Never mind that “liquid bombs” are fantastical nonsense, or there is no evidence those arrested—more accurately, disappeared—in Britain plotted to blow up planes (no bombs, no airline tickets, no passports), the corporate media, having established the now widely believed Brothers Grimm story of Muslim perfidy by way of household chemicals, has moved to the next level.

“An al-Qaeda operative who masterminded the alleged plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic is hiding in mountainous terrain in north-eastern Afghanistan, a Pakistan intelligence official has claimed,” reports the Scotsman. “Although his name and nationality have not been revealed, the suspect allegedly exchanged messages, carried by a courier, with detained British national Rashid Rauf, who is being interrogated by Pakistani authorities in connection with the alleged plot that was smashed last week with at least 30 people arrested in both Britain and Pakistan.”

As usual, a bit of translation is required: the “al-Qaeda operative,” in fact a Jaish-e-Mohammed (an ISI, thus CIA, creation) patsy, has told his “interrogators,” that is to say torturers, whatever they want to hear, or what the United States and Britain want to hear in order to lend a veneer of credence, no matter how suspect and transparent, to their Brothers Grimm story of perfidious Muslims who hate our freedom so much they rummaged under their sinks in search of explosive cleaners.

Of course, at the heart of this fairy tale, al-Qaeda lurks. “Rauf was in touch with the al-Qaeda operative through a courier from Afghanistan who would cross the porous, mountainous frontier separating Afghanistan and Pakistan to deliver messages, the official said.”

But this “courier” is hardly your run-of-the-mill operative, he is instead “a close aide to Egyptian-born al-Qaeda No2 Ayman al-Zawahri,” thus “al-Zawahri probably approved the plan to blow up passenger planes leaving London for the United States by detonating disguised liquid explosives carried on board in hand luggage.”

For those of us who venture beyond reading the ticker down in the lower third of the screen on Fox News, the idea Ayman al-Zawahiri is behind this nefarious non-plot makes perfect sense, as he is an intelligence asset par excellence.

“Ayman al-Zawahiri headed up the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the ‘covert-overt’ militant arm of the CIA-MI6 penetrated Muslim Brotherhood,” I wrote earlier this year. “His brother, Zaiman, ran terrorist camps under NATO protection in the U.S. zone in Kosovo (it’s a family affair). You’d think no self-respecting hater of the Great Satan would live in America, and yet al-Zawahiri, according to January 2000 U.S. Congressional testimony, was granted U.S. residence by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, something almost impossible for many legitimate immigrants to obtain (unless they enjoy CIA clearance).”

But never mind. Our Ministry of Fantastic Stories, otherwise known as the corporate media, more accurately described as the stenographic wing of the neocon-dominated government, has spent a lot of time and effort building Ayman al-Zawahiri into an archfiend of illustrious and scary Freddy Kruger proportion, second only to Osama, who we hear from on occasion, no matter a recent Osama tape is “like a voice from the grave,” not surprising as Osama died some time ago.