'Tower' provides new understanding of 9/11

Besides the commission report, dozens of intricately reported books about 9/11 are already available in English; I had read perhaps half of them and learned something new from each before starting ``The Looming Tower." But Lawrence Wright's book is my new touchstone. None of the previous books led me to say ``Aha, now I think I understand" as frequently. It is also the best example of narrative storytelling. As I already knew from Wright's previous books (among them ``Remembering Satan," ``Twins," and ``Saints and Sinners" ), he is a superb literary stylist.

``The Looming Tower" is a book of synthesis, of re-emphasis, of explaining seemingly isolated events in an improved context. Perhaps the most important re-emphasis is how the CIA and the National Security Agency -- for what appear to be petty, bureaucratic reasons -- failed to share information with the FBI that might have halted the airplane hijackers from carrying out their missions in New York and Washington. That portion of Wright's reporting has already been excerpted by The New Yorker magazine (where he is a staff writer), under the headline ``The Agent: Did the CIA Stop an FBI Detective From Preventing 9/11?" In the book version, it is fair to say that Wright eliminates the question mark. He pretty clearly believes that individuals within the CIA deserve blame.

Although the book is populated by thousands of sources and subjects (Wright provides brief descriptions of 86 ``principal characters" in the back), he wisely chooses four as the centerpieces. They are John O'Neill, an FBI counterterrorism specialist who just weeks before 9/11 accepted the job as World Trade Center security chief, dying in the collapsed towers' rubble; Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi Arabian businessman turned Al Qaeda financier and public leader; Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor believed to serve as Al Qaeda's planner of deadly operations; and Prince Turki al-Faisal, director of Saudi Arabian intelligence agencies trying to stifle the Al Qaeda brand of terrorism .