The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [0]
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Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random
House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint
previously published material:
David Corn: Excerpt from “When 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Go Bad.”
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Forbes: Excerpt from “There Is No Time, There Will Be Time”
by Peggy Noonan (Forbes, November 30, 1998).
Reprinted by permission of Forbes Media LLC © 2011.
HarperCollins Publishers: Excerpt from At the Center of the Storm
by George Tenet, copyright © 2007 by George Tenet; excerpts from
Perfect Soldiers by Terry McDermott, copyright © 2005 by Terry McDermott.
Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.:
Excerpt from The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 by
John Farmer, copyright © 2009 by John Farmer.
Reprinted by permission of Riverhead Books,
an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
St. Martin’s Press and Liza Dawson Associates: Excerpts from Growing Up bin Laden
by Najwa bin Laden, Omar bin Laden, and Jean Sasson, copyright © 2009
by The Sasson Corporation. Rights outside of North America are controlled
by Liza Dawson Associates. Reprinted by permission of
St. Martin’s Press and Liza Dawson Associates.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53125-4
www.ballantinebooks.com
Jacket design: Misa Erder
Jacket photograph: Benjamin Thompson/Flickr/Getty Images
v3.1
“I don’t believe for a minute that we got everything right.
We wrote a first draft of history.”
—LEE HAMILTON,
vice chairman, 9/11 Commission
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
AUTHORS’ NOTE
PREFACE
PART I ATTACK
PART II DISTRUST AND DECEIT
PART III AMERICA RESPONDS
PART IV PLOTTERS
PART V PERPETRATORS
PART VI TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
PART VII UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
AFTERWORD
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTO INSERT
NOTES AND SOURCES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Other Books by This Author
About the Authors
AUTHORS’ NOTE
OVER THE YEARS, THE EVENT TO WHICH THE WORLD GAVE THE BRIEF name “9/11” has burgeoned into a universe of facts and factoids. Our approach to the writing of this book was to build a chronology, which eventually ran to well over a thousand pages, to gather information from a multitude of sources, including published material in both paper and electronic form, and to conduct interviews of our own. We read as deeply as possible the many thousands of pages of staff reports, original memoranda, and other 9/11 Commission records that began to be released as of 2009.
Additional information on numerous points can be found in the Notes and Sources section at the back of the book. These are linked to the text by page number.
For ease of reading, we have adopted a single standard for Arabic names that are rendered differently in different texts. The name “bin Laden,” for example, can be found elsewhere as “bin Ladin” or even “ben Ladin,” and the organization associated with him as “al-Qaeda,” or “al Qida”—and more. We have stuck to “bin Laden” and “al Qaeda.”
The full rendering of many Arab persons’ names is lengthy, and we have in many cases shortened them. After a full first mention, for example, “Khalid al Mihdhar” becomes just “Mihdhar.” We render “Ramzi bin al-Shibh,” as have many other texts, simply as “Binalshibh.” Though perhaps not strictly correct, or satisfactory to the purist, this makes for smoother reading.
Our aim has been to make readable sense out of a kaleidoscopic story, to offer rational explanation where there has been confusion or unnecessary controversy, and to serve history as well as possible.
A.S. R.S.
May 2011
PREFACE
TEN YEARS ON, MEMORY AND LOSS. WHERE TWO WONDERS OF THE modern world once soared high over the city, two great cascades feed reflecting pools of shimmering water.