ayman al zawahiri Archives

I finished reading The Cell: Inside The 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It and was a bit disappointed. Not due to the writing, but rather I also read Triple Cross: How bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI–and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him just a couple of months ago and felt it was much more in depth.

Triple Cross critiques issues addressed as errors in the reporting by the authors John Miller and Michael Stone. Miller is a noted former investigative journalist with ABC News.
There was much attention drawn to The Cell for two reasons: The ABC movie The Path to 9/11 which was America’s first network movie behind the attack on 9/11 was based upon the book. Second, it was Miller’s famous 1998 interview with Osama bin Laden.

At that interview Miller learned bin Laden was well on his way to leading al-Qaeda‘s war on America. The only problem was it was too early for most law enforcement agencies to act upon.

The interview was interesting enough to see how Al was protecting bin Laden and Miller’s recollection of how 15 years old boys were shooting AK-47s next to his ears (as a way to intimidate him) repeatedly as bin Laden arrived for his interview.

Miller shared how he even initially met with bin Laden’s right hand man Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. It was quite an interview for Miller and helped establish him as a strong source on terrorism for ABC even before the 9/11 attack.

Lawrence Wright has written an amazing book that helps us understand al-Qaeda. His book The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11 is very well written and as a result very upsetting. This deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize.
Would you be surprised to learn foundations of al-Qaeda began from an Egyptian enrolled in grad school at the University of Northern Colorado in 1949? His name was Sayyid Qutb. He began the modern Islamist movement that today is al-Qaeda.

Wright documents the wealth of the bin Laden’s family which provided Osama bin Laden the financial ability to forward his own view of the world through terrorism. Osama bin Laden promoted great myths of Islam defeating massive Soviet troops in Afghanistan to sell his vision…including the dreams of airplanes hitting buildings and his relationship with Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The Looming Tower uncovers frustrating examples of how the US government failed to stop the attacks on 9/11 even when small teams within our intelligence agencies had evidence of the coming attacks. But they were fighting each other. The CIA purposefully withheld evidence from the FBI. This shows how broken our intelligence systems were organized and how they failed America.