The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
by Lawrence Wright


  
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Book Description

Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is probably the most essential book to read this year. It’s a riveting, gracefully written, profoundly disturbing account of the history of 21st century terrorism. Wright begins in the decades following World War II and the creation of Israel, and carries the story up to its flaming conclusion in 2001. After many years of failing in their attempts to set up a theocracy in the Middle East (Egypt was their original target), Muslim fanatics turned their attention, instead, to the western powers, especially the United States. Joining together in a loose confederation under the leadership of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri following the Afghan Civil War, the newly named al-Qaeda embarked on an ambitious and meticulously planned program of death and destruction that included the bombing of the Navy guided missile destroyer U.S.S. Cole in 2000, and various western embassies in Africa. What makes this book so depressing is that it becomes clear that between the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the FBI, the U.S. had all the puzzle parts that – put together – would have prevented the suicide bombers from carrying out their martyrdoms on 9/11. But since not one of the three groups was anxious (or even willing, it appears) to share their intelligence and information, the plot unfolded nearly exactly as Osama and Zawahiri had planned. Sure, we’ve read a lot of what Wright covers in both newspapers and in other books (Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies, for one), but never have all the facts been amassed in one place, and never in so much detail. If there’s a hero in Wright’s book, it’s John O’Neill, the all-too-human FBI agent so angry and frustrated by the bureaucracy that prevented an all out push to get bin Laden that he retired from the bureau and started work as the chief of security at the World Trade Center in late August of 2001 and died, age 50, on September 11. The title of the book comes from a chapter in the Koran, “Wherever you are, death will find you,/even in the looming tower,” which bin Laden repeated several times in a speech he gave to his followers in the weeks leading up to September 11.