Inside 9-11: What Really Happened

Mohamed Atta had a terrorist primer. He spent the night before 9/11 at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine. The story of the terrorists in flight schools, creating problems in night clubs and elsewhere in the weeks before the incident of the suicide attacks of the four commercial jetliners, and their journeys in America and abroad are outlined in the book. Calls from passengers and flight personnel on the highjacked airliners are detailed in this account. Next, the authors, journalists of DER SPIEGAL, describe the attempts of the workers in the World Trade Center towers to save themselves. It was important for small firms to have the World Trade Center on their letterheads. Initially it was conceived as a center for overseas trade, not a financial center. Later the rise in commercial-space rents in New York City caused the kinds of businesses most likely to rent space in the towers to change. One of the reasons so much is known about situations within the planes and towers is telephone contact. Wired and wireless, modern communications capabilities are awesome. Reading the account is an emotional experience. People waited to be rescued and rescue workers never came. Others walked down and out of one of the towers from the eighty-ninth floor. Horribly burned individuals exited safely with others. Fear is something firefighters train themselves to ignore. The authors show the messages received at the fire department message center--FDNY Emergency Message Center. When the tower came down it sounded like a freight train. The entire South Tower had collapsed. Nobody in the FDNY expected a collapse of the entire structures of the monumental towers. The South Tower was hit second but collapsed first. It was hit lower. NYC has more tall buildings than any other city. Still, FDNY is not a suicide organization. After the collapse of the tower, the plans of evacuating persons on the higher floors of the other tower changed. A quick thinking fireman shouted, causing most of the fire personnel in the North Tower to leave the building. The North Tower collapsed in an almost absurdly controlled way. Eleven people survived the crash of that tower. Nearly all the men in leading positions of the New York Fire Department were dead. By mid day the FBI had determined that some of the highjackers had come from Germany. Mohamed Atta's travel bag was located at Logan Airport. It contained among the toiletries two written documents. Part II of the book is call "In the House of Followers". In the first day the FBI had Atta's suitcase, as noted, and a white rental car containing flying manuals in Arabic and some papers with the same Arabic names that appeared on the passenger lists. The Hamburg-Harburg Technical University has an international profile. Seven of the thirteen names investigators supplied appeared in the student directory. Two of the suicide pilots had studied there. Investigators in Germany began to try to unravel the great

In the last six months, I read the New York Times book Out of the Blue, and to be honest the Germans did a better job with this book. I think both this and Out of the Blue are 5 star reads though. What really mattered was the extra information Der Spiegel put into this book. As an example--how did the U.S. Government figure out the passengers who hijacked the four planes? Well on one of the calls to an airline headquarters, the stewardess stated the seats the hijackers occupied, and one of these was Atta. This information was not in Out of the Blue.Also interviews with Atta's father and other hijackers families.The beginning of the book talks quite a bit about the two planes which crashed into the World Trade Center. Not as much info on the Pennsylvania crash or the Pentagon attack. What is include gives good detail. There is more in depth material on the New York attacks. The next to last chapter details how much of the operation was conceived and supported in Hamberg, Germany. Many of the hijackers not only were educated here, but also settled down there. Since the authors are Germans, much is detailed on the German connection.In the appendix are some of Atta's writing and the drivel of Bin Laden. One wonders who believes in this stuff. It is apparent, bin Laden has not only managed to hijack four planes but believers in a religion. The writers attempt to make some analysis on this in the summary, but it will still leave the reader shaking his head on these beliefs.One small minus was a number of typos in the copy. Altogether a great read on a tragic event for America.

This is the best Sept. 11 book I've yet read, and it doesn't even come from America. The reporting is excellent and thorough and the level of detail is impressive. Sometimes gory, sometimes horrifying, but always educational, this book examines the events of that day from the point of view of the terrorists as well as the victims. An appendix includes the terrorists' final instructions, which are quite chilling to read. Kudos to Der Spiegel for putting together the best 9/11 coverage so far.

As after any disaster, volumes were released after September 11, from former Israeli intelligence agents condemning bin Laden, to conspiracy theorists saying George W and the boys were behind the event and nearly every stand between. Finally, this one is worth reading.Much like after the Oklahoma City bombing, one is forced to ask, Why? What could motivate someone to do such a thing? In this case, indeed, the perpetrators didn't just kill others but destroyed themselves in the process. Is it something about Islam? About religion in general? (God knows, there are many in this country who feel that New York is the new Sodom. Some of them may have done it, if they had had the...what, guts?Now, a cynic may challenge the objectivity of the authors. But they start by acknowledging their researchers and fact checkers. So, assuming they're not true phonies--and Der Spiegel has a good journalistic reputation so that's not likely--they not only found the facts but double and triple checked them.They followed the hijackers step by step through the process. They also followed persons who survived the attacks on the WTC, and then they followed firefighters, obviously those who survived too. They talked with people who met the hijackers, e.g., flight instructors, and a kick boxing instructor, even Mohammed Atta's father, who's convinced that Israeli intelligence planned the whole thing. In other words, they got a variety of perspectives. And that added credibility to the report. I guess if I were to label the portion that intrigued me most, it was the extensive training that the whole "block" had in Germany. Most of them even left Germany for a while, ostensibly to train in Afghanistan. Then they conveniently lost their passports. There would, therefore, be no reference to that country in their passports when they attempted to relocate to the US. In short, the conspiracy was extensive. The manual the terrorists--while I often shy away from using pop words coined by the US government, I'm hard pressed to find an alternative in this case--used as a guide was quite thorough, and frightening. It was well thought out, even though quite morbid, and frequently referred to the sacred Jihad (struggle). Then there's the Primer found in Mohammed Atta's car. If this hadn't happened in real time, I'd have thought that was a spoof on fundamentalist religion. (The book also includes Atta's last will and testament. But, since I was already familiar with that, the other documents were more shocking.)It's funny. I don't feel any more "resolved" after reading it. Were I anti-Islamic, I wouldn't be any less so after reading it. Perhaps what I learned most from it was the depth of the passion of the terrorists, and the uncanny degree of the conspiracy. It took a long, long time, with almost no one, even those most closely associated with the terrorists--many of whom worked out at a gym walking distance from my house--having any idea what was going on. Incredible. If I were inclin

Although there are already many books about 9-11, this book stands out. Composed of brief but intertwining stories about the terrorists and those fighting to stay alive, this fast-paced book reads more like a thriller than the other dry, academic books on the subject. I couldn't put it down. As a New Yorker, I was just a few miles from the disaster and could smell the smoke for days. I was initially reluctant to read the book -- I thought I already knew what happened. But this book in particular helps bring the events of those days into clearer focus.Meticulously researched and well-written, the book contains some amazing survivor stories, but also details the 911 calls from people trapped inside the buildings, conversations from the airplanes, and even the hotel rooms rented by the terrorists. It also explains what motivated a group of unlikely students to orchestrate such an unimaginable act.The book is remarkable not in its analaysis of the tragedy, but in the seemingly mundane and innocuous details of the firefighters, victims, and terrorists. The events of 9-11 are often told from the "big picture" perspective. This book provides insight into the human stories.Particularly amazing is the appendix in the back of the book. This resource contains the bios of the terrorists, succinct explanations of Al Qaeda, and the complete Al Qaeda terrorist handbook found in the rental car of one of the terrorists. While I have read snipets of this in the past, I do not know of anywhere else where this chilling document is available in its entirety. There are many books about 9-11, but no other book provides the same level of detail. This book will continue to engross readers in years to come.