Did anybody fact-check this extraordinary claim from Mark's favorite (sarcasm) academic martyr? (more sarcasm)
Dr. Kevin Barrett, author of Questioning the War on Terror: "And that’s what Al-Qaeda is. It's a cat’s paw for Western intelligence agencies. And we heard this from the Arab world’s leading political commentator Mohamed Heikal, who told us immediately after 9/11 that this official story of 9/11 is ridiculous. He said when he was at the highest levels of government in Europe he was the one who was in charge of essentially infiltrating and virtually running so-called Al-Qaeda. He said Al-Qaeda is full of people from Saudi intelligence, from US intelligence, Israeli intelligence and of course Egyptian intelligence and it couldn’t do anything on its own."
I tried to verify this and could not. I found nothing to the effect that Mr. Heikal had ever been "at the highest levels of government in Europe". He was an advisor to the Egyptian government. I could not find anything to the effect that Mr. Heikal ever said he was in charge of "virtually running so-called Al-Qaeda." What I found was that Mr. Heikal said in 2001 that al Qaeda was so filthy with informants that preparations for 9/11attacks could not possibly have been kept a secret.
" Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaida has been penetrated by American intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication."
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2001/oct/10...
Mr. Heikal also predicted that the invasion of Afghanistan would be just a start for the Americans.
Dr. Barrett's claim that Mr. Heikal admitted that he ran al Qaeda appears to be typical Barrettry: gaudy, offensive, and untrue.