Welcome to my yearly book review of all the books I’ve read in 2022. This is actually inaccurate, as I won’t be reviewing all the books I read this year. I’ve decided to only write about the books which made the biggest impression on me. This post will focus on the 9/11 related material I’ve been reading.

The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden by Peter Bergen: This look at Al Qaeda’s leader fills in a seeming drought of bin Laden biographies. Peter Bergen uses a trove of documents recovered during the 2011 raid to flesh out his subject’s life. Some will snicker at Bin Laden’s eccentricities, such as putting hair dye in his graying beard. More serious readers will grapple with the central contradiction of his life: That a man humble enough to sacrifice his life for god was also a narcissistic media whore. Many myths about bin Laden (some of which were self-perpetuated) are dispelled. His publicly stated strategic rationale for 9/11, to draw the US into an unwinnable war and bankrupt it, was just glossing over a gross miscalculation. Using the Beirut barracks bombing and Black Hawk Down incidents as models, bin Laden believed a large and dramatic atrocity would cause the United States to pull out of the Middle East altogether. Needless to say, it backfired. Bin Laden’s incompetence as a military leader is well documented but his personal bravery in the Soviet-Afghan war was well covered in Arab media and helped lead to a flood of donations to the mujahadeen.

If this book has a theme it’s the power of delusion. Bin Laden had many delusions but his unassailable belief in them enabled him to shape the course of history. He was not the only one. As bin Laden was escaping Tora Bora, General Tommy Franks was briefing Donald Rumsfeld on the Iraq War plans. One flaw of this book is Bergen’s tendency to lapse into the first person when discussing his encounter with bin Laden as part of CNN in the 90’s. It’s a jarring shift in perspective which makes one feel like you’re reading a different book. A single, dedicated chapter would have sufficed. Neither was I convinced by Bergen’s contention that bin Laden’s father influenced his path to Jihad. Bin Laden claimed that his father had said one of his sons would go on to wage Jihad, yet this was said during one of his many self-aggrandizing interviews in the 90s. Further, according to Bergen’s account the two had no real relationship before the elder bin Laden’s death in a plane crash in 1967. Given his penchant for inventing myths and post facto motives for himself this claim feels suspect. No doubt this and other details will be debated for decades to come but overall this is a great book for those looking for a detailed portrait of 9/11’s mastermind.

FBI 9/11 Operation Encore files: This isn’t a book but I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about this. For those who don’t know, the FBI has released thousands of pages of documents about its investigation into Saudi links to 9/11. Most of what’s in them has been known for years but there are some new revelations. In the interest of staying purely historical, I’m going to avoid speculation and stick to what the files do definitively prove. I’m also going to be writing as if you’re already familiar with this topic to save time. Here’s a good primer to catch up.

There are three things these files do prove:

1. Bayoumi was in fact a Saudi spy. He received a stipend from the Saudi GIP.
2. Contrary to his assertions, Bayoumi was an extremist. A witness quotes him as saying the Muslim community needed to ”take action” and was ”at Jihad”. He also had connections to other terrorist elements besides the hijackers.
3. His meeting with the hijackers was not a coincidence. A witness variously named Caisin bin Don/Isamu Dyson/Clayton Morgan says Bayoumi drove to the restaurant, waited by the window for them to arrive, and approached them from such a distance where it would have been impossible for him to have overheard them i.e. it was a planned meeting.

The files go on to say “there’s a 50/50 chance” Bayoumi knew about 9/11 beforehand.

In many ways this is unsatisfying since it still doesn’t definitively answer the big question of if Saudi officials had foreknowledge of 9/11. On the other hand, it only adds to the suspicion and keeps interest in this case alive. I look forward to any new revelations.