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.
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Baer probably knows more than he lets on, even when speaking "openly" about 9/11. Perhaps he knew Ali Jarrah during his time in Lebanon. As it turns out, Jarrah has recently been connected to both the Mossad, as reported in the Arab daily As-Safir, and to the "Al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam" as mentioned in 'Lebanese working for Mossad' may have played role in Mughniyeh hit. Moreover, it turns out that Jarrah has family ties to Ziad Jarrah, one of the 9/11 hijackers: Members of Israeli spy ring 'related to 9/11 hijacker'.
A double agent? Not strictly speaking, to the extent that the Mossad and other Western intelligence services are said to be backing Sunni groups such as Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon (as Seymour Hersch reports in The Redirection) and Jundullah in Iran (as Brian Ross reports in The Secret War against Iran).
In his most recent book, The Devil We Know, Baer argues that rather then backing these Sunni groups (a less rational devil) in a strategem contra Shia ascendancy in the Middle East, we would do better to deal with Iran as the new superpower in the region, one that will more likely back acceptable military tactics, e.g. though Hezbollah is regarded as a terrorist organization, Baer suggests it is one less inclined to target civilians, as is the case with Sunni terrorists...
Ah, but then they, as rational players, are not the token demons we need to invoke when trying to inflame the American public to consent to whatever geo-political misadventure the ISUSUK axis embarks upon.
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