This article's lead section contains information that is not included elsewhere in the article. If the information is appropriate for the lead of the article, this information should also be included in the body of the article.(May 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is a 2006 non-fiction book by Lawrence Wright, a journalist for The New Yorker. Wright examines the origins of the militant organization Al-Qaeda, the background for various terrorist attacks and how they were investigated, and the events that led to the September 11 attacks.
The Looming Tower is largely focused on the people who conspired to commit the September 11 attacks, their motives and personalities, and how they interacted. The book starts with Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian religious scholar who visited the United States in the late 1940s and returned to his home to become an anti-West Islamist and eventually a martyr for his beliefs. There is also a portrait of Ayman al-Zawahiri — from his childhood in Egypt, to his participation in and later leadership of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, to his merging of his organization with Al Qaeda.
Lawrence Wright also describes in detail some of the Americans involved in counter-terrorism, in particular Richard A. Clarke, chief counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council; Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's counterterrorist Alec Station; and John P. O'Neill, an Assistant Deputy Director of Investigation for the FBI, who served as America's top bin Laden hunter until his retirement from the FBI in August 2001, after which he worked as head of security at the World Trade Center, where he died in the 9/11 attacks.
The book also describes some of the problems associated with the lack of cooperation between the FBI, the CIA, and other U.S. government organizations that prevented them from uncovering the 9/11 plot in time.
Because The Looming Tower is to a large extent focused on telling the story of the people involved, it does not describe the 9/11 plot and its execution in much detail. It focuses more on the background and the conditions that produced the people who planned and staged the attack and on information about those who were combating terror against the United States.
Quran reference in title
The words "looming towers" or "lofty towers" (بروج مشيدة) appear in the Quran4:78 (Sūrat an-Nisā').[citation needed] According to Wright, Osama bin Laden, at a wedding before the 9/11 attacks, quoted the line, repeating it three times: "Wherever you are, death will find you, even if you are in lofty[failed verification (See discussion.)] towers" (أينما تكونوا يدرككم الموت ولو كنتم في بروج مشيدة, 'aynamā takūnū yadrikkumu l-mawtu wa-law kuntum fī burūjin mušayyadatin)[failed verification (See discussion.)].[1][citation needed]
^Kreisler, Harry (2006-11-13). "Conversation with Lawrence Wright: Page 3: Book: The Looming Tower". Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley (globetrotter.berkeley.edu). UC Berkley, California: Regents of the University of California. p. 3. Archived from the original on 2020-01-15. Retrieved 2007-07-09. Let's show the book and talk about it. The book is, as I said, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, published by Knopf. I would like to begin with a quote, and this is the source of your title. You quote Osama bin Laden at a wedding before the 9/11 attack was launched. He quoted from the fourth Sura of the Koran and he repeated it three times. And the line is: "Wherever you are, death will find you, even in the looming tower." So, what was your goal here in writing and how did you set about doing it?