Lawrence Wrights The Looming Tower is a masterful account of the events that culminated in al-Qaedas terrorist attacks of September

11, 2001. To relate the story as fully as possible, the author, in addition to using available published sources, interviewed over five hundred people. Wright readily admits that

The Looming Tower is not the final accounting. At the time of

writing, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaedas leaders, were in hiding, and the principal governments involved, notably Saudi Arabia and the United States, had information that has not been made available to Wright or any other investigator of the events of 9/11. The title The Looming Tower comes from the Qur n. After the terrorist attack, in a tape belonging to a member of an al-Qaeda cell, bin Laden urged the future highjackers to embrace martyrdom and recited a passage from the Qur ns fourth sura: Wherever you are, death will find you,/ even in the looming tower. In 1996 Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian, openly declared war on the United States. Until then American authorities had largely ignored him, and there was only one FBI agent assigned to the bin Laden threat prior to that year. Hardly anyone in the American government took him seriously. Wright begins his narrative with Salyyid Qutb, an Egyptian educator who visited the United States in 1948. He became convinced that there was a clash of civilizations between Islam and materialistic cultures, both capitalist and communist. Even

contemporary Islam was straying, and Qutb envisioned a restoration of a purer Islam, the Islam of the Prophet Muhammed, who died in 632 c.e. Wright refers to this attitude as the paradise lost syndrome. Convicted of involvement in plots against the secular Egyptian government of Gamal Abdul Nasser, Qutb was executed in 1966, but he was an inspiration for later al-Qaeda terrorists, notably Ayman al-Zawahiri, a middle-class Egyptian doctor. In the aftermath of the assassination of Egypts Anwar Sadat in 1981, al-Zawahiri and others were imprisoned and tortured. After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Wright reports, many Muslims believed that fighting the Soviets was a religious jihad sanctioned by the Qur n. Osama bin Laden, one of fifty-four siblings, was the son of a wealthy contractor for the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. While in college he was influenced by the writings of Sayyid Qutb. Bin Laden was an early supporter of the jihad against the Soviets, raising funds even from the Saudi royal family. Ironically, given what was to transpire, the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations contributed weapons to the fight against the Soviets, a classic example of unintended consequences inasmuch as many of those armed Muslims would become alQaeda adherents. In 1986 bin Laden and his family moved to Pakistan, where he became head of a small Arab brigade. Zawahiri also relocated to Pakistan, resuming an earlier relationship with bin Laden. They complemented each other perfectly. Bin Laden had the money and the idealism, Zawahiri had the experience and was

a brilliant propagandist. The result was a commitment to global jihad, not just against the Soviets. The goal was to restore the unity of Islam under religious leadership from Spain across Asia to the Philippines. Al-Qaeda was founded in 1988, but bin Laden and Zawahiri had not yet focused on the United States as the principal target. Wright goes on to discuss the problematic relationship bin Laden had with the Saudi royal family. Although of the puritanical Wahhabi Islam sect, the Saudi royals were widely criticized for their spendthrift habits and playboy activities, and bin Laden became a rallying point against the regimes materialism. Iraqi dictator Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait in 1990 created other complications. The royal family was divided on allowing Saudi Arabia to be used by the United States as a staging area in the Gulf War, while bin Laden adamantly opposed any American presence. After radical Muslims came to power in the Sudan, bin Laden moved to Khartoum in 1992. By then America had become the primary enemy, the personification of Christendom and the eternal enemy of Islam. Wright argues that bin Laden and alQaeda had little in the way of a political program other than a purified Islam to be achieved through jihad. Bin Laden, believing that America was a toothless tiger, found an example in Somalia, where in the aftermath of the downing of two United States helicopters, President Bill Clinton withdrew Americans from that country.

Because of bin Ladens support of jihad, his Saudi Arabian citizenship was revoked in 1994. The Saudi government refused to allow him to return except as a prisoner, and the Sudanese wanted to be rid of him, so with other alternatives closed to him, bin Laden returned to Afghanistan in 1996, in his opinion a modern

hijra, emulating Mohammeds flight from Mecca to Medina in 622

c.e., which eventually resulted in Mohammeds triumphant return to Mecca. Radical Islam had established roots in Afghanistan in the form of Mullah Mohammed Omar and his Taliban faction. By 1997 Zawahiri had joined the other jihadists in Kandahar. Wright states that although Saddam Hussein had conversations with representatives of al-Qaeda, he never provided any material support, and bin Laden ultimately sided with Iraqi dissidents. If The Looming Tower has a hero, it is John ONeill, chief of the FBIs counterterrorism unit beginning in 1995. An atypical agent, with his flashy wardrobe and his female attachments, he was responsible for the arrest in Pakistan of Ramzi Yousef, the chief figure in the 1993 attempt to blow up New York Citys World Trade Center. FBI culture focused on traditional crimes, such as those committed by the Mafia and occurring within the United States. It had recently been given wider responsibilities but was slow to adapt to a world terrorist threat. ONeill adapted. To his fellow agents, his relentlessness regarding bin Laden looked like an obsession, but by 1997 he was in charge of the FBIs National Security Division in New York City.

If ONeill was resolute in his pursuit of bin Laden, his FBI superiors, including its director, Louis Freeh, were not. There was also the rivalry between the FBI and the CIA. In part, it was a bureaucratic struggle over turf, fueled by antagonistic personalities, but part was their differing missions. The FBI wanted to bring criminals to trial, whereas the CIA was dedicated to eliminating security threats regardless of legal restrictions. Wright relates the relationship that Dan Coleman of the FBI had with the CIAs Michael Scheurer. They had their personality differences, but also Coleman wanted to bring bin Laden to justice whereas Scheurer wanted to kill the Saudi. However, as the CIA had no sources within either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, it was impossible to arrest bin Laden or kill him. The CIA was successful in 1998 in capturing one of Zawahiris advisers, whose laptop computer revealed the names of many alQaeda members and its organizational chart, but the CIA refused to share the information with the FBI. In August, 1998, al-Qaeda launched a terrorist attack against the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Over two hundred people died. Five hundred FBI agents were deployed to the two African nations, where it was ascertained that the attack was an al-Qaeda operation. Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on a chemical weapons facility in Khartoum; later it was discovered that the facility manufactured pharmaceuticals, not weapons. In Operation Infinite Reach, sixty-six cruise missiles were launched against al-Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan. The National Security Agency monitored phone calls

but refused to share information with either the FBI or the CIA. If it had, the al-Qaeda leadership might have been killed. With the new millennium in the offing, in 1999 ONeill became convinced that al-Qaeda would strike within the United States, but FBI director Freeh informed the White House that there was no domestic danger from al-Qaeda. The CIA was also concerned about domestic threats but had few details. In December Ahmed Ressam was apprehended at the Canadian border in possession of incendiary materials to be exploded at Los Angeles International Airport. Although he had trained in an al-Qaeda camp, Ressam was a freelancer, not an al-Qaeda agent. Wright notes that by the late 1990s, al-Qaeda recruits were largely middle class, mostly college educated, living displaced and alienated lives, often residing in Europe. Many were attracted to the lure of martyrdom rather than any specific political goals. The cause of jihad gave them an identity. In particular the German government tolerated political dissidents, and radical Muslims had settled in Hamburg, including Mohammed Atta, future leader of the 9/11 attacks. In Afghanistan, attacks on America were being planned. The White House and the Capitol building were possible targets, and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed advocated the World Trade Center, which his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, had failed to destroy in 1993. Atta and others were selected for the mission. They returned to Hamburg with the goal of enrolling in flight schools in the United States. The CIA identified two other Saudis who entered America in January,

2000, also with the intent to enroll in flight school, but the agency did not pass that information along to the FBI, in part because the CIA was overwhelmed with other warnings. USS Cole was badly damaged and seventeen sailors killed in an al-Qaeda attack in Yemen in October, 2000. ONeill was in charge of the investigation. The CIA had earlier acquired information regarding a Khallad, the mastermind of the Cole bombing, but had failed to inform the FBI. There was no response to the Cole attack because of the presidential campaign and President Clintons attempt to make peace between Israel and Palestine. The perpetrators of the attack on the African embassies were convicted in a New York court in May, 2001a victory for the FBIs campaign to bring criminals to justicebut by then future highjackers had already entered the United States. Again, possible clues of terrorist attacks were not shared between the FBI and the CIA. Wright generally blames the CIA for the intelligence secretiveness and points to the lack of urgency on the part of the FBI. That summer an FBI agent in Phoenix noted that terrorists were possibly training at flight schools, but the warning was ignored, as was a request from a local agent in Minnesota to pursue possible terrorist connections to Zacarias Moussaoui, who was also taking flight lessons. Personal peccadilloes having hindered his advancement, ONeill resigned from the FBI on August 22, 2001, immediately taking a position with the World Trade Center. On September 11, ONeill

died in the collapse of the towers. In Afghanistan on September 11, bin Laden and others listened to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Bin Laden was elated when reports came in but perhaps disappointed that the fourth plane did not strike the Capitol Building. He was also disappointed that his fellow Muslims did not immediately rally in support of his jihad against the United States, but he maintained that the infidel West would eventually succumb, God willing.

The Looming Tower is only one of numerous works that have been
published about the events of September 11, 2001. Some have focused on the terrorist attack itself and the immediate aftermath; others have traced the resulting war on terror and the Iraq War. What Wright has accomplished is to present in eminently readable fashion the historical background that tragically led to 9/11. The work was a finalist for the National Book Award and well deserved the honor.