So, then, the organization allegedly responsible for the single most extraordinary terrorist attack in history is relatively unimpressive in comparison to Mughniyeh? Now, while we would hardly expect Baer to speak openly about al Qaeda or 9/11 on the Newshour, by all counts a firm bastion for maintaining the myth and likely to remain so until the bitter end, we should note that he has done so elsewhere. But it was amusing nonetheless to see him pull that little jab. Needless to say, Maggie didn't ask him to elaborate and quickly changed the subject.