A review by ben3845
The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States by National Commission on Terrorist Attacks

4.0

I picked up The 9/11 Commission Report in light of the 20th anniversary of the attacks and the reflection it prompted for many of us. I’ll go ahead and say unequivocally at the top that this report leaves no room for the consideration of conspiracies about whether Al Qaeda might not be responsible for the 9/11 attacks. There is a wealth of evidence that the attacks were being planned for years by the wide-reaching terrorist network and that Bin Laden was directly involved in the planning, down to personally approving the hijackers. But what does become tragically clear in the report is that the United States had ample opportunities to stop Bin Laden throughout the Clinton Administration. It seems that President Clinton and his team understood the gravity of the terrorism threat, but they were playing by old rules. For them, the risks of opportunities to strike Bin Laden or Al Qaeda just seemed to outweigh the perceived threat without the hindsight afforded to us now.  The same can be said of our diplomatic efforts to nudge Pakistan toward ostracizing the Taliban. They could have done more and we could have pushed them with a heavier hand — but 20th-century thinking did not merit a change in approach. The lack of preparedness for the new threats facing us extended to everything from the intelligence community, to the FAA, to the communications equipment of the NYPD. The book was not without inspiration though — the Commission does an excellent job of highlighting the incredible heroism displayed by first responders. 343 FDNY firefighters died that day — more than any emergency response agency in history. But their sacrifice was key to enabling the vast majority of civilians below the point of impact in the towers to evacuate (16,400 - 18,800 were in the towers at the time of impact). I appreciate the care the authors put into crafting a report that read with objectivity while adding just enough editorialization to make the report readable (although as a report, naturally, it could still be a slog at times). This book is a big commitment — but it’s worthwhile for anyone seeking to learn more about a day that changed all of our lives forever.