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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I'm done reading it, too. I was waiting for more people before I said much of anything, but I will say that I thought the book was much, much better at telling the bin Laden/Zawahiri side of the story than the O'Neill/Turki side of the story. Wright obviously didn't have any access to what anyone else at the FBI was doing, and he doesn't seem to have had any access at all to the CIA. Michael Schereur (sp?) makes a brief cameo -- in reality, he was running the CIA's Al Qaeda effort, and has written his own book about it (haven't read it). Wright had even less access to Saudi intelligence's doings.
Not to criticize Wright for a book he didn't write, but it's more like a history of Al Qaeda up to 2001 than what the book jackets sells it as.
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You're right. I didn't take into account that his lack of access to the CIA could manifest itself as "WTF was the CIA thinking?" in the book.
I also learned a lot about how al Queda was formed and was fascinated by the more personal stories about OBL and Zawahiri. I wish there was more info about the 9/11 hijackers. I feel like more insight into why so many upper/middle class Saudis choose jihad over a confortable lifestyle.
As a westerner, I have some difficulty keeping all the middle eastern names straight (every one seems to be named Abu Abudullah al-Whatever, NTTAWWT), especially since everyone has at least two aliases. Reading Bob Baer's books is a real chore in this regard. But I thought Wright did a nice job making it easy to identify the players, which is no easy feat.
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