The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower is a masterful, detailed, and even gripping study of the backgrounds and preparations of the nineteen hijackers who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Wright has done an astonishing amount of research not just on the personal history of the attackers, but also on the roots of Islamic terrorism, the role of Middle Eastern governments in diverting the frustrations of their citizens away from their own autocratic regimes and toward the Western powers, the role of bin Laden in the attacks (he was a more complicated and less powerful figure than is commonly believed), the essential role of Mohamed Atta (the mission was nearly abandoned by al Qaeda until Atta and four others volunteered for the mission), and the broader failures of the US intelligence. I am usually skeptical of “missed clue” explanations (which are usually more obvious in hindsight than in the moment), but in this case the poor inter-agency communication between the FBI and CIA is truly astonishing, and Wright shows in detail just how much the CIA knew but failed to share with the FBI.