THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO LEE HAMILTON, who in thirty-five years in Congress became a legendary figure for his folksy wisdom and expertise in foreign policy and national security matters. After his retirement from Congress in 1999, he became president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, where I have had a long association. He was also been the co-chairman (with ex-governor of New Jersey Tom Kean) of the blue-ribbon 9/11 Commission that had the thankless task of sorting out and explaining how the attack on America happened.
The inspiration for this book came at a luncheon some ten years ago when I sat with Lee, as he regaled us with his fascinating stories about political life in Washington, for he is a great storyteller. The conversation drifted to 9/11 and eventually to the nineteen perpetrators. The Commission, he said, did not have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to delve deeply into the psychology and motivations of the villains. But one of them interested him immensely: the pilot who brought down Flight 93 into the mud of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Several things intrigued Hamilton about the figure I came to think of as the nineteenth hijacker. He came from a fine, middle-class family in Beirut, Lebanon. He was handsome and smart. Many options were open to him in life. His death was a waste. More importantly, the Commission Report made clear that Number 19 nearly pulled out of the operation a month before September 11 because of a romantic relationship with a lovely Turkish-German woman. I was immediately interested. Hamilton encouraged me to write a book about him.
I thank him once again for steering me toward such a compelling and important story. Very little is known about the nineteen hijackers, and what little is known remains classified. While in my research for this book (which included trips to Beirut and Hamburg), I was able to track down several witnesses and participants to the events and gained access to a variety of significant documents, the hijacker’s wife had disappeared, and the hijacker himself, of course could not be interviewed. His life and death had to be imagined.
I will call him Sami Haddad.