The Looming Tower
by Lawrence Wright · first published 2006
67% recommend33% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Detailed account of the intelligence failures and rivalries between agencies leading up to 9/11, with a focus on the people behind al-Qaeda; often recommended as the go-to starting point on the topic.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
National Book Award FinalistA Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times Book Review Best Book of the YearA gripping narrative that spans five decades, The Looming Tower explains in unprecedented detail the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, the rise of al-Qaeda, and the intelligence failures that culminated in the attacks on the World Trade Center. Lawrence Wright re-creates firsthand the transformation of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri from incompetent and idealistic soldiers in Afghanistan to leaders of the most successful terrorist group in history. He follo
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…states, and yet these states are aligned to the West, armed by the West, and also suppress the same radical elements you wish to neutralize domestically. To add a touch of concreteness, according to "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright (which I cannot recommend enough if you're interested in that bit of modern history), an explicit motivation of Osama bin Laden was the US's continued…
on “Shut up and play nice: How the Western world is limiting free speech” ↗Obligatory reading: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looming_Tower Important name in this event in Ali Soufan. The amount of conspiracy theories here are surprising.
on “‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’” ↗For anyone interested, The Looming Tower provides excellent insight into the events leading up to 9/11. https://www.amazon.com/Looming-Tower-Al-Qaeda-Road-11/dp/037...
on “Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival” ↗…other terrorist attacks and was known to US intelligence. All the different agencies had info on a lot of the hijackers but they all kept it to themselves or the info wasn’t passed up the ladder. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright is one of the best books on this topic and goes further into it. But I’m sure you can find other references, including the 9/11 Report. This was a massive failure by the US intelligence…
on “Flurry of Calls Among Saudi Staff and Spy Coincided with 9/11 Hijackers’ Arrival” ↗He was both, but now he has no funds. Or, at least, no means to get at those funds. Read "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright.
on “How Aaron Barr revealed himself to Anonymous” ↗If that's interesting to you, check out _Going Clear_, by Lawrence Wright, who also wrote _The Looming Tower_, which is also an excellent book.
on “John Dee and the occult in California” ↗The Looming Tower is the modern classic[1]. It's about the people behind the attacks and some of the dysfunction that caused the Bush Administration to fail to stop them. The aftermath of the attacks is much more complex…
on “Ask HN: Best book to read on the 9/11 tragedy” ↗…Intelligence agencies have a very hard time working together. The domestic unit tasked with tracking Al Qaeda did not know agents were on American soil, when the CIA and NSA (foreign intelligence) did. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright is a great book about this, and the TV show by the same name (a Hulu original) is also fantastic and largely accurate to the true story. Rare gem for Hulu.
on “Google's origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance” ↗…intelligence agencies will have infiltrated such a large international group anyway But will those organizations get in each other’s way and thus cause us to not stop it in advance. Watch or read The Looming Tower for more context. I’m not sure we really learned our lesson for that one.
on “Power Outage at Samsung Fab Destroys 3.5% of Global NAND Flash Output for March” ↗The show "The Looming Tower" on Hulu documents this well, would recommend checking it out if you want to learn more. It also documents how the CIA and NSA basically froze the FBI out of key intel. What I find super ironic is this…
on “Biden Declassifies Secret FBI Report on Saudi Connections to 9/11” ↗This is my favorite description of enlightenment ever, taken from http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002883.html Here's a section from The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, describing what Mubarak's security services did after Ayman al-Zawahiri attempted to assassinate Mubarak in 1995: To deal with Zawahiri, Egyptian intelligence agents devised a fiendish…
on “Hosni Mubarak finally steps down” ↗In his book on 9/11 and Al-Queda, The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright claims that OBL is actually not particularly tall and certainly not 6'6".
on “Driving Directions from Pakistan Military Academy to Bin Laden's Compound” ↗…sequels. Consequently I read this profile with no knowledge of Lawrence Wright. Enjoyed it too. But then got to the end and...Holy cow, what a resume on this guy! > LAWRENCE WRIGHT is the author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and named one of Time’s Top 100 Books of All Time. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and winner of three…
on “Lawrence Wright on Larry McMurtry” ↗As per this article, Palantir gives their new employees a reading list - http://thebaffler.com/salvos/improv-da The two books listed in the article are: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 and Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. Does anybody know the others? Thanks
on “What books are on Palantir's reading list” ↗…are relatively old, nothing like new or anything. Examples: Army at Dawn, Eternal Golden Braid, Tale of Dueling Neurosurgeons, When Genius Failed, Snow Crash, Good Omens, The Signal and The Noise, The Looming Tower. I would expect at least a couple of these to be on there, its not like they're at peak popularity or anything. But I did chuckle at Piketty's Capital being on unlimited.
on “Kindle Unlimited” ↗