“The authenticity of the latest message purported to be of Ayman al-Zawahiri,” B. Raman, a former Indian government official and director the Institute for Topical Studies, wrote on May 22, 2003, “is yet to be established. According to counter-terrorism experts familiar with the voice and accent of al-Zawahiri, while the language and accent in the tape resemble those of al-Zawahiri, the voice seems to be of a person younger than al-Zawahiri, who is 51 years old.” As Raman notes, “one generally depends on the voice analysis experts of the US intelligence community” to establish the veracity of such recordings, although it “is not certain how accurate are their analysis and conclusions” (or for that matter how deliberately skewed for the sake of psychological warfare).

For instance, in regard to establishing the authenticity of an earlier (November, 2002) Osama bin Laden communiqué, “a private Swiss expert had expressed his reservations about the conclusions of the US experts.” In fact, the Swiss expert, Herve Bourlard of the Lausanne-based Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, assigned a team of experts to review the recording, according to the BBC. It was not Osama bin Laden on the tape, but probably an “imposter,” concluded Samy Bengio, a voice recognition expert. Bourlard and his colleagues “said it was 95% certain the tape does not feature the voice of the al-Qaeda leader.”

Apparently, in the case of the latest al-Zawahiri tape, the corporate media and the above mentioned handsomely remunerated editors and publishers (in essence neocon and neolib propaganda disseminators) are not waiting for the CIA to certify the latest tape—it is a foregone conclusion the voice is al-Zawahiri’s.

“Al-Zawahri issued the fresh threats with a Kalashnikov rifle propped against a woven cloth background that moved with the wind and showed the sunlight, suggesting the scene was filmed outdoors. He wore a white robe and black turban and emphatically wagged his finger while speaking,” writes USA Today. “The videotape of al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri broadcast on Thursday is the latest in a series of recent messages sent by the terrorism network’s top leaders that analysts believe may be part of a campaign to reassert themselves, even as they remain isolated by US and Pakistani forces,” explains the Financial Times. “The video is another Al Qaeda message apparently intended to turn Western democracies against their leaders by explaining acts of terrorism as rational decisions from a group with specific political goals,” reports the Christian Science Monitor.

Of course, this is all nonsense—a fantastic fiction contrived by an alliance of Anglo-American intelligence agencies (or factions therein) studiously working to keep the al-Qaeda myth alive as they put forward their plan to eviscerate Islamic culture and societies while also attacking civil liberties in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Finally, there is a glaring flaw in the al-Zawahiri myth: in the May 21, 2003 message, al-Zawahiri mentions attacking Norway for its support of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. “Some observers have interpreted the reference to Norway in the message as possibly a mistake and said that he was probably having Denmark in mind,” notes Raman, writing for the South Asia Analysis Group. “Al-Zawahiri is reputed to be an intelligent and well-informed person. It is difficult to believe that he would have mistaken Norway for Denmark. This indicates the possibility that the message might have been recorded by someone else, not well-informed and hence not able to distinguish between Norway and Denmark, in the name of al-Zawahiri in order to mobilize the remnants of Al Qaeda and the IIF [Bin Laden’s International Islamic Front] for action in retaliation for the occupation of Iraq.” Or maybe the CIA does sloppy work.

It is, as they say, human to err, and maybe al-Zawahiri simply made an honest mistake, mixing up Norway and Denmark—except for one thing: in 1991, on the run after his participation in terrorist attacks in Luxor, Egypt, al-Zawahiri was “offered asylum in Denmark,” according to Giles Foden, writing for the Guardian on September 24, 2001. Although it was never officially confirmed al-Zawahiri lived in Denmark, a 1995 attempted assassination of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak “had been planned by exiled Egyptian fundamentalists based in Denmark, including the Vanguards of Conquest [or Tala’i’ al Fath, an Islamic group active since the late 1970s] and al-Zawahiri,” according to the Guardian.

In other words, either al-Zawahiri, using a voice not his own and suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, made a terrible blunder about a country where he once lived, or the CIA (or whatever intelligence outfit puts together these audio and video tapes) didn’t bother to research al-Zawahiri before releasing the tape to al-Jazeera, a media outlet that basically serves as a useful idiot for flawed propaganda (and it really says something when even al-Jazeera does not detect these obvious mistakes).

Of course, considering the gullibility of the average American—so eager to buy whatever bogus nonsense his government pedals via the corporate media—it does not really matter if these tapes are amateurish and factually incorrect. Slavish citizens buy these shoddily crafted lies hook, line, and sinker and will, unfortunately, ultimately suffer the consequences, that is to say have to put up with fake terrorism for a generation or two until their freedom is but a distant memory in the past.