beginning is excellent
end is good too
middle is dry ( )

On this 18th anniversary of the 9/11 disaster, I'd like to recommend reading (or rereading) this historical book. Some government reports require hacking through thickets of bureaucratese; not so in the case of the 9/11 Commission Report. Written in clear, simple English, it gives a fascinating account of not only the attacks, the victims, the terrorists, but also events that led up to that infamous day. The Report won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Admittedly, a lot more information has been discovered, reported, and published since the Report came out, but for people who were children at the time, and for others who may not recall all the details reported during those days, this is a riveting account.

Should be required reading. See Jesse's review for a great summary: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/54435804. ( )

It may be unusual that commission reports are readable, but this one is quite well-written and well-structured. I find the last chapters with recommendations for reorganization of the governments security efforts should have been left out and put somewhere else. In the version I have there is annoyingly no index.

I find two major omissions: The engineering report on the structural capability of the World Trade Center. As far as I remember this was intentional left out to a separate later report as the engineering modeling took long time. The other omission is the issue with the interrogation of detainees which may have involved torture. The commission report gets away with this issue by writing on page 146: "Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. [...] Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process". One may wonder what the "sensitive interrogation process" entails... ( )

Scary. Infuriating. Hilarious. The 9/11 Report methodically demonstrates that U.S. preparedness was not the fault of any one particular official but the result of institutionalized laxity and bureaucratic cautiousness. The report points out figures that will make your head spin:

Even in 2002, the number of U.S. Arabic degrees awarded was six.

U.S. air strikes on al Qaeda flew over Pakistan, which had to be informed each time. Pakistan's ISI then warned Bin Laden, who quickly evacuated.

Zakariya Essabar's own parents thought he was too religious.

The only real security layers between the terrorists and their objectives were visa application forms and airport metal detectors.

The FBI, CIA, and NSA were reluctant to share FISA information, underestimating their own legal abilities.

Airport security screening, CAPPS, simply required that suspected luggage be held off a plane until the passenger boarded. ( )