(2007-03-12) Wright Al Qaeda

Lawrence Wright, following on his book The Looming Tower: AlQaeda and the Road to 9/11 ISBN:037541486X (World Trade Center), has created a one-man-show now running in So Ho, covering the back-story from a more personal perspective. I think the intelligence community is a disaster right now. It's worse off in many respects than it was before 9/11. For instance, one of the heroes of my book, Ali Soufan, was one of nine Arabic-speaking agents in the FBI on 9/11. There are fewer now. The FBI claims they have 25 Arab Ic speakers. I've talked to some of these guys. They went to Middlebury College for nine weeks to study Arabic, and they can order breakfast, but they cannot interrogate a suspect.