All reporters stand on the shoulders of the journalists who have preceded them, and while I’ve disagreed with some of the conclusions reached by others who have covered this story, I owe them all a great debt. This book would not have been possible without the extraordinary reporting done in the years since the World Trade Center bombing. The seminal texts referenced throughout include Two Seconds Under The World by Jim Dwyer, David Kocieniewski, Diedre Murphy, and Peg Tyre, the best book on Yousef’s first attack on the Towers. The definitive biography of Ramzi Yousef is Simon Reeve’s The New Jackals, recently published in trade paperback with a post-9/11 update. There is no better telling of Yousef’s takedown, or the role of the Diplomatic Security Service in his hunt, than Sam Katz’s Relentless Pursuit; and Steven Emerson’s American Jihad offers the best insight into the spread of al Qaeda worldwide.
Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, by an anonymous member of the U.S. intelligence community, takes the reader into the dark world of radical Islam as no other book has done, and the three leading post-9/11 investigative books, Breakdown by Bill Gertz, The Age of Sacred Terror by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, and The Cell by John Miller, Michael Stone, and Chris Mitchell, all deliver key elements of the mosaic. To a great degree, my book attempts to pick up where these reporters have left off. I’ve benefited greatly from the work of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, in particular the coverage of the original World Trade Center bombing investigation and its aftermath by Ralph Blumenthal and Alison Mitchel of the New York Times.
In the months since the 9/11 attacks some of the best investigative reporting on the issue of prior knowledge was done by Maria Ressa, the Manila Bureau chief for CNN, and John Solomon and Jim Gomez of the Associated Press.
As part of an ongoing investigation of the FBI’s failures leading up to September 11, Gomez sent Solomon a copy of the very same FBI lab report on the evidence seized at the Dona Josefa and Su Casa Guesthouse that we’ve reproduced portions of in this book (pp. 241 and 286).1 The eight-year-old lab report had been discussed openly in two previous federal trials, yet in September 2002, the U.S. Customs Service, acting on a reported request from the FBI, took the extraordinary step of seizing a Federal Express package with the report from a FedEx facility in the Midwest as it was being routed to Solomon in Washington from Gomez in Manila.
“The interception was improper and clandestine,” said AP President and CEO Louis D. Boccardi.”2 Sen. Charles Grassley, the lead Judiciary Committee member on FBI oversight, called the seizure “a potential violation of [the] First and Fourth Amendment” and pushed for an FBI OPR inquiry on the matter.
“It’s highly unusual for the government to intercept communications of the media,” said Grassley, “and I want to make sure we don’t have any attempts to censor or stymie the news.” An FBI spokesman first alleged that the lab report contained sensitive information that should not be made public, but the Bureau later withdrew their objection and apologized for the interception.
Still, the incident pointed up the potential chilling effect such a seizure could have on journalists seeking to get to the truth behind potential 9/11 negligence inside the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency.
After covering elements of the Justice Department for ABC News, I gained new insights into the FBI through Ron Kessler’s two landmark works, The Bureau and The FBI. Pat Milton’s In the Blink of an Eye tells the story of the downing of TWA Flight 800 better than any other book on the subject, and Stephen Jones’s Others Unknown gives an important alternate perspective on the Oklahoma City bombing. While I’ve taken exception to Laurie Mylroie’s theory that Ramzi Yousef was an agent of Iraq, her thoroughly researched The War Against America provides material on the 1993 Trade Center bombing story that can be found nowhere else.
A special thanks goes to Col. Rodolfo “Boogie” Mendoza, the remarkable Philippine National Police official who uncovered Yousef’s third plot, and Colonel Aida Fariscal, who made the discovery that shut down Yousef’s Manila cell and no doubt saved thousands of lives. I also owe a real debt to retired Special Agent Len Predtechenskis, Nancy Floyd’s mentor. Men like Len, who risked his life repeatedly to keep this nation safe at the height of the Cold War, represent the best of the old Bureau and hope for the FBI to come.
After tracking the Bureau’s failures for eighteen months, I fundamentally believe that the best way to turn the FBI into an effective preemptive force against terror is to give more power to the street agents while providing them with the guidance of veteran agents as mentors. Special Agent Nancy Floyd and Fire Marshal Ronnie Bucca never met, but they shared a number of qualities, including tenacity and heart. Each believed that intelligence comes from the street, not the twenty-fifth floor, and that it never comes without a healthy respect for the enemy. Most important, they believed in the critical need to share intelligence. In August 2002, nine years after the World Trade Center bombing, the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force admitted its first fire marshal. Hopefully, it won’t take another al Qaeda attack on America to admit the next one.