What separates The Looming Tower from other books about al-Qaeda, 9/11, and the intelligence community?
More than any other book in English, The Looming Tower explores the Arab personalities who make up the core of al-Qaeda. It examines their backgrounds and explores the evolution of their decisions to attack America and to murder innocent people. Relying on documents that have never been available until now and extensive interviews with jihadis and intelligence figures who have never before spoken to the press, The Looming Tower gets inside the al-Qaeda community and richly describes what the terrorist life is like—not only for the leaders but also for their wives and children. At the same time, The Looming Tower deals with the counterterrorists in America and Saudi Arabia who sought to stop the Islamist threat. The story is told through the lives of four primary characters: Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who is the brains behind al-Qaeda; Osama bin Laden, the organization’s charismatic leader; Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and now the ambassador
