From a prior post: "Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower" won a Pulitzer for its methodical and well-written account of how al-Qaeda came to be and came to carry out the 9/11 attacks. No better place to start."
But what exactly did the book that won a Pulitzer, the "Looming Tower", leave out.
First the account in this book of FBI Agent Ali Soufan and the events prior to 9/11 were based on input from Steve Bongardt, FBI Special Agent on the Cole bombing, in effect in charge of the Cole investigation in the US since his boss, FBI Agent Ali Soufan, and lead investigator of the Cole bombing, was out of the country from November 2000 to 9/11 investigating this bombing in Yemen. All of this information had then been vetted by John Miller FBI Information Officer at the FBI HQ. But what information did Wright and even Bongardt not know at the time of this book?
Lawrence Wright, and correspondingly, Steve Bongardt, never knew when FBI HQ Agent Dina Corsi told Bongardt on August 28, 2001 that he had to destroy the information that he had on Mihdhar and that he and his team would not be allowed to take part in this investigation and search for Mihdhar, that Corsi already was aware that the CIA had a photograph of Khallad Bin Attash taken at Kuala Lumpur, knew they had been hiding this photograph from the FBI, knew this photograph connected Mihdhar and Hazmi directly to Khallad and the planning of the Cole bombing that took place at Kuala Lumpur, and even knew that this meant the investigation of Mihdhar should have gone to Bongardt and his team of Cole investigators! Had Corsi and the CIA officer she had been working with Tom Wilshire not conspired to hide this photograph, it would have been impossible for Corsi to force the investigation of Mihdhar away from the Cole investigating team and they most likely could have prevented the attacks on 9/11. What is horrific is at this time Wilshire and the CIA knew by hiding this photograph the FBI would be unable to amount an effective search for Mihdhar and that as a result thousands of Americans would perish in the huge al Qaeda attack the CIA and Wilshire already were aware of.
Wright, and correspondingly, Bongardt, never knew that when Margaret Gillespie found out on August 22, 2001 from the INS that Mihdhar and Hazmi were both inside of the US and took this information to Dina Corsi and Wilshire on that same day, that Wilshire knew immediately that both Mihdhar and Hazmi were long time al Qaeda terrorists in the US in order to take part in the huge al Qaeda attack that the CIA had been getting numerous warnings about. Wilshire's emails in July to his CTC managers stated just exactly that.
Wright describes in his book that Soufan had asked the FBI Director Freeh to contact CIA director Tenet in November 2000 and ask Tenet if the CIA knew about any al Qaeda meeting at Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, and if the CIA had any information of Khallad Bin Attash. Freeh told Soufan that the CIA had no information on any meeting in Kuala Lumpur or on Khallad Bin Attash, known at this time to be the mastermind of the Cole bombing. But Wright, and correspondingly, Bongardt, never knew that Freeh was well aware of this meeting in Kuala Lumpur and even aware that Khalid al-Mihdhar had attended this meeting. This information that Freeh had this information is found on page 181 of the 9/11 Commission report and on page 248 of the FBI IG report. Neither Wright nor Bongardt ever knew that Freeh had criminally obstructed Bongardt and Soufan's FBI investigation of the Cole bombing!
Wright and correspondingly, Bongardt, never knew that the meeting held in New York on June 11, 2001 between the CIA and the FBI had been set up by the CIA because of Soufan's request in April 2001 to the CIA HQ asking if the CIA knew about any al Qaeda meeting at Kuala Lumpur in January 2000, and if the CIA had any information on Khallad Bin Attash. He correctly describes that at this meeting CIA officer Clark Shannon asked Bongardt and the other Cole, investigators of they could identify anyone in the Kuala Lumpur photos of Mihdhar, one photo had only Mihdhar and Hazmi in it. But Wright and Bongardt were complete unaware that this meeting had been a CIA sting of the FBI, set up only to find out if the FBI Cole investigators had uncovered the information on Mihdhar and Hazmi that the CIA had been keeping secret for the last 19 months.
Wright never knew that identification of Khallad from the Kuala Lumpur photos in January 2001 had been initiated by Soufan's request to the Yemen station in November 2000, and that this identification was known by the Yemen station, the CIA Bin Laden unit and the CIA handler for the CIA/FBI Joint source and that all of these units were all committing criminal obstruction of the FBI Cole investigation by not providing FBI Agent Soufan, even after his direct request, information that there had been an al Qaeda planning meeting at Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 and that Khallad bin Attash had been photographed and identified right at that meeting with Mihdhar and Hazmi, directly connecting both Mihdhar and Hazmi to the planning of the Cole bombing.
None of this information was know by Wright in spite of him having spent many hours interviewing Bongardt. What is so tragic is that at any one of the times mentioned above had the CIA and the FBI HQ agents the CIA had recruited to obstruct criminal FBI investigations, not block this information from going to the FBI Cole investigators, the attacks on 9/11 could have been prevented and the 3000 people killed on that day would still be alive.
HOW SAD!
How could Wright have been so wrong and his book so flawed!!!
It turns out in spite of literally having almost all the final pieces to the 9/11 puzzle, Wright never went back to re-read either the FBI IG report or even the 9/11 Commission final report. He had all of the information needed, along with publicly available information, in order to put the entire story of 9/11 together and completely failed in the end to do this.
Yet he still got a Pulitzer prize for this obviously fatally and tragically flawed effort.
GO FIGURE!
The book "Prior Knowledge of 9/11", has all of the information in it missed by Wright and now finally has the complete picture of what actually happened prior to 9/11 that had allowed these attacks to occur!
This book can be found at www.eventson911.com. DU bloggers can also put this entire story of 9/11 together themselves, the site "
http://eventson911.com" lists all of the material needed to do this, which should take not much more than a few short years of effort to do.