Al Qaidah
by Anthony C Heaford --- @mancunianquiet on twitter --- work-in-progress 25 January 2026
As confirmed by Hilary Clinton (youtube), everyone knows Al Qaeda grew out of the US backed 1980s Jihad in Afghanistan.
We know it was formed at an August 1988 meeting (minutes) chaired by Osama bin Laden in Peshawar Pakistan.
And it goes without saying Al Qaeda is the terrorist entity responsible for a spree of attacks that started in the early 1990s (wiki).
Except that’s not true, even the name is wrong - a deliberate misspelling of Al Qaidah, a town in the central highlands of Yemen named after a military base setup there in 1174 AD. I only know about Al Qaidah because I visited it on Friday 26 September 1997. It was the last day of a week long business trip and while on route to the airport I was taken to a secluded valley one mile south east of the town for an unscheduled meeting in the buildings shown in the adjacent video. It was my recruitment interview for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s terrorist cell (who’d been introduced to me as the Engineer thirty minutes earlier in my customer’s factory). My brief visit to Al Qaidah in 1997 is the basis for my assertions today that the entire narrative around Al Qaeda is wrong. Mine is an informed theory supported by historical facts and personal experience; I hope you’ll bear with me as I try to explain because I think it’s very important knowing exactly who our true enemies are.
1985 could be a far more accurate start date for the international terrorist entity known as Al Qaeda, a claim supported by a declassified CIA report on an Afghan Mujahideen leader and Wahhabi Islamic Law professor called Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. It stated:
** Sayyaf has used his role as principle conduit of Arab money to the Jihad to build his own insurgent organization **
Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T01058R000406230001-1.pdf
Sayyaf’s Insurgent Organization - the real Al Qaeda
The CIA’s 1985 assertion that Sayyaf was using Arab funds to build his own insurgent organization was spot on, as the following table illustrates:
1986-88 Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah Leader
“Sungkar first inspired Hambali to share the vision of establishing a radical Islamist regime in Southeast Asia,then furthered Hambali's instruction in jihad by sending him to Afghanistan in 1986. After undergoing training at Rasul Sayyaf's Sada camp (where KSM would later train), Hambali fought against the Soviets; he eventually returned to Malaysia after 18 months in Afghanistan. By 1998, Hambali would assume responsibility for the Malaysia/Singapore region within Sungkar's newly formed terrorist organization, the Jamaah Islamiyah.” (2004 9/11 Commission Report page 150/151)
1987-92 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
“KSM plunged into the anti-Soviet Afghan jihad soon after graduating from college. Visiting Pakistan for the first time in early 1987, he traveled to Peshawar, where his brother Zahid introduced him to the famous Afghan mujahid Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, head of the Islamic Union Party. Sayyaf became KSM’s mentor and provided KSM with military training at Sayyaf’s Sada camp… Between 1988 and 1992, KSM helped run a nongovernmental organization in Peshawar and Jalalabad; sponsored by Sayyaf, it was designed to aid young Afghan mujahideen.” (2004 9/11 Commission Report page 146/147)
1988-89 Filipino Abu Sayyaf Founder
“Abdurajak delivered several khutbahs or sermons and released several fatawa using the nom-de-guerre “Abu Sayyaf,” in honor of Afghan resistance fighter Abdul Rasul Sayyaf… Since Abdurajak used the pen name “Abu Sayyaf,” the military described his followers as a group of Abu Sayyaf, which was popularized in media as the Abu Sayyaf Group, or ASG.”
(West Point Combating Terrorism Center report, page 17)
1990-92 Ramzi Yousef (KSM's nephew)
“In late 1990, Yousef went to Afghanistan for training at [Abdul Rasul Sayyaf's] Camp Khaldan, where he learned basic bomb building... In the summer of 1991, Yousef travelled to the Philippines where he conducted explosives training for the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf. In 1992, he returned to Camp Khaldan and began teaching a course in explosives.”
(2005 US Department of Justice funded report, page 47)
Combined with the CIA’s 1985 assessment of Sayyaf, the examples above prove beyond any doubt that between 1985 and 1992 Sayyaf was using Arab donations to build his own global insurgent organization. The table below shows the fruits of Sayyaf’s efforts - attacks between 1993 and 2002 that I believe can be attributed to him, and highlighting the significant roles of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the governments of Qatar and Yemen too:
1992 Qatar - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's New Host & Employer
After five years working for Abdul Rasul Sayyaf in Pakistan and Afghanistan Khalid Sheikh Mohammed relocated himself and his family to Qatar. The first documented evidence of KSM terrorist activities targeting the United States is dated 3 November 1993, when he wired $660 from Doha to the World Trade Center bomb group in New York. KSM was based in Qatar for the next three years, employed by the government owned water department until they helped him escape capture by the USA in 1996.
26 February 1993 New York - World Trade Center Bombing
It was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s protégé Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who helped plan and finance the 1993 WTC bombing from Qatar. It was Sayyaf’s bomb specialist Ramzi Yousef who helped build the bomb in New York. The opening shot of a terrorist campaign against the United States was perpetrated by Sayyaf’s Insurgent Organization. They intended to murder 250,000 people by collapsing one tower into another, a measure of their hatred of and anger towards the US government.
1994 Manila - the Bojinka Plot
After the WTC bombing Ramzi Yousef settled in 1994 Manila with a small terrorist cell, planning attacks and preparing sophisticated bombs. Yousef had taught Abu Sayyaf bomb making in 1991 so again all this activity was linked to Sayyaf’s Insurgent Organization. There was a bin Laden link in the Philippines – Osama’s brother-in-law Jamal Khalifa. The brother-in-laws served together in the 1980s Afghan Jihad but as that drew to a close Khalifa left for the Philippines in 1987, actively recruiting fighters and providing financing for Abu Sayyaf. Conversely Osama returned home as soon as the last Soviet left Afghanistan. The Bojinka plot to bomb a dozen trans-Pacific airliners was busted, but not before Sayyaf’s Insurgent Organization had bombed a cinema for practice and killed a random Japanese businessman on their first test bombing a plane - Philippine Airlines Flight 434.
4 April 1995 Philippine - the Ipil Massacre
In their first attack two hundred heavily armed Abu Sayyaf terrorists attacked a remote town, firing upon residents, strafing civilian homes, plundering banks before taking up to 30 hostages and burning the center of the town to the ground. The final death toll was fifty-three and about as many again wounded. Abu Sayyaf are named in honour of Abdul Rasul Sayyaf - this massacre was carried out by the Filipino branch of Sayyaf’s Insurgent Organization.
1996/97 Yemen - KSM's New Host & Financiers
This detail is my firsthand testimony that I met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on Friday 26 September 1997 inside the secure headquarters compound of the British allied, American supplied, multi-billion dollar Hayel Saeed Anam Group global conglomerate. I believe he was there, in HSA's Taiz HQ 17-miles south of Al Qaidah town, in 1996 too. My reasoning is in August 1996 HSA ordered industrial quantities of TNT component chemicals (as used in the 1998 US embassy bomings & detailed below) and in September 1997 I met two Pakistani chemical engineers there - members of KSM's terror cell.
7 August 1998 Africa - the US Embassy Bombings
9 September 2001 Afghanistan - the Assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud
11 September 2001 America - the 9/11 Attacks
12 October 2002 Indonesia - the Bali Bomb Attacks


Work-in-Progress...



The End of the Afghan Jihad
Like Christian Holy Wars, Islamic Jihads have strict criteria and rules. Most factions respected the 1987 Mujahideen / Soviet ceasefire. I believe OBL respected it and began organizing the resettlement of his followers in Yemen in anticipation of peace. At the subsequent April 1988 Geneva Accords the Soviets announced their full withdrawal by February 1989 and that’s why at the Peshawar meeting in August 1988 OBL was so precise in saying:
“…within six months of Al Qaidah three-hundred-and-fourteen brothers will be trained and ready”
- he'd already arranged the demobilization / resettlement of the Arab Mujahideen serving him. And OBL did leave Afghanistan six months later, very soon after the February 1989 Soviet withdrawal. The Jihad was over and OBL refused to partake in a civil war. Other quotes from the Peshawar meeting re-emphasize the Mujahideen's internal division in 1988, centering on the Maktab Al Khadamat (a Mujahideen volunteers' Services Bureau in Peshawar):
“… disagreement is present… ” “… the Sheikh's military gang has ended.”
“Why is the Arab element being secluded?” “Mismanagement & bad treatment in Maktab Al Khadamat”
OBL took back all the civil engineering machinery (likely gifted from the Bin Laden Group) he’d used to build trenches and tunnels, showing a clear break with the forces continuing the battle in Afghanistan. The Mujahideen who'd ignored the rules of Jihad and kept attacking the Soviets included the CIA funded Haqqani group and 9/11's Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. KSM's brother Zahid introduced him to the Saudi backed Afghan Wahhabi professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf on his arrival in 1987 Pakistan and he worked for Sayyaf at the Maktab Al Khadamat Services Bureau from 1988-92. KSM relocated to Qatar in 1992 from where he helped his nephew Ramzi Yousef plan and finance the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yousef was another alumnus of Sayyaf's training camps, as were the 2002 Bali bombers and the founder of the Filipino Abu Sayyaf Group. Sayyaf's protégés were responsible for the 1993 WTC bomb and the 1994/5 Bojinka Plot in Manila, the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (KSM flew to Nairobi shortly before the bombings), 9/11 and the 2002 Bali bombs. That decade long terrorism spree wasn’t Al Qaeda – it was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s organization, financed by Saudi / Wahhabi donations and managed by KSM. And the documents below – a 1985 CIA assessment of Sayyaf and his mentions in the 2004 9/11 Commission report – confirm his relationship with KSM since 1987, and that:
**Sayyaf has used his role as principle conduit of Arab money____
to the Jihad (Holy War) to build his own insurgent organization **
If I'm correct in saying Sayyaf headed KSM's decade long terrorist spree rather than OBL, then the CIA assessment of Sayyaf confirms he was funded by Arab donations and makes no mention of him being on the CIA's books. It also confirms the terrorist entity known as Al Qaeda did not grow out of the Afghan Jihad but was instead a cancer within, one secreted by Sayyaf that caused resentment and some refusing to work with him:
** other resistance leaders... accuse him of corruption and misuse of funds, resent his
position as the Arab's "fair-haired" boy, and have increasingly refused to work with him **
But still being the main conduit for Arab donations to the Jihad, Sayyaf maintained his power and influence. He was, as the title of his CIA assessment says, a divisive-unifier. Few Afghans liked his clandestine Wahhabi activities but as long as he was distributing the very substantial Arab donations, they had to tolerate him. That same imposition – an alliance with Sayyaf - was forced on the reluctant leaders of the Afghan Northern Alliance after 9/11 too, this time by the CIA. While establishing a coalition of Afghan forces in October 2001 CIA officer Gary Schroen was repeatedly warned against including Sayyaf – most likely because they all knew Sayyaf had vouched for the assassins posing as journalists who murdered Ahmed Shah Massoud on 9 September 2001. But Schroen ignored their concerns, ignored Sayyaf’s links to the Filipino Abu Sayyaf Group and put him on the CIA payroll – personally handing him a $100,000 retainer on their first meeting. Contrary to Hilary Clinton’s assertion “The people we’re fighting today are the people we supported in the fight against the Soviets”, it appears America’s true enemy – KSM’s boss Abdul Rasul Sayyaf – did not receive CIA support during the 1980s anti-Soviet war, but he did post 9/11 during the so called War-on-Terror.
The Beginning of the Unofficial Global Jihad
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s terrorist spree started on 26 February 1993 when his nephew Ramzi Yousef attempted to murder 250,000 people in New York by collapsing both World Trade Center towers with one bomb in the basement. Fresh from four years employment with Sayyaf at the Peshawar Services Bureau, KSM had moved his family to Qatar and in November 1992 transferred money from Doha to the bombers in New York. Qatar then gave KSM a no-show government job and salary, false passports and the freedom to travel internationally until stopped by the USA in 1995. KSM had been indicted for his role in the 1993 WTC bombing and when Qatar was advised they helped him escape capture in 1996. This shows the first attack by the terrorist entity we know as Al Qaeda was in fact Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s terrorist network, managed by KSM and facilitated by the Qatari monarchy. While Wikipedia does credit Al Qaeda with the 1992 Aden hotel bombings and it is very likely it was perpetrated by one of the estimated 3,000 Yemeni Mujahideen veterans objecting to an American military presence in Yemen, it was not Al Qaeda. The localized grievance (US forces transiting via hotels in the city) and bungled attack (two bombers were injured and two tourists were accidentally killed, no US personnel were harmed) strengthen my theory this wasn’t a battle hardened international terrorist group’s opening salvo. What's curious about the 1992 attack is it succeeded. Heeding the warning, the US military stopped all overt activities in Yemen for the next six years. But the CIA did not stop its covert actions, as evidenced by Billy Waugh's admission to working with Al Qaeda operators in 1990s Yemen - a very significant point we will return to.

My evidence is from 26 September 1997, on the last day of a business trip to Taiz city and while being driven to Sanaa for my return flight. Twenty minutes into the journey the customer’s general manager Mohamed announced, “I’m taking you to a meeting”. I protested vehemently, saying any further delay would mean me missing my flight, but Mohamed dismissed my concern by saying, “The plane will wait for you”. A minute later Mohamed turned right off the main road and into a narrow gap between some buildings. We emerged on a dust track with cliffs to our left and open fields to our right. After five minutes driving we arrived at a collection of buildings in the aforementioned valley, as shown in the adjacent image and the video below that also frames the reason for our detour - this was my recruitment interview with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's terrorist cell - and its outcome.
Google maps route of my journey from the HSA Group's hilltop compound to the meeting in a valley by Al Qaidah town on 26 September 1997
Al Qaeda is a Western Deep State construct created with a planted news report on 30 May 1993. Their intention was to frame Osama bin Laden and the Taliban for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Wahhabi funded terrorist spree that started with the World Trade Center bombing 26 February 1993 (KSM wired money from Qatar to the bombers and advised them over the phone). That Agence France-Presse AFP report read:
"Jordanian Militants Train in Afghanistan to Confront Regime”
Citing a Jordanian militant, AFP said he’d been “trained by Al-Ka’ida, a secret organisation that is financed by a wealthy Saudi businessman who owns a construction firm in Jeddah, Ossama ibn Laden.”
My Theory on Al Qaeda’s Invention
Why would the Deep State (Western Intelligence agencies) invent a terrorist group and use a misspelling of Al Qaidah? As stated above, my theory is they were trying to frame Osama bin Laden for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s Wahhabi funded terrorist spree, and introducing the name ‘Al Kaida’ would unnerve, implicate and to a degree control OBL. But why would those Intel agencies also want to protect KSM, who they knew had supported the 1993 WTC bombers from Qatar? KSM’s boss was not OBL – it was a Wahhabi Arab funded Afghan professor called Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, The Professor. At the end of the Afghan Jihad there’d been a falling out between the foreign Mujahideen based in Peshawar Pakistan – it’s mentioned several times in the notes taken at the August 1988 meeting chaired by OBL in Peshawar. That falling out was why OBL left Afghanistan within weeks after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, even taking all his heavy construction machinery with him. OBL’s Jihad was over but KSM’s was just beginning; he’d just arrived in fact, in 1987 (as detailed in the quotes from the 2004 9/11 Commission report pictured right), having been a student in the USA till 1986.
The fact that KSM's boss Abdul Rasul Sayyaf was put on the CIA payroll by Gary Schroen in October 2001 and remains a US and NATO ally to this day illustrates perfectly why they framed OBL for KSM's terror spree - they wanted it to happen! OBL had become a threat to the Arab monarchies after shaming them with his offer to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1990. Instead those monarchs invited the American and British militaries to liberate Kuwait, and Saudi expelled OBL in 1991. But even from exile in Sudan OBL tried to counter the disinformation being spread about him with his first Western media interview in December 1993, when he stressed he was 'building roads to peace' in Sudan. He did start issuing threats against Saudi in August 1995, but that was only after Saudi had revoked his citizenship, frozen his assets and there had been at least three assassination attempts against him. It appears to me OBL was driven to join a terrorist campaign that was already well underway under Abdul Rasul Sayyaf’s direction.
Link to The Independant's online report
Supporting Evidence
CIA contractor Billy Waugh made no secret he worked with Al Qaeda operators in 1990s Yemen - he detailed how they were intent on striking the USA in his 2004 autobiography (quoted right). That likely happened during the 1994 Yemen civil war, in between his extensive surveillance of OBL in Sudan conducted around the same time. And I can link Waugh's activities to my 1997 visit to Yemen. The machine I was installing had been purchased at an industry exhibition in Chicago, a sale setup by our US sales agent David Dean. I can link Waugh and Dean through their Vietnam service. That link may sound wild and speculative until you know this - Dean committed suicide on 8 January 2020, very soon after I'd made these allegations publicly. After finding information linking their Vietnam service in December 2019 I began tweeting about it, identifying but not naming Dean. On the  6 January I tweeted 'More info on the US sales agent who I believe was a CIA contractor (same career history as Billy Waugh) coming soon'.  Two days later Dean hired a boat on Lake Hartwell, Georgia and motored out for ten minutes before jumping into the icy cold water, likely holding the boat's anchor. His body was recovered two days later, on the 10th.
The 9/11 Military Commission
Possibly my most interesting validation came from the 9/11 court in Guantanamo Bay in March 2018. My visit to the valley by Al Qaidah town was in 1997 but it wasn’t until November 2017 that I found the name of the town on Google maps. Four months later Dan Futrell, a US military investigator working for the 9/11 Military Commission, emailed me saying they were 'very interested in my insights and knowledge' and proposing to send a team of investigators to Manchester to interview me, as per his email below. The adjacent image is of a New York Times article written by one of Futrell's colleagues in December 2017, human rights attorney Alka Pradhan. In it Pradhan dismisses any link between Al Qaeda and Al Qaidah town, raising many questions about Futrell contacting me in March 2018 and saying they were 'very interested in my insight and knowledge'. And there's another twist, or maybe just a coincidence: Amy Zittritsch, my Pentagon liaison, was a CSRA contractor. CSRA is a subsiduary of General Dynamics whose other subsiduary, the British army Foxhound vehicle manufacturer, I reported on their £400-million procurement corruption in 2017! The Foxhound desert patrol vehicle was signed in to service during my 2012 Helmand tour despite the fact it kept failing hot weather trials.
Contrary Reports
In 2013 Johanna Hortolani of the Reprieve UK human rights NGO published a report that asserts there’s no link between Al Qaeda and Al Qaidah. She doesn’t say how or who made that assertion, just that Emad Hassan (the Yemeni Guantanamo detainee Reprieve UK were representing) had been detained because he told interrogators that he knew about Al Qaidah, suggesting the interrogators were too thick to differentiate between a terrorist group and a supposedly unrelated town of the same name. Reprieve UK repeated the claim of a ‘translation error’ when Emad Hassan was released in 2015 but when I brought the Truth about Al Qaidah to their attention in 2019, they deleted that report and republished it omitting the assertion that Al Qaeda and Al Qaidah are unrelated. Johanna Hortolani’s 2013 report is still available to read here. US attorney Alka Pradhan was one of Johanna Hortolani’s co-workers in 2013, representing Emad Hassan for Reprieve UK. Johanna Hortolani’s original 2013 claim (I can’t find any previous reference to Emad Hassan and Al Qaidah town, but would be happy to be corrected) was repeated in 2014 by the Morning Star Online, who interestingly used both Hortolani’s misspelling and the correct spelling (with an apostrophe) of the town’s name: “During his interrogation he was asked if he knew al-Qaida, replying: "Yes, I know al-Qa'idah well," referring to a village near his home in Yemen rather than the terror group”. Equally interesting is the Guardian newspaper reported the same story about Emad Hassan on the same day as the Morning Star, but omitted any mention of Al Qaidah town.
Conclusion
I've no doubt of Al Qaidah town's links to the terrorist entity known as Al Qaeda because I've been there, thirty minutes after being introduced to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Taiz - my task now is to convince a wider audience. I hope this redrafted report is a step closer to that - this is big and blatant enough to topple those corrupt Intel agencies who invented Al Kaida in 1993 to frame OBL for KSM's terror spree.