‘9/11’ authoritative, highly readable
If it were titled just “9/11” and arrived as the big summer book of a star nonfiction author — say, Robert Caro — it couldn’t be doing better.
“The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Activities” (W.W. Norton, 516 pages, $10) remains the No. 1 best-seller on amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. So now it’s time for a little respect.
Time for critics to elbow one another aside to praise the depth of the report’s interviewing (1,200 individuals in 10 countries) and the scope of its archival research (2.5 million documents examined).
Time to appreciate the richness of its context, the authoritativeness of its tone, the fairness of its perspective, and — last but not least — its brisk readability.
Yet the “9/11 Report” inevitably wears a “Politicize Me!” sign on its back in a campaign season. So Fox News Channel has already chopped it into sound bites and spun it for the pro-Bush right, and The New York Times has done the same for the anti-Bush left.
Your job as reader and citizen: Just say no. That is, read it and refuse to accept it in bits and pieces, as stray bullets from an ammunition dump for Red or Blue America. Because the report is a superb study, orchestrated by a fine scholar: commission executive director Philip D. Zelikow, who taught history at the University of Virginia.
It’s a tale of U.S. government complacency, of endless hemming and hawing as jihadism and al-Qaeda grew bolder, more sophisticated and more aggressive, from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to the attacks on the USS Cole and the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to 9/11 itself.
It begins with a gripping, precise Chapter 1, “We Have Some Planes” (a hijacker’s comment), that re-creates the surprise seizures themselves and grimly documents the misinformation among aviation and administration officials in the early hours of Sept. 11, 2001.
The report then steps back for “The Foundation of the New Terrorism,” outlining the rise of Osama bin Laden. Chapters 3 and 4, “Counterterrorism Evolves” and “Responses to Al Qaeda’s Initial Assaults,” lead us through Washington’s fitful attempts to adapt to a post-Cold War enemy.
Chapter 5, “Al Qaeda Aims at the American Heartland,” draws heavily on detainee interrogation reports, particularly from 9/11’s organizer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Chapter 6, “From Threat to Threat,” begins with the “Millennium Crisis” (anybody remember Y2K?), continues with the Clinton administration’s failed efforts to dislodge bin Laden from Afghanistan, and ends with the George W. Bush administration taking over.
Chapter 7, “The Attack Looms,” traces the movements of hijackers inside the United States. Chapter 8, “The System Was Blinking Red,” returns us to the U.S. intelligence community’s “inability to capitalize on mistakes made by al-Qaeda” as “time ran out.”
Then we once again experience Sept. 11. Chapter 9, “Heroism and Honor,” focuses on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Chapter 10, “Wartime,” starts that morning as President Bush flies out of Sarasota, Fla., and into his defining crisis.
In case after case, the report corrects what we thought we knew, from how officials issued (or failed to issue) orders to shoot down the planes to how hijackers tricked their way into the country.
We now read that the passenger on United Flight 93 who supposedly declared, “Let’s roll!” and ignited a revolt against the hijackers, may actually have said, “Roll it!” — referring to a food cart passengers possibly tried to use to break into the cockpit.
In the end, in its modesty, its earnestness, its self-described “humility” in offering solutions rather than the finger-pointing that infects politics and media today, the report sends a simple message:
Unless we stop fanning factional Left/Right hatred among ourselves and work together to solve the many challenges of Islamic terrorism, we’re going to get slammed again.