This is really scary stuff - and another Pulitzer Prize winner. But sadly not for fiction.It's a detailed account of the formation of Al-Qaeda and their turning-on-its-head of so much traditional Moslem teaching. So suicide is OK - it's martyrdom. Killing other Moslems is OK - they disagree with us so they can't be proper Moslems. Killing innocent people is OK - if they're faithful they'll go to Paradise and if they're not they had it coming anyway. Democracy is a bad thing. Massive retaliation from America is to be desired because it'll rally the Moslem faithful - so let's provoke them as much as we can. And so on. How do you begin to counter thinking like that?
It's also the story of how the FBI tried to track Al-Qaeda down and avert disaster, and of the obstruction that so often faced them - particularly from the CIA. Central to this part of the story is John O'Neill. He headed up the FBI operation before, in August 2001, finally giving up in despair and ironically (and tragically) taking the job of head of security at the World Trade Centre, where he died on 9/11.
The book is full of little colourful details. The trouble is the only two I knew anything about were wrong. One of Bin Laden's men 'played center' in a soccer team - not a position I've ever heard of. And Bin Laden's technical experts are supposed to have taken the camera tape from an American TV crew and 'erased some faces' before returning it to them. It can't be done. So how many other 'facts' are a bit iffy?
But if some of the minor details are wrong it still tells a very powerful story.
Could be a bit like the TV episode 24 - as someone who works in the mobile phone industry I can't stand it when for instance they are doing the "hold them on the line so we can track them " load of rubbish. Perhaps the author has been tempted to elaborate for the sake of entertainment.
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