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The Looming Tower -;'*W' *T*T*» i *•>» *- T Jà^J* 18OO 00049 Praise for THE LOOMING TOWER "What a riveting tale Lawrence Wright fashions in this marvelous book. The Looming Tower is not just a detailed, heart-stopping account of the events leading up to 9/11, written with style and verve. [It's] a thoughtful examination of the world that produced the men who brought us 9/11, and of their progeny who bedevil us today . Wright has unearthed an astonishing amount of detail about Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri. .. and all the rest of them. They come alive . The portrait of John O'Neill, the driven, demon-ridden F.B.I, agent who worked so frantically to stop Osama bin Laden, only to perish in the attack on the World Trade Center, is worth the price of the book alone. The Looming-Tower is, a thriller. And it's a tragedy, too." —Dexter Filkins, Cover, The New York Times Book Review "A towering achievement. One of the best and more important books of recent years. Lawrence Wright has dug deep into and written well a story every American should know. A masterful combination of reporting and writing." —Dan Rather "A searing view of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. a view that is at once wrenchingly intimate and boldly sweeping in its historical perspective ... A narrative history that possesses all the immediacy and emotional power of a novel, an account that indelibly illustrates how the political and the personal, the pub­ lic and the private were often inextricably intertwined." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Lawrence Wright's integrity and diligence as a reporter shine through every page of this riveting narrative." —Robert A. Caro CURRENT AFFAIRS/ ISBN 0-375-4K86-X HISTORY 52795 780375"4K862 U.S.A. $27.95 CANADA $36.95 A SWEEPING NARRATIVE HISTORY of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the peo­ ple 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 cross­ currents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organiza­ tion 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. The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despair­ ing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda com­ pounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O'Neill's high- wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life—he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others' existence—and the nitty-gritty of turf bat­ tles among U.S. intelligence agencies. Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a gal- vanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at Septem­ ber ii, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing ter­ rorist threat. LAWRENCE WRIGHT graduated from Tulane Uni­ versity and spent two years teaching at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law. The author of five works of nonfiction— City Children, Country Summer; In the New World; Saints and Sinners; Remembering Satan; and Twins— he has also written a novel, God's Favorite, and was cowriter of the movie The Siege. He and his wife are longtime residents of Austin, Texas. Lawrence Wright's Remembering Satan and Saints and Sinners are available in Vintage paperback. With 16 pages of photographs and 1 map in text jacket photograph: Osama bin Laden and His Sixteen al-Qaeda Members, © Reuters/Corbis Jacket design by Chip Kidd >~< Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, New York www.aaknopf.com 8/2006 THE LOOMING TOWER ALSO BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT God's Favorite Twins Remembering Satan Saints and Sinners In the New World City Children, Country Summer THE LOOMING TOWER Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 Lawrence Wright Alfred A. Knopf ^^ New York 2006 THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF Copyright © 2006 by Lawrence Wright All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto. www.aaknopf.com Grateful acknowledgment is made to Constable & Robinson Ltd. and Michal Snunit for permission to reprint an excerpt from The Soul Bird by Michal Snunit. Reprinted by permission. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wright, Lawrence, [date] The looming tower : Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11 / by Lawrence Wright. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-375-41486-x 1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001. 2. Qaida (Organization) 3. Terrorism—Government policy—United States. 4. Intelligence service—United States. I. Title. HV6432.7.W75 2005 973.931—dc22 2006041032 Manufactured in the United States of America Published August 8, 2006 Reprinted Three Times Fifth Printing, August 2006 This is for my family, Roberta, Caroline, Gordon & Karen CONTENTS Prologue 3 i. The Martyr 7 2. The Sporting Club 32 3. The Founder 60 4. Change 84 5. The Miracles 99 6. The Base 121 7. Return of the Hero 145 8. Paradise 163 9. The Silicon Valley 176 10. Paradise Lost 187 11. The Prince of Darkness 202 12. The Boy Spies 213 13. Hijira 224 14. Going Operational 237 15. Bread and Water 245 i6. "Now It Begins" 262 *7- The New Millennium 287 18. Boom 301 19. The Big Wedding 333 20. Revelations 362 Principal Characters 375 Notes 385 Bibliography 429 Author Interviews 439 Acknowledgments and Notes on Sources 447 Index 455 X f''%,. Ar Si Bhac *Sea O % jâEORG^\ % TURKEY ARMENIA r ^ TURKME ISTAN V5 ^ <Ù ** V.^ AZERBAIJAN *e* LEBANON^, SYRIA-- / <§ ^ , ISRAEL^^am^c^ *) Tehran Tel Aviv #0^ Amman *2^ ? c Cairo® ;Jerusalerri JORDAN V ®B%hdad IRAN \ IRA* EGYPT Y? KUWAIT Medina BAHRAIN-^ Q ^ Riyadh^ Gul QATAR Jeddah U.A.E. Port w y SAUDI Sudan- Mecca ARABIA OMAN SUDAN «^Khartoum /ERITREA YEMEN Aden ...-•••' ETHIOPIA !>JfBOUTI Gulf of Aden AZAKHSTAN KYRGYZSTAN EKISTAN CHINA TAJIKISTAN tfTUSH PANJSHlk VALLEY Kabulr Peshawar KhostP Islamabad HANISTA|J lahar r % New Delhi <% PAKISTAN Carachi \v~- . Arabian Sea .00 200 Miles 200 Kilometers Sayyid Qutb, the educator and writer whose book Milestones ignited the radical Islamist move­ ment, is shown here displaying one of his books (probably Social Justice in Islam) to the president of Col­ orado State College of Education, Dr. William Ross. Greeley, Colorado, from the air in the 1940s. "The small city of Greeley, in which I am staying, is so beautiful that one may easily imagine that he is in paradise," Qutb wrote. But he also saw the darker side of America. Qutb on trial, circa 1965. He was hanged in 1966. "Thank God," he said when his death sentence was pronounced. "I performed jihad for fifteen years until I earned this martyrdom." /*£££%. Ayman al-Zawahiri grew up in Maadi, a middle-class suburb of Cairo. A solitary child, his class­ mates regarded him as a genius. He is shown in his childhood in a Cairo park. Zawahiri as a schoolboy, right, and as a medical student at Cairo University, below Opposite bottom: Ayman al-Zawahiri was defendant number 113 of the 302 who were charged with aiding or planning the October 1981 assassina­ tion of Anwar al-Sadat. He became spokesperson for the defendants because of his superior English. He is shown here delivering his lecture to the world press in December 1982. Many blame the torture of prisoners in the Egyptian prisons for the savagery of the Islamist movement. "They kicked us, they beat us, they whipped us with electric cables! They shocked us with electricity! And they used the wild dogs!" The defendants on trial Left: Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, "the blind sheikh," was one of the defendants. He was the emir of the Islamic Group at the time. Left: Mohammed bin Laden came to Saudi Arabia in 1931 as a penniless Yemeni laborer and rose to become the king's favorite contractor and the man who built much of the infrastructure of the modern Kingdom. He gestures here to Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz during a tour of the renovation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, circa 1950.
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