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A sweeping narrative history of
the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at
the people and ideas,
the terrorist plans and
the Western intelligence failures that culminated in
the assault on America.
A sweeping narrative history of
the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at
the people and ideas,
the terrorist plans and
the Western intelligence failures that culminated in
the assault on America. Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and
the United States.
The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling
the story through
the interweaving lives of four men:
the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri;
the FBI's counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill; and
the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal. As
these lives unfold, we see revealed:
the crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden ...
the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of
the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and
the attack on
the USS Cole ... O'Neill's heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in
the World Trade
towers ... Prince Turki's transformation from bin Laden's ally to his enemy ...
the failures of
the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented
the 9/11 attacks.