Peter Attia MD174-The 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks: reflections on how they happened & lessons learned
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,176 words- 0:00 – 0:10
Intro
- PAPeter Attia
[upbeat music] Hey everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia.
- 0:10 – 6:32
Lawrence and Peter recount their personal experiences on September 11th, 2001
- PAPeter Attia
Lawrence, thank you so much for coming over. I love being able to, you know, kind of interview people in person, so to have somebody that's from Austin and to, to be able to sit down with you is, is, is, is really exciting today.
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, it's a pleasure to be out and about, even under the constrained circumstances that we find ourselves.
- PAPeter Attia
You know, this is a topic that I think many of my listeners are gonna kind of wonder, what does this have to do with longevity? 'Cause that tends to be what I, what I speak about. But, but as we sit here basically, uh, you know, minutes away from, uh, effectively the 20th anniversary of, uh, certainly the most, um, pivotal moment for many of us in our lifetimes. Of course, you were also alive during some of the other pivotal-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... moments in our history. Um, I think for many of us, we just sort of can't believe how fast 20 years has gone by.
- LWLawrence Wright
Mm-hmm.
- PAPeter Attia
Um, so I kind of want to just start with a, a, maybe a silly question, but what do you remember of that morning, that Tuesday morning? Where were you?
- LWLawrence Wright
Back then, I had breakfast with a bunch of colleagues that were learning Spanish, and so we would speak Spanish at breakfast, and, um, every Tuesday. And, uh, after breakfast, I got in the car and, uh, NPR was on and they had reported a tr- uh, one plane had hit the World Trade Center, and by the time I got home, the second plane had hit. And, um, I had written about terrorism already, so I was aware that this was probably a terrorist attack. It, it wasn't a surprise to me that it was a terror attack. Of course, it was an immense surprise that it was such a dramatic strike.
- PAPeter Attia
Had you heard much about Al-Qaeda before this? Were they familiar to you?
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah. I had written a movie, uh, called The Siege with Denzel Washington-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- LWLawrence Wright
... Bruce Willis, and Annette Bening. Um, and it was about what would happen if terrorism came to America. That was the question I asked myself. And I, you know, it'd already happened in London and Paris, of course Tel Aviv, you know. So suppose it happened in New York, and, uh, this movie came out in 1998. Uh, and in August of '98, uh, a couple of months before the movie actually opened, uh, there was the first big strike by Al-Qaeda against American embassies in East Africa, and 224 people were killed. Um, and, you know, that was scarcely remarked.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- LWLawrence Wright
And I don't even think that, uh, during the elections, you know, the terrorism was mentioned. Uh, you know, campaigning had already begun, uh, for the... Well, the midterms were underway. Um, so it wasn't a central issue. It happened over there. Uh, we still had this sense of invulnerability in America, and I think that's why it was unnoticed. But there was another bombing that same month in Cape Town, South Africa, at a Planet Hollywood restaurant. And, uh, two people were killed, two British tourists, and a little girl lost her leg. And, uh, an Islamic group called, I've forgotten what the name was, an Islamic group claimed credit, saying that they were, um, protesting the trailers that had appeared in movie theaters for The Siege. The movie hadn't even come out yet, and people are already dead. And, uh, that was a scarring experience for me. You know, that I didn't feel that my movie was responsible for people getting killed, but had the movie not happened, they'd probably be alive. And so terrorism touched me, uh, right off. And it's, you know, it's three years before 9/11. Uh, there was a lot of anger in the Muslim community about having, being depicted as terrorists because it was a, that, having spent a lot of time in Egypt and so on, I, I sensed that if you're going to make a plausible terrorist action, that would be the source of it. But there were pickets outside the movie theaters. I mean, and people don't like to go to the movie when there are pickets, so, you know, there's always another show. So it didn't do well. It was a bomb. And then after 9/11, it was the most rented movie in America, and I think it was because in the movie there, yes, there is terrorism. Yes, it happens in New York, and it presages so much of what actually did happen, but it had an ending, and, you know, it, it, it turned out all right. And I think after 9/11, people were desperate for something that would give them a little hope.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, I was talking to my wife this morning. Uh, she was so bummed she couldn't be here to meet you because she's such a fan. Um, so we'll have to figure out a way to do something-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... another time, so, 'cause she, she was really bummed to not be here. But, but I was talking about how it, it's not clear to me, 'cause I've never really talked about it with anybody else, what the impact is like collectively for, for the average person, right? So, you know, my story is like everybody else's, which is I can remember in crystal clarity every detail of that morning.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
I was a, I was a surgical resident at Hopkins. Um, I was down in the pediatric trauma bay. A kid had just been hit by a car. So I was tending to this kid, you know, getting X-rays, doing all the things. He turned out to be totally okay, but just making sure he didn't have broken bones. And I remember a person, I remember who they were, walking in and saying, "A plane just hit the World Trade Center." And I assumed it was like a Cessna that had hit the Trade Center-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... in the fog, so it was sort of like- My only thought was, "Oh, it must be a foggy day up in New York-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... today or something." Didn't think anything of it, kind of went right back to work. And then of course, you know, some odd 40 minutes later, second plane hits. All of a sudden now the TV's on in the ER, and we're all seeing what's going on. And then, you know, for the next 48 hours none of us left the hospital because we were sort of waiting. Would there be-
- LWLawrence Wright
Right
- PAPeter Attia
... survivors coming? Obviously, there were none.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Um,
- 6:32 – 12:34
How 9/11 changed the US into a security state and affected a generation
- PAPeter Attia
but the part I never really understood is how much of a lasting impact it had on me for reasons I can't explain. I didn't know anybody-
- LWLawrence Wright
Right
- PAPeter Attia
... who died that day. I didn't even know any of the first responders or people who were traumatized as survivors, and yet for at least 10 years I had horrible dreams about being on, uh, was it United 93, the flight-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... that got, that crashed-
- LWLawrence Wright
Right
- PAPeter Attia
... in Pennsylvania. I had dreams of being in the cockpit as it was nosediving in the ground. Um, uh, y- you've spent time talking about this with people. Is that a, is that an experience that you've seen in the, in the normal person who's not, who, who wasn't physically or directly touched by this?
- LWLawrence Wright
I- in some ways it's a generational divide. You know, we're old enough for it to have deeply affected us personally, and I think every American was profoundly affected in one way or another. The, for one thing, there was this sense of invulnerability. It was a smug feeling about we exist in the world, but apart from it. You know, things that happen out there in the rest of the world don't really touch us. We meddle, you know, in wars and so on, but it, it never comes to the homeland, and that was so punctured. It was so disillusioning. And, uh, you know, that we're in, we're a regular country, and we're vulnerable. Uh, and that was, you know, shattering, and I don't think anybody who was cognizant, uh, at that age f- I don't think anybody walked away feeling the same. Now, it's interesting to me 'cause, you know, the culture changed around that event, and young people don't know what America was before 9/11. They only know, you know, the country that we've become. And, and I reflect on, you know, when I was, like, in high school, uh, I remember I took a date to the airport in Dallas. Uh, it's called Love Field. [laughs]
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm. Yep.
- LWLawrence Wright
But not for that reason.
- PAPeter Attia
Yep. Nope.
- LWLawrence Wright
But, uh, back then, it, when you didn't have any money and you wanted to entertain your date, it was, you know, a plausible place to go. And so we went, walked out on the tarmac where, uh, an American Airlines plane had flown in, you know, and we decided he'd just come from Paris. So we sat in the first class compartment, and a stewardess, as we called them then, served us a snack, and then we went up in the FAA tower. And, you know, "Come on in, kids."
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- LWLawrence Wright
And so we sat down and watched them, you know, landing planes, and that was America. There was a sense of freedom, and, uh, you know, we talk a lot about freedom, but that was really freedom, that you could, teenagers, you know, just wander in and, and, and see things, and pe- this sen- unguarded feeling that Americans had, that we were not threatened. And now the airport experience, if you can just compare that.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh, nobody, you know, young people, e- even people in their, you know, mid-20s now or even 30 don't really know America beforehand. They don't know that you could go into an office building without having your picture taken, or you could go s- visit the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia without having to take off your belt and your shoes. You know, we've built up a security state, and we've been so deeply involved with the rest of the world in an antagonistic manner since then, and that h- has become normal but is an aberration in our history. And, you know, I think that, you know, I, I would like for us to try to remember the country we were and aim s- to steer towards that because if you forget the, the memory, if you lose the memory of the country that we were, then I don't think we can ever get back to port.
- PAPeter Attia
It's funny you mention that story about being at Love Field. Um, w- I, one of the memories I have is anytime my dad would travel, and my, I'm sure my parents will come up during this discussion because they're immigrants from Egypt, which plays such a central role in the story we're about to discuss. But, um, it was not uncommon for my dad, during flights, you know, if he was going somewhere and he was returning to Toronto, which is where we lived, um, he would spend most of the flight in the cockpit just playing patty cakes with the crew-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... 'cause he was such a outgoing guy. And it, I'm not making this up, there were times when he would bring the entire crew home-
- LWLawrence Wright
[laughs]
- PAPeter Attia
... and, and, and prepare a mir- meal for them 'cause he was, uh, you know, he cooked.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
He owned a restaurant. So I, there were times when he would show up with eight random people from Air Canada-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... who were coming to our house because they had, you know, a night layover in Toronto, and they'd be coming over for dinner. I mean, like, think about [laughs] how-
- LWLawrence Wright
That's very funny. Exactly. Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... bizarre that is in the context of the world we live in today.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah. Yeah. We're not unique in that, but other countries have been putting up with this kind of defensiveness for a long time.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
And so it's a bigger challenge in America. And, you know, there's no doubt that we needed to be on guard and protect ourselves and ramp up our defenses, and, you know, but the truth is You know, we've, in, in trying to create security for us, we've created a security state that is such an abridgment of our freedom that we are doing to ourselves. You know, we're doing it to protect ourselves, but at the same time, we're the ones that are holding the handcuffs, and it's, it's an abridgment of our freedom in a profound way that I think that people who talk a lot about freedom don't really appreciate.
- 12:34 – 21:18
Lawrence’s early coverage of 9/11 and how he knew it was going to be “the story of our lifetime”
- PAPeter Attia
So how long after 9/11 did the idea come to you, um, that you were going to, to put in the type of profound research that ultimately led to The Looming Tower, which I, I think came out in '06?
- LWLawrence Wright
That's right. Oh, it was immediate. You know, I, I knew this was the story of our lifetime. Um, it was not clear that day, um, that it was Al-Qaeda, um, but it was pretty clear to me. I mean, I had, the, in my movie, The Siege, I depicted something like that kind of organization. And I, if you remember, uh, the phones were out in Manhattan that morning because the cell tower had been destroyed on top-
- PAPeter Attia
I do remember that, because I had a, my, at the time, my girlfriend, who was an architect, lived in Manhattan, and I couldn't get ahold of her for a day and a half.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
And I had a couple of friends from medical school who were residents there. Couldn't get ahold of them.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Very strange situation.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah, it was unnerving. And, um, so I, I, I sent an email to my editor at The New Yorker, David Remnick, and I said, "Put me to work." I'd been kind of straying from the reservation, you know, working on movies and things like that. So, um, that afternoon, the phones came back on, at least for The New Yorker, and we had a conference call with, I guess, about a dozen, uh, New Yorker writers, and, you know, like me, you know, scattered around, uh, you know. Jeff Toobin, I think, was in, um, the Bay Area or, uh, Jeff Goldberg and Jane Mayer were both in Washington, and, you know, we were all checking in. And, you know, "What do you want us to do?" And what David asked us to do was to find stories, just, you know, human stories that can form part of a narrative that he would weave together. And, um, and I felt at a handicap in Austin, you know, but, um, somehow I found this young man named Kurt Ehelsen. Uh, he was a reporter. Uh, he was supposed to have been on the top floor of the World Trade Center at the Windows on the World restaurant-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm
- LWLawrence Wright
... on the 101st floor before a conference that his magazine, which was called Waters, uh, it's an investment magazine, uh, he had an appointment there at, uh, 9:00. And, um, he slept through the subway stop for his [chuckles] the first time in his whole life. And, uh, so he turned around, got off on the Chambers Street exit, ran into the World Trade Center. Uh, the Trade Center's elevators were up a flight of escalators, so he ran up the escalators and into an elevator, and there were, like, 200 elevators in the two towers, and you had to change floors.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
So, um, he ran into the elevator, and an elevator operator was holding the door for this woman who was taking her time, you know, walking across the lobby, and Kurt was very anxious because he was late. And as she checked in, s- as she stepped into the elevator, he noticed that she had a rose tattoo on her ankle, and he thought to himself, "Oh, wow." And then the plane hit, and, and the doors to the elevator accordioned. Uh, and nobody knew, you know, what had happened. Was it an earthquake? You know, the, it had, the building had been bombed before by a precursor of Al-Qaeda, so there was that. You know, but, you know, Kurt stepped out of the elevator, and he looked around in the lobby, and there were objects lying there, uh, concrete objects, some, he said, the size of an alarm clock, and some like a size of an office chair, and just lying on the, you know, the ground of the, the lobby. And it was eerie. And remember, he had to go up a flight, uh, but he was confused, and he saw, uh, daylight, um, and he went towards that, and it was a door that led to a, a, a patio. And he walked outside, and there were hundreds of shoes on the ground, and something else that he thought was luggage, but turned out to be human torsos. And then something landed right beside him, and so he went back in. And, uh, his, his story of escaping the T- the Trade Center and making it home to Queens became the bookend of The New Yorker's black issue. And, um, that's what got me started. Um, it was, s- it was, I gotta say, incredibly wrenching, um, you know, to hear his story. And, you know, it, it, pasted it together over a number of interviews, and I would, I'd interview him, and then my wife, uh, would, um, type up the notes. And, you know, we were, a lot of weeping going on. And, but I knew from then that I was on the case, and, uh, that, you know, whatever portion of my life was already spoken for, uh- A couple of months later, I signed a contract, uh, February, uh, uh, for a book that was supposed [chuckles] to be turned in a year later, and I scratched out February and wrote March or something, [chuckles] April. I had, uh, had no idea. I turned it in five years later. So I had no idea what I was getting into, but I just knew that, you know, this was ... that I was gonna go all the way to the end of this.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. Those stories, by the way, are, are so interesting to me. I only know one, um, which is a friend of mine's ex-wife was supposed to be on one of the th- four flights. I don't remember which one, but she missed the flight. Um, so she overslept. She got to the airport but didn't get through security in time, so by the time she got to the gate-
- LWLawrence Wright
Mm
- PAPeter Attia
... they had already shut the doors. Uh, I think the plane was even pulling away. And so you have this moment where you're so upset, like you in that moment can't imagine a greater tragedy, right?
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
Like, whatever it is she was going to do, what an inconvenience to-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... uh, 'cause it was a cross-country flight. And then of course, to realize that that saved your life. I mean, tho- those stories are, you know, they're, they're sort of hard to process.
- LWLawrence Wright
And what you don't hear is that somebody else may have gotten that seat.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
And, uh-
- PAPeter Attia
Exactly
- LWLawrence Wright
... so there's another side to those coincidences.
- PAPeter Attia
Right, the person who would've only made that flight by standby or something, you know?
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah. Right.
- PAPeter Attia
Well, y- you know, I, your book is really two stories. It's really a book of, of two parallel stories that are each one very difficult to get through, if I'm gonna be honest.
- LWLawrence Wright
Mm-hmm.
- PAPeter Attia
I've read your book two and a half, three times, basically.
- LWLawrence Wright
Mm-hmm.
- 21:18 – 33:09
Egyptian politics and the foundation of radical Islam
- PAPeter Attia
maybe we'll start with the former. Um, and it's, it seems that a good enough place to start would be Sayyid Qutb.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
So, so who is this character, and why is he an important figure in the, in the creation of Al-Qaeda?
- LWLawrence Wright
Sayyid Qutb was a, an educator in Egypt, and, um, very, uh, cosmopolitan in his way. Um, he, uh, a- and he was religious, but he wasn't, you know, at the beginning, uh, fanatical. But, uh, he was a member of the Muslim Brothers, which was outlawed in Egypt. And Nasser came into power, uh, in 1952 in the Officers' Revolt, and looking around for partners, uh, he decided that maybe the Muslim Brothers could be co-opted. And so he tried to enlist Sayyid Qutb in his s- in his governance. Uh, and Qutb signed on for a little bit, but the truth is, you know, the Muslim Brothers had a goal, which was not to have a military dictatorship but, but an Islamic one. And, uh, and they, you know, they never really, uh, s- they never came to an agreement. Um, and Sayyid Qutb actually was, um, he wasn't thrown out of the country. Some friends arranged for him to get out of Egypt at a time when it was really difficult for him, and he got a job, uh, teaching in Greeley, Colorado at this little college. Uh, and it was, you know, I visited Greeley, and I, I, I don't know how different it was, uh, in 1940s, but, uh, when he first went there. But, um, I think it f- you know, it's, it's, it's a town that reminds you of America as it used to be. You know, lots of green lawns, innumerable churches, you know, just a scrubbed up Norman Rockwell type of town. And Qutb hated it. He just thought it was, you know, the worst excesses of America. I mean, if only he knew. And but he, he was shocked by the behavior of the women. Uh, he was very threatened by them. And he was, um-
- PAPeter Attia
I mean, imagine he'd gone to Vegas or something, right? It's like-
- LWLawrence Wright
I, you know, he, he-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, yeah
- LWLawrence Wright
... he did spend a, a little bit of time in New York, which was interesting for him, because his brother, who was in Mecca, came out of Mecca to interview, uh, to allow me to interview him, said that he had never met a Jew, uh, until he got to America. Uh, and yet he hated them. You know, there was, uh, this, the unseen enemy, and then suddenly he's in, uh, you know, in Manhattan, and, uh, you know, he's encountering Jews all over the place. And then he goes to Greeley, um- It's, it was a turning point for him. He came back and wrote a, a very influential article about how dangerous America was. And this was at a time when America was seen as the one non-colonial power by the developing world, and it was held in very high esteem. And yet that was an opening shot. Then came the revolution, and, uh, Nasser reached out to, um, to Qutb to, to see if he could bring him into the government, and that didn't work out at all. They had totally different aims for the country. Nasser, not obviously a secularist, but probably, you know. But he saw the, you know, the powerful trend of Islam in the country, and he wanted to tame it in some way, and he thought by co-opting Sayyid Qutb he might be able to. And Qutb had written e- every Friday in the newspapers, not just in Egypt, but all over the Arab world, they would publish, uh, his commentaries on, on Islam and, and the, the Quran. Um, so he was a, a figure of note.
- PAPeter Attia
And at the time, Egypt was mostly Sunni?
- LWLawrence Wright
Egypt, uh, is divided into almost entirely Sunni Muslims and Christians.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh, you know, the, the Shiite, uh, minority is, you know, insignificant. But, um, you know, there is about a 10%, uh, nobody really knows, but, you know, there's a smaller population of Christians. And, um, you know, like a lot of Islamic countries, there's little to choose from on the religious banquet.
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- LWLawrence Wright
And you can be, you know, the, the option is to be more or less religious. And, and, you know, piety is how you advance, uh, in a deeply religious society as Egypt was, and, and actually became much more so. When I lived there in '69 to '71, um, you know, my s- female students were not covered. Um, even at, even at Cairo University, it was rare to see women with head coverings. And, um, I was teaching in, at American University at the same time Ayman al-Zawahiri was a medical student-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- LWLawrence Wright
... at Cairo University, and he was part of a, an effort to get women to cover and to become more obviously, uh, religious. So it was a, a country in transition.
- PAPeter Attia
It's interesting. So you were there, uh, you know, my mom left Egypt when she was 22, and the day she flew out, it was her first time leaving the country, was September 28th, 1970. And so when she departed from Cairo, Nasser was the president, and a young president.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
He was in his 50s. When she landed in Copenhagen, on the news Nasser was dead, and she was in such shock because she, you know, Nasser was like kind of a god to her generation.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
And he seemed indomitable. Like, it just seemed like this is a, this is a person who will be president of Egypt forever.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Uh, so, so what was that, so you were there-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... exactly in the middle of that transition from, uh, Nasser to Sadat. Um, what did it strike you as the implication of that was in terms of either the secularization of Egypt or the move towards this more religious state?
- LWLawrence Wright
You have to understand what Nasser stood for. Um, in Egypt, he was the first Egyptian to rule over Egypt since-
- PAPeter Attia
2,500 years or something
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah, at least 2,500. Before, you know, Cleopatra and all the Greeks, uh, who took over as the pharaonic figures. Uh, even king of, of, that they overthrew was Turkish.
- PAPeter Attia
Yep.
- LWLawrence Wright
So, you know, suddenly you have an Egyptian. Not just an Egyptian, this glamorous, you know, very handsome, you know, compelling figure, uh, extremely charismatic and, uh, an unusual figure in the Arab world. In fact, his appeal, you know, was so broad, he actually, you know, Egypt essentially annexed Syria. [laughs] It was the United Arab Republic, but the Syrians had very little, [laughs] they just wanted to throw in their lot with the most powerful figure in the Arab world. So his sway was unbelievable. And, um, and it, it was so powerful that even the hideously mismanaged war against Israel in 1967, which, you know, the Six Day War, you might have well called it the six-hour war because it was over as soon as the Israelis bombed the air, you know, the Egyptian airplanes. Um, it was a catastrophe, and yet he survived that. Um, so the idea that there would be a day without Nasser was just not something that occurred to Egyptians. And I remember when it happened, um, he, he was actually m- moderating a, a peace conference with the Palestinians at the time, you know, and, um, and he had a heart attack. Um, and I, you know, I had a, a, a, a, a cook who came to my apartment, uh, that morning, and he said, "The people are like sand in the street." I remember the, the night that the news came out, um, I had not heard the news before hearing the ululating, you know? All over t- just it was eerie, and, but it b- 'cause it wasn't a singular sound, it was like a, a vast sound. And, uh, so as Americans, we were counseled not to go out. Um, I don't think that anything would've happened to us, but it was, the streets were weirdly empty, and Cairo always had a problem with, you know, pollution, you know, s- um, s- and noise. Suddenly it was dead quiet. Uh, the atmosphere clarified. It was beautiful, but unsettling. Uh, and for three days, you know, you just didn't see anybody. And then, uh, they had the funeral, uh, and we went up on the roof. We lived in Zamalek, which was an island in the middle of the Nile. We were right across from the Russian news agency, Novosti. And, uh, so we were up on top of the roof, and you could see the, the, the, the, the f- parade forming. A- at the end, it started at the end of Zamalek. There was a, a revolutionary tower. It was actually, uh, there's a story on that. The CIA tried to bribe Nasser with $10 million, and he used it to build this tower, the revolutionary tower, on the island directly across from the Hilton so that the Americans could see where their money went. So that's where the parade started, the q- funeral cortege. And the, they were gonna cross the Qasr El Nil Bridge, and, um, there were, you know, all the dignitaries around the world, and, you know, what we could see was just a mass of, you know, uniforms and suits and stuff like that. But we could also see this immense crowd of people on the other side of the bridge, and they rushed in towards the cortege as it co- and in the middle of the bridge, they met, the, the, the, the mourning Cairenes and the, and the dignitaries. And in the front of the, the cortege, there were, uh, police with batons beating a path through people. And the tur- the turmoil was so great that from where we were, which was a mile away maybe, you know, we could see the bridge trembling. And I, you know, I've often thought about how, you know, soldiers have to break ranks when they cross a bridge because of-
- 33:09 – 52:54
Anwar Sadat’s presidency, assassination, and the birth of the radical Islamic movement
- LWLawrence Wright
Yes. So I worried that the bridge might actually crack, you know, but they beat their way all the way through the mobs in the streets. And, uh, and I thought, "This, this country will never be the same." And, and it really has never been. Uh, it, I will qualify that by saying it has never been, although it has always been ruled by, uh, military forces, um, f- military figures with the brief exception of the, uh, the, is Muslim Brotherhood president. Um, and, and then who becomes president is Anwar Sadat, uh, who was regarded as a joke in Egypt. Um, he had, you know, been in the, you know, w- officers' coup, but he missed the revolution. He was at a movie. It was a double feature, but he missed the, [laughs] missed the revolution, and that was a story that, uh, hung around Anwar Sadat. And people thought he was a fool and he wouldn't last, and he turned out to be a significant figure. You know, because of him, Egypt and Israel are at peace to this day. Um, nobody, everybody underestimated him. Um, but he lived in, or he had been in Nasser's shadow all that time, so, uh, it, it marked a turning point, and it was Nasser... I mean, excuse me, it was Sadat who expelled the Soviets. Uh, you know, up until that point, Egypt had been a kinda Soviet military base, and, um, we didn't, you know, the US and Egypt didn't have diplomatic relations. There were only a handful of Americans actually there when I was living there.
- PAPeter Attia
Now, four years prior to, um, Nasser's death, uh, he had Qutb executed.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
But you get the sense that he was, that was reluctant. He, i- i- I don't, I think he understood that that execution would make a martyr of him, and there's probably nothing worse that you could have done than have made a martyr of this man. Uh, didn't he have Sadat then as either prime minister or vice president-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... almost try to get Qutb to just ask for some sort of forgiveness so he could save face-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... and not execute him?
- LWLawrence Wright
Qutb was a hard case. [laughs] You know, he would rather die than renounce his, you know, his stance, and he told Sadat that. Um, and, you know, he called their bluff. You know, it, it cost him his life, but it also gave birth to this movement because once Qutb was dead, he became a symbol of the oppressiveness of the Arab regimes, you know, the dictatorships that spanned the entire of North Africa all the way, uh, all the way to Turkey. Uh, it... And what was the alternative? The only alternative that people could see was the Muslim Brotherhood or some other form of Islamism. So it was Qutb's death that, uh, inspired, for instance, uh, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Um, Ayman al-Zawahiri, his uncle, uh, was Qutb's lawyer and had been his teacher. Uh, he was a dear friend of Qutb. And just before Qutb was hanged, uh- He gave Zawahiri's uncle his bi- his, his Quran, which was, you know, incredible, incredibly treasured. And, uh, so when, [laughs] when Ayman al-Zawahiri was 15, he started a cell to overthrow the Egyptian government. That'll show you the level of commitment, uh, that, uh, Al-Qaeda was born in.
- PAPeter Attia
And there's something else that's very interesting that I remember... You know, as I mentioned to you, so much of reading your book put into context so many stories that I had heard growing up that seemed at the time disjointed, but l- like, 'cause they sort of lacked the, the clarity of the, the full arc.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
But one of them was how Sadat, upon immediately becoming president, basically freed many of the prisoners-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... that Nasser had put away. So it seemed that Nasser had a much clearer understanding of the threat of Islamic fundamentalism. And w- I guess the question is, what is it that Sadat hoped to gain by freeing these individuals?
- LWLawrence Wright
Sadat, unlike Nasser, was very pious, and he thought nobody was more pious than he. He called himself the first man of Islam. How about that?
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- LWLawrence Wright
And, um, and he thought because he was religious, that he would have standing with people, like, in the Muslim Brotherhood. Um, he totally underestimated, you know, the, the fanaticism that had grown up in those prisons. Uh, and not just because of Sayyid Qutb, you know, but, you know, one of the things that radicalized Qutb was when he was in prison, soldiers came in and shot prisoners in their cells. You know, and, and his, his question to himself was, "What kind of Muslim would do this to another Muslim?" And his answer was, "They are not Muslims." And so essentially, he... It, it's a phrase in Arabic called takfir-
- PAPeter Attia
Yes
- LWLawrence Wright
... which is to expel someone for their disbelief. And, um, and so he, he created the precedent that, you know, unless you believe as I, we do, you're not a real Muslim. And once that door was opened, the, it, it led to the idea of terrorism. And, uh, you know, that's where, you know, Zawahiri and bin Laden got permission, uh, to become the terrorists that they became.
- PAPeter Attia
How far back does that precedent go? If you go back to Muhammad, wh- where is the first sign of, uh, that it's okay to kill someone if they don't believe what you believe?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, you know, there's a, the question of killing someone, you know, there was a lot of tribal warfare, uh, before Islam, and Islam was really in part an effort by Muhammad to unify Muslims, uh, to stop fighting each other. Uh, and, you know, Islam, one of the meanings is submission. You know, submit, you know, accept your place. And, um, but that didn't stop a lot of the infighting. In, in Saudi Arabia in particular, uh, the Ikhwan, uh, were, you know, uh, wild, uh, wildly fanatic, uh, tribesmen that, uh, the first king of, of Saudi Arabia enlisted in his battle. But then in order to subdue them, he had to bring in, uh, British war planes and machine guns to shoot his own, you know, soldiers of the cross, as to, so to speak. In modern era, you know, it was, uh, bin Laden who looked out at, um, you know, in the, in the takfiri universe, there was a, a, a kind of doctrine, uh, that, that came from some of the discourse that, you know, first of all, you have to attack the near enemy and, uh, then the far enemy, and the far enemy being the West-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah
- LWLawrence Wright
... and the United States, but the near enemy being dictators like Mubarak and so on, the, the royal family in Saudi Arabia.
- PAPeter Attia
So the heretics, the, the heretics, the, the Shia-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... the Jews, the West. Those would be the four stated enemies-
- LWLawrence Wright
Absolutely
- PAPeter Attia
... in, in basically-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... in proximity.
- 52:54 – 1:00:29
Aftermath of the Sadat assassination, and establishment of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan
- LWLawrence Wright
But, um, but they were, you know, they came for Sadat, and when I looked at the, the news footage and the stills of that, it, it looked to me-
- PAPeter Attia
The stills are harrowing.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. He's standing at attention as he's being shot.
- LWLawrence Wright
It looked, looked to me like he was gonna go out, you know, unintimidated, and that would've been-
- PAPeter Attia
And may- you might be right. Yeah
- LWLawrence Wright
... that would've been part of his character. And of course, he, he was so vain. Uh, he had his new, uh, Italian-made, uh, uniform, and he didn't wanna ruffle the lines of the uniform with a bulletproof vest.
- PAPeter Attia
With a bulletproof vest.
- LWLawrence Wright
So, uh, he was unprotected in that way.
- PAPeter Attia
You talk about how the, the men that were charged, and even not charged, basically the men that were imprisoned following that were tortured.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
And that out of that torture came a lot of the humiliation that ultimately fed what would become the terrorism we all learned about 20 years ago for the first time, many of us. What happened to those men, and, and what, what, what did your research uncover about what, what that period was like following the assassination of Sadat? Uh, it wasn't long after, I mean, Mubarak would've been immediately instated as president.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right. I, I think we've, we, we don't understand clearly the role of humiliation in human affairs.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- LWLawrence Wright
But it's very powerful. And, you know, going back to the '67 war, you know, the humiliation, I think, you know, gave birth to this rise in radicalism in Egypt and elsewhere. Um, and torture is deliberate humiliation Um, and we don't really know what happened to Zawahiri, um, although he was probably electrocuted and stripped naked and, you know, and, and humiliated in every possible way that you can imagine. Um, and you can emerge from that totally broken, or you can emerge full of rage and willing to do anything to exact revenge. And, you know, I think that that prison population was divided along those lines. There weren't people that weren't affected by it, you know? There were people that were either broken or turned into something else, and that something else became the seeds of Al-Qaeda, that, you know, that Al-Qaeda really began as Zawahiri's organization.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- LWLawrence Wright
You know, it was Al-Jihad, and they were on... When they got out, they were on a rampage and, you know, they were killing people as mu- you know, as fast as they could, and they tried to kill the prime minister. They, they, they did kill some people. They, they, they accidentally killed this little schoolgirl named Shaima who, um, you know, they, they... This is a characteristic of jihad, uh, action. So carelessly did they plan this assassination of the prime minister, they just put the bomb outside a girls' school. And, uh, and the only person killed was, you know, a, a schoolgirl. Could've been dozens of them. Uh, but s- the city, Cairo, was infuriated, and there were marches in the street and, you know, protests. And Z- Zawahiri actually complained because [laughs] you know, w- he felt offended that, uh, that they were subject to so much abuse and, uh, and yet, you know, it was pretty clear that, uh, Shaima, um, was a step too far, uh, for Al... for jihad. And, um, actually, one of the killers lives now in London. You know, he got political asylum because of the, you know, the fact that, uh, Egypt had a death penalty and, uh, and the British would take in anybody who was under a death penalty. So, um, you know, Shaima's killer is living in London.
- PAPeter Attia
Still?
- LWLawrence Wright
Last I talked to him, he was still there. Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Something else that you point out in the book that I thought was so fascinating 'cause it, it's so obvious once you stated it, but I'd never really understood it, which was why couldn't the real resistance take place in Egypt? But you point out that the topography is not amenable to it.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
You can't really live away from the Nile.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
You basically, the moment you get too far off the Nile, you're in the middle of the desert. It's not amenable to guerrilla warfare. And the military had too strong a hold over the Nile from Upper Egypt all the way to the Delta and into-
- LWLawrence Wright
Mm-hmm
- PAPeter Attia
... the Mediterranean Sea. So basically, if they were going to create an army, they needed to do it outside of Egypt.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
And it seems that Zawahiri realized that in, in the mid-'80s, if they're not-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... the early '80s, correct? And is that about the time that he left?
- 1:00:29 – 1:24:15
Osama bin Laden: upbringing, involvement in the Soviet–Afghan War, and rise to celebrity status in Saudi Arabia
- PAPeter Attia
Which now brings us to the other half of the Al-Qaeda duo, Osama bin Laden. I think it's well known by many people who have paid attention to the stories of Al-Qaeda that he came from unbelievable wealth, unbelievable privilege Um, but maybe for folks who aren't quite familiar with his, his lineage, who was Mohammed bin Laden and why, why did he have such an empire? What was the-- what were the circumstances of, of Osama bin Laden's upbringing?
- LWLawrence Wright
Mohammed bin Laden was, uh... came from Yemen, and there are stories about, uh, how he got there, um, but, you know, essentially he, you know, uh, I think the most credible is he kinda hitched a ride on a boat that took him up to Jeddah. And, uh, he was a laborer. He was blind in one eye. He was illiterate. And, uh, he was-- he put himself to work as a handyman and then did some work for, you know, the Americans were, uh, you know, at that time working on Aramco, building up the Saudi, uh, oil, uh, reserves. And there were American companies in Saudi Arabia who were essentially beginning the, to build the kingdom itself, you know, the roads, the hotels and so on, so it was a good time to be in that business. And Mohammed bin Laden, uh, the, the king didn't really trust the Americans, uh, you know, and so-
- PAPeter Attia
Who was king then? Was it Faisal?
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh, no, this is before Faisal.
- PAPeter Attia
But it was after Abdulaziz.
- LWLawrence Wright
It w- we, we-- I think it w-- well, I, I think it was Abdulaziz when-
- PAPeter Attia
Okay
- LWLawrence Wright
... uh, when Mohammed bin Laden first got there.
- PAPeter Attia
Okay.
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh, it was if, if, you know, the king of, of, the first king-
- PAPeter Attia
The first king
- LWLawrence Wright
... of that lineage.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
And, uh, he built a... I don't know if he built the whole palace, but the king was infirm. And if you remember, um, at, y- uh, when, in the meeting between, uh, Roosevelt, President Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz in the Suez Canal-
- PAPeter Attia
Yep
- LWLawrence Wright
... Roosevelt gave him a wheelchair. And, um, so the king liked having the wheelchair, but he lived upstairs. So he, he got Mohammed bin Laden to build him a ramp so the car could drive him upstairs. And, uh, so that was the, you know, uh, and a display of the genius that, uh, Mohammed bin Laden had. And then there was a, a goal that, um, uh, that had been, uh, from the very beginning of the, uh, of the kingdom to try to unify the two sides of Saudi Arabia. The eastern-- the western portion, uh, was divided by a mountain range, and, um, on the other side of it was the holy lands, Mecca and Medina, and Jeddah, the, you know, one of the major cities. But it was cut off, uh, by the Sarawat Mountain range. And, uh, when Faisal became king, he, uh, was trying to get a contractor who would build a road that would unify the kingdom. And, uh, you know, the, the main contractors looked at the steep cliff face and just... it was daunting. You know, how would you do that? And so Mohammed bin Laden, this one-eyed, illiterate, Yemeni laborer, uh, gave a bid to the king, which didn't turn out to be accurate, but, you know, he... And the king accepted. And so the legend in, is that he pushed a goat over the edge of the cliff and followed him down this, you know, cliff face marking the path, and that's the path-
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- LWLawrence Wright
... that this road... I drove down it. I drove up and down it, but it's, uh, it's very windy and, um, the, uh, and, and, uh, oddly enough, you know, beset with chimpanzees. So, you know, there are a lot of animals along the way. [laughs] You have to be careful. But it's a, it's a two-lane road that goes down, but that was one of the most important roads in history because it unified the kingdom and it made Mohammed bin Laden the most famous non-royal figure in the kingdom, a real hero. And, um, and he took advantage of his celebrity. He had, um, a, a lot of wives. Uh, some-
- PAPeter Attia
How about 45 children?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, uh, 52 I think w-
- PAPeter Attia
Oh, my
- LWLawrence Wright
... I think bin Laden had 52 brothers and sisters, so maybe 53 total. And, um, some of the wives he would marry on Friday and divorce on Sunday, you know, so, you know, there was that kind of arrangement. But, um, e- typically in Saudi Arabia and is, under Islamic rules, you're awarded four wives, and the fourth wife is always a little bit of a threat to be discarded. And it was the fourth wife that was the mother of Osama. And, uh, she was Syrian. Uh, and, uh, you know, she was an Alawite, which is the sect that, uh, Assad, the ruler of Syria, is a part of. It's a minority sect that is thought to be her- heretical inside, uh, Sunni Islam. Uh, so that was by itself a mark against Osama. Uh, and his father divorced her, um, and, uh, Asa- and, but he arranged marriage for her and one of his trusted employees, uh, who actually Osama became close to. Um, and they lived in a little house in Jeddah, uh, off a street that's called Macaroni Street because, uh, there was a pasta factory nearby. And, uh, that's where he grew up. He was always pious. It wasn't a conversion. Uh, he was-- he would play soccer and he would wear long pants and, but he must have had some influence on these other kids 'cause they, eventually they adopted his long pants strategy. And he would, uh, even when he was fasting, which he did-
- PAPeter Attia
He fasted two days a week?
- LWLawrence Wright
... two days a week, emulating what he thought the prophet did.
- PAPeter Attia
And, and he's, this, we're talking about bin Laden as a teenager.
- LWLawrence Wright
Absolutely. He would, uh, make sandwiches for his soccer mates and, uh, even though he wasn't eating them, and then, you know, they'd serve cakes and then play, uh, you know, sort of Islamic games, you know, guess the names of the prophet's companions and that sort of thing. And, um, he also, uh, even though music, uh, is frowned upon, instrumental music is frowned upon in Saudi Arabia, uh, he led, uh, this a cappella, a cappella singing, and I tried to get... [laughs] He taped some of them, and I tried to find some tapes of, uh, you know, bin Laden singing, but I, I never could lay my hands on anything like that.
- PAPeter Attia
Did you have an insight as to why he was so pious?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, as, you know, I think that if you want to stand out in a very religious society like Saudi Arabia, uh, you can become less religious or more. And, uh, you know, in his environment, um, he was, he was not going to become less religious. So he, I think he always had the idea that there was an achievement, uh, by becoming, uh, um, a, a more of a, an authority. I mean, you have to bear in mind his father was an exceptional figure. He died in an air crash, but as, uh, and bin Laden was young when that happened. But very few people in Saudi Arabia in all of history have achieved the kind of status that Mohammed bin Laden did, who is, you know, someone who's not in the royal family. I mean, that was exceptional. And I think that Osama being the son of the fourth wife and then, you know, cast out of the inner spell, or inner circle, uh, when the father divorced his mother, he always wanted to distinguish himself, and there was a, you know, this horde of other children around to compete against. You know, Osama was adventurous. Um, some of the other sons were adventurous, but I think he, you know, one of them, uh, died, uh, nearby here, uh, you know, in Central Texas. He crashed an ultralight plane in a power line. So it wasn't just Osama that was sort of, you know, an adventurous type. But, um, the, uh... Early on, you know, he was, you know, racing horses. Uh, he was, uh, drove very fast, um, uh, not professionally, but, you know, he was, he liked to drive, and he was careless. He had wrecks a lot. Um, but he had this kind of im- impunity, uh, around him. But he was... And he liked to go out and camp in the desert by himself. Uh, he was forging an independent identity even as a very young man. He was drawn more deeply into Islam in his school. Uh, apparently there was a, I, I think it was a gym teacher who was in the Muslim Brothers, and, um, he impressed Osama. Uh, and so that probably drew him more into Islamic politics. Uh, and he met other people that would, uh, be important to him, uh, inside what was a secret cell of his Muslim Brothers in Saudi Arabia.
- PAPeter Attia
Do we know if he was influenced by Sayyid Qutb's writings?
- LWLawrence Wright
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I... Well, there's no one who wasn't. You have to start with that. But, uh, Sayyid Qutb was a big figure, and when he was in the university, there, there were lots of discussions about, uh, Qutb, and there was a, a- another head of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, uh, who had a bit of a contrary view. And, uh, sometimes Osama would take one perspective and sometimes the other, but they were essentially arguing over Qutb. And so he, he was a huge figure. He might have met... No, I, I guess not, 'cause I, I would have asked, uh, Qutb's brother, Mohammed, if he'd ever met Mo- uh, Osama, but I don't think so.
- 1:24:15 – 1:29:58
How the Western intervention in Saudi Arabia impacted Arab nationalist’s hatred of America
- PAPeter Attia
it, I guess it would've been the summer of 1990 when Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
And although I guess we wouldn't know it at the time, you could argue that was certainly one of the greatest factors that would ultimately lead to 9/11, though it wasn't... Y- y- you can only know that in retrospect.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right. And it's, it's peripheral in that, I mean, we wouldn't understand it from our point of view because America and other allies rushed in to save Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden was trying to keep that from happening, and so he went to the minister of defense and said, "I'll take care of this. You know, I'll bring my Al-Qaeda guys," which were several dozen maybe, you know. Um, and, um- And we, we, together with my father's earth-moving equipment, you know, we will, um, enlist the people and we will repel the million-man Iraqi army. And, uh, you know, the minister of defense just... He didn't laugh him out of the office. It wouldn't be polite. But it was def- you know, not taken seriously.
- PAPeter Attia
The first time I heard this story, by the way, was, uh, I had the, the, the privilege of meeting Prince Turki.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Spending a week with him, actually.
- LWLawrence Wright
Really?
- PAPeter Attia
In Saudi Arabia.
- LWLawrence Wright
I, I wanna hear more of that.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. And, um, he, he told this story, which was how bin Laden was adamant that he, based on his victory in Afghanistan, which again means he believed his own hype.
- LWLawrence Wright
I think so.
- PAPeter Attia
Right? Like, he, he actually thought that he moved the needle in Afghanistan.
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, he def- he, he defeated the Soviets, so what would the Iraqis be by comparison? That was what was going on in his-
- PAPeter Attia
Right
- LWLawrence Wright
... his mind.
- PAPeter Attia
And the disconnect from reality. Um, but how humiliated he was when not only was he not the one that was going to defend his country, but these filthy Americans were going to come in and do this, which included women.
- LWLawrence Wright
Jews, Christians, you know.
- PAPeter Attia
And they were gonna spend quite a bit of time there, right? This was, even though it didn't take long to get, uh, Saddam Hussein to retreat, you still had to maintain no-fly zones. You still had to maintain a military presence there.
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh, I- I'll stop you a bit on that, because we didn't need to stay in Saudi Arabia. There were other bases in, you know, Qatar and-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah
- LWLawrence Wright
... and UAE. You know, we, we could have gotten away, but the Saudis had very nice bases.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm.
- LWLawrence Wright
And, um, but the, it was the lingering. I mean, we promised we were gonna leave when the war was over.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. Why... So that's a good point. We, it, it was, it was promised that the US would leave.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
Why, why did they not?
- LWLawrence Wright
They were comfortable. You know, and I think probably the royal family felt happier having an American presence there, because the Saudis have always been insecure, uh, about their, you know, they, they're sitting on this golden egg and, uh, you know, everybody around the world wants a piece of it. So the Saudis, suddenly they've got the American military there, and that's not the worst thing in the world, in their opinion. But for bin Laden and for other people, you know, there's a, you know... There's a saying attributed to the Prophet, which was, "There shall be no two religions in Saudi Arabia." Well, you know, there are more than two religions, and there were at the time of the Prophet, but, uh, bin Laden took this to mean only Sunnis sh- uh, in, of his particular stripe should live in the kingdom, and everybody else has to be expelled. And it was such a huge thing to have half a million, uh, Americans and other nationalities, most of them not Muslim, uh, living in their country, protecting. How humiliating, once again, you know, is it that you have to turn to these other powers? We're not strong enough to do it ourselves. Uh, that, you know, for bin Laden, that was, you know, a, a big motivating force. Uh, that's when he really sort of turned his attention to America.
- PAPeter Attia
And this is where, as he and Zawahiri are getting closer, there's a bit of a difference between them, right? Which is at this point, Zawahiri is still really focused on overthrowing Egypt.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- 1:29:58 – 1:43:28
Theorizing on the role of the religion in holding back Islamic states from making progress towards democracy
- PAPeter Attia
It's funny, I always talk to my parents about this stuff. You know, when Mubarak was, like, entering his 573rd term as president, right? [laughs] Uh, and I always said, you know, "Why..." I, and I would ask naively as sort of a youngster. I was like, "Why can't Egypt have an actual democracy? Like, why do these elections have to be rigged?" And my parents, for right or wrong... And you have to remember, my parents have a very different view of Egypt, right? So my mom views Egypt fondly.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Right? Left reluctantly. Loved Nasser. My father, on the other hand, couldn't wait to get out. Despised Egypt. Never looked back. Hates everything about it, and is the, is the classic immigrant who wants to come to the West.
- LWLawrence Wright
Mm.
- PAPeter Attia
And y- you know, just hates the corruption, hates the, hates the socialism of Nasser, right? Nasser wanted to take every-- wanted to socialize the country. Um, but they both agreed full stop that a country like Egypt had to be ruled by a strong man. Like, their, their view, again, r- r- I, I don't know if this is true, but their view was you could never take democratic principles and just lop them into an Egyptian society. Like, it needs an iron fist to rule it, and Mubarak was the least bad option. That was basically the way they thought of him. What, what's your view of an autocratic leader at that, of that era? I mean, do, do, do you, do you think that my parents in their assessment were correct of Egypt?
- LWLawrence Wright
You know, I, I was wrong about Egypt. I thought it was ready for democracy. And, um, bec- uh, they had a parliament back during the era of the king, you know? So there was, uh, even though somewhat forgotten, but there had been, you know, deliberation laws were passed. You know, it, it had the appearance of being, uh, a constitutional monarchy because the king was so indolent-
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- LWLawrence Wright
... that he didn't, couldn't stir himself to do anything. [laughs]
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- LWLawrence Wright
But, uh, I, my analysis was this is a sophisticated country. Um, people have, uh, it's a, it's a c- it's a country that is never gonna dissolve. Like, you know, Iraq may fall apart. That's not gonna happen to Egypt. It thinks of itself as eternal, and so it's always going to be one thing. It's always gonna be the most significant Arab country, and they know it. Um, so I thought, "Well, yeah, this..." I was all for the-
- PAPeter Attia
You were very optimistic in 2011.
- LWLawrence Wright
I was.
- PAPeter Attia
I wrote a lot of, I read a lot of what you wrote.
- LWLawrence Wright
And I, I had been affected. I went back to Egypt to make a speech or a couple of speeches. I spoke at American University in Cairo, where I used to teach, and I, and I spoke at, um, the, um, at, at Cairo University, where, uh, Barack Obama went to make his famous-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- LWLawrence Wright
... outreach, outreach speech to the Muslim world. And I remember, uh, uh, it was, this was back during the election. Um, this was before the Arab Spring started, but, uh, and during the primary season when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and, you know, uh, were, uh, running for office, and I was, uh, asking the, the kids, "If you were an American, who would you vote for?" You know, "How many here for, uh, Hillary Clinton?" All the girls in hijab raised their hand.
- PAPeter Attia
Hmm.
- LWLawrence Wright
You know? And, uh, "How many for Barack Obama?" You know, a lot of other people. "How many for John McCain?" One guy from the embassy. [laughs] And, uh, so, but they were totally into the idea of democracy. They were excited by what they were seeing, and that there could be revolutionary nonviolent change was on their mind. And one, one young woman said in, in this very plaintive voice, "What happened to us?" I mean, y- every Egyptian lives with the weight of history on shoulders. You look at the pyramids, and, you know, Egypt was the, the, you know, the-
- PAPeter Attia
The center of civilization.
- LWLawrence Wright
Absolutely, and it really was. You know? I mean, China, you know, you know, but the, the, it ch- it was so powerful and, uh, and so much art and, you know, just it, it, and, and, and, and then a long slide into, you know, being just a tourist kingdom. So what happened to us? And-
- PAPeter Attia
And, and also s- such an important pillar of science, too.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
And that's the thing. Like, I remember as a student, as a, as a youngster, I was a, I hated school. I just despised school. Didn't, didn't do well in school or anything like that. And, uh, ultimately I turned that around, but a lot of it had to do with something my mom would say to me repeatedly growing up, which is she would say... 'Cause we're Coptic, right? So she would say, "You know, we're defendants, we're de- we're descendants of the pharaohs. Like, you know, you are a pharaoh. Science and engineering is in your blood. Your ancestors built pyramids."
- LWLawrence Wright
Mm-hmm.
- PAPeter Attia
You know, and, and she would just say these things, which when you're a kid, like, you know, you kinda start to believe it after a while.
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh-huh.
- PAPeter Attia
It's like, "Well, you know, maybe Mom's right."
- LWLawrence Wright
Right. Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
"I maybe, maybe, maybe I am smarter than I think I am." Um, but, but that's, but it is, it's, it's also a, it's a society that, that does have a very scientifically literate population.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- 1:43:28 – 1:48:53
Bin Laden’s time in Sudan
- PAPeter Attia
so.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
So let's go back to our good friend. Um, it's the early '90s now. He's been humiliated by his own government, who have said, "Thanks, but no thanks. We're gonna have the Americans help us out here." He goes to Sudan of all places.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
What happens in Sudan? Why doesn't he end up just settling down in Sudan and living the rest of his years there?
- LWLawrence Wright
Oh, I wish he had. [laughs] At '92 to '96, uh, Al-Qaeda became essentially an agricultural organization, and Sudan, uh, bin Laden in Sudan, uh, probably was the largest landowner. He owned a considerable amount of property, and he would, you know, do jobs for the Sudanese government, you know, build highways and stuff like that, and they would pay him with land. Um, it's, it's ... Whenever I think about Sudan, I, I went there to, to, to try to understand that period in his life, and I was trying to penetrate Sudanese intelligence, and so I was, you know, recruiting, [laughs] you know, some, some names of people that I had been given, and I finally, you know, got, made some relationships, and they took me around and showed me bin Laden's house and so on. And y- this was a time when I had been traveling a lot, and I had injured my back, and, um, the, uh, it, it, it was very painful to take those long airplane flights. And I took one of those big exercise balls, you know-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- LWLawrence Wright
... where you have to blow up, and you'd have to un-blow it when you left the country, but, but in order to, you know, ease the, the pain. And, um, so one day one of my Sudanese contacts knocked on my door, uh, at w- at a hotel that called itself The Hilton, and, um, there was, uh ... Ahmed was the intelligence agent, and he had this guy with him who was kind of, um, plump, and he had, uh, one of those conical Indonesian hats that Muslims wear. And, um, so come on in, and, you know, uh, Ahmed was very tired, and he sat on the edge of my bed, and his eyes were bobbing. And I said, "Ahmed, just lie down." So he falls asleep, and he leaves me with this Al-Qaeda guy. And, um, and I'm, you know, I got my ball, and I give him the office chair that's in the room and say, "Who are you?" And he said, "Well, you can call me Loay." And that was frustrating, but, uh, I started asking him about bin Laden. He seemed to know everything, and he, especially in Sudan, uh, you know, he knew all about bin Laden's enterprises, the, you know, the, the, the s- he started, uh, raising seeds. He, he had a, for a while, a bicycle importing company. Bicycles aren't usually used in Sudan 'cause the roads are all sand. But the, uh, you know, he had all these different enterprises, and this guy knew everything. But he also knew all about, you know, fighting the Arabs, mujahideen in, in, in Afghanistan. And, and yet I was at sea. I didn't really know who he was. And so I went back to the US and started triangulating, and I found Mohammed Loay Bayazid, whose Al-Qaeda name was Abu Rita al-Suri. And, um, he was the guy, [laughs] he was the guy who took the notes at the founding of Al-Qaeda in May of 1988. It's his handwriting. I thought, "Oh, God." [laughs] I didn't have any idea who I had. And, uh, so I flew back to Sudan, and, uh, he wouldn't see me. And, uh, that was, you know ... So then I began to court him, you know, and finally he agreed, and I flew back. And, um, I said, "Loay, why didn't you see me last time? I mean, it's a lot of trouble to c- come to Khartoum." And he said, "Well, I didn't know how seriously to take you. The first time we met you were sitting on a balloon." [laughs]
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- LWLawrence Wright
That was, that was my, my first Al-Qaeda interview. It was a real triumph. But, uh, those years in Sudan, uh, at least according to Loay, you know, they were kind of wonderful years for Al-Qaeda because they weren't fighting anybody. Um, bin Laden still had money, and, uh, and he was generous in handing it out. Um, the, uh, they would have, uh, celebratory dinners, and they had soccer teams. They played, you know, they had their own little league. And, uh, you know, people had dormitories and stuff like that. People got money to get married. It was, they were settling down. It was the US State Department that decided this can't stand, and, um, so they put pressure on the Sudanese government to expel bin Laden, and the Sudanese government did that.
- PAPeter Attia
Based on what?
- 1:48:53 – 1:58:40
The CIA vs. the FBI: setting the stage for the failure of US intelligence
- LWLawrence Wright
He was a potential ter- terror- terrorist, a funder of terror anyway.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm. What, um, hard evidence did the State Department have at that time?
- LWLawrence Wright
Th- really none. Uh, there were suspicions. Uh, about that time, uh, the CIA had opened up an office on bin Laden, or a file in any case.
- PAPeter Attia
This is before the creation of Alec Station?
- LWLawrence Wright
That's where Alec Station came from, uh, which was really the first sort of off-campus, uh, in the US station Um, but it was off campus and ignored by the CIA. Uh, they, they called the people that worked there the, the, the people, the Island of Lost Toys. Uh, you know, they were people that were kind of pushed out of their own departments and, you know, that was the, the team, the original team that-
- PAPeter Attia
And that team was led by Scheuer.
- LWLawrence Wright
Michael Scheuer, yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Scheuer. And what is it about him that had... What is it that brought him to lead Alec Station? What was his conviction?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, Scheuer is, uh, a loose cannon, to put it-
- PAPeter Attia
Well, certainly today he's about as off the rails as they come.
- LWLawrence Wright
He, he wants to shoot Democrats.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh-
- PAPeter Attia
But at the time, what was his conviction about Al-Qaeda?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, he was right about it.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
You know, he was right that it was, um, you know, it was a terrorist organization that, uh, could strike America and intended to. Uh, he was right that they had reasons. He under- I, I mean, think, you have to give Michael Scheuer credit for seeing into the mind of bin Laden and his followers and seeing how they looked at the world. It's so foreign. I mean, when 9/11 happened, the idea that a man in a cave in Afghanistan would attack America was comical, and Scheuer didn't think so. Um, so he was, you know, he was not a prophet, but he was an analyst that could look at the tea leaves and see what could actually happen, and nobody took him seriously.
- PAPeter Attia
That's another beautiful parallel in your book, right? Is we, we, we've, we've gone through kind of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Jihad, Al-Qaeda. We haven't quite got to the point where Al-Qaeda and, and, and Al-Jihad become one entity, which will happen in the late '90s. But as we move to the intelligence side, which is the harder part, I think, to wrap one's head around, you also have these two parallels between I-49 and Alec Station.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
And these two personalities between Michael Scheuer and John O'Neill-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... which are both right, but because of their remarkable disdain for each other, tragically both let this thing slip.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Um, so maybe let's now shift for a moment-
- LWLawrence Wright
Sure
- PAPeter Attia
... and talk a little bit about Alec Station and I-49, the CIA and the FBI, which by around this point in time, the mid '90s, are starting to kind of pay attention to this threat, yeah?
- LWLawrence Wright
You know, when you're talking about it, I, I, I reflect on the fact that The Siege was built on this same premise, that, you know, uh, uh, my mission was to write a movie about a woman in the CIA. That was the, the assignment. And Annette Bening became the woman in the CIA. And, and what's, what was the... The Soviet Union had fallen. What was the problem, you know? And I, I realized the CIA had a real life enemy, and it was the FBI, and so that's what the movie's about. So maybe I was already primed to see it that way, but, you know, I'd heard about the antagonism. But as an American, I can't tell you how disappointed I am in our intelligence agencies and the f- their failure to protect our country. That's their mission, but they got c- so caught up in their, their institutional and personal antagonisms that they allowed 9/11 to happen. And John O'Neill, um, lived a big life, you know. He was, uh, uh, flamboyant. Uh, you would never think of an FBI agent... I mean, to me, FBI agents were kind of like Mormons in terms of their dress and their sober, you know, demeanor and so on, at least the stereotypes. John O'Neill wore these, you know, Gucci suits, and he had these transparent black socks and kind of, uh, you know, almost ballet slippers, and he had, uh, a, an office that he had personally decorated. Most FBI offices are, are, uh, the furniture is all made in prisons. So all of that goes out, and in comes, you know, this luxurious office. And, uh, he has a, uh, on his... He always has fresh flowers, and he has, uh, on his coffee table this book, Tulips, The Men- The Flower That Drives Men Wild. I mean, this is not your typical FBI agent. And he set out, when he was assigned to New York Station, to conquer the city. He wanted to meet everybody of any importance, and he did. He, he gave his, uh, new secretary a Rolodex with all the names of the people that he wanted to meet in the next six months, and he went down that list. So he had tentacles in every part of the city. And he thought of himself as a sheriff. And he, you know, when, when the embassy bombings happened, um, the FBI was given the task of trying to find out, you know, if it was a crime against America.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah. We should, we should probably take a moment to make sure people understand the difference in the mission of the organizations.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Right? So the FBI is law enforcement.
- 1:58:40 – 2:10:04
The mistake by US intelligence of not taking the bombings of the US embassies and the USS Cole seriously
- PAPeter Attia
There's a very interesting parallel between the transition in both human capital and military capital. We're gonna talk about the USS Cole, but you're very deliberate in the way that you write about it, about the way you write about the bombing, which is you describe in excruciating detail the strength and might of that ship.
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh-huh.
- PAPeter Attia
And you're deliberately vague about the skiff that blows it up to demonstrate, I think, the enormous asymmetry that took place.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
The point being this USS Cole was an unbelievable warship for traditional warfare-
- LWLawrence Wright
Right
- PAPeter Attia
... and yet was defenseless against guerrilla warfare.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
And that basically means there was kind of this decade lag after the Cold War where the military industrial complex had not adopted to what the new warfare was. But I think what you're saying, which is you got six people that speak Arabic in the entire FBI, and the CIA, you know, also has their, you know, tentacles back in the Cold War, well, that's basically the same thing, right? It's the, it's the, it's the human and intellectual-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... skill set that's for the wrong war, and it seemed like it just took a while to, to catch up. Unfortunately, it didn't catch up, right? I mean, I think that's part of the story.
- LWLawrence Wright
It never did, and the, the Cole bombing, uh, was a very telling moment. Uh, you know, October 20th, I think, uh, 2000.
- PAPeter Attia
Amazing, two weeks before the election.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah, and this is not, you know, really remarked upon in, in, in the campaigns, but 19 sailors died. Um, and the ship, you know, it was a stealth vessel [laughs] you know, but there was no hiding it. It was in the middle of Aden Harbor in Yemen, which had no business being. I mean, Yemen is far from an ally and, uh, you know, the whole area was riddled with, you know, uh, jihadis and, you know, people that were intent on doing harm to the US, and there was this very appealing target. Um, and there was a failed attempt to bomb it. Uh, the, the little skiff was overloaded with, um, with explosives and sank. But, um, then, then they pulled it off, and in, in some ways it w- it prefigured 9/11. You know, that kind of imbalance of forces that you were talking about, you know, the, you know, the, the coming out of the blue, who would, who would ever have expected it? Uh, you know, that, uh, it was common. It's always been common in, you know, ports that, you know, little boats would come out and try to sell trinkets and stuff like that or deliver food, and so the, the sailors were used to seeing boats coming toward them. Um, but they had no idea. You know, they were waving at the, at the people that were about to kill them.
- PAPeter Attia
What was involved operationally for Al-Qaeda to pull off the embassy bombing in Kenya and then the USS Cole? Because obviously they were, they were prologue to 9/11.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
They were practice runs. Um, they were never the end goal. Um, well, I mean, I guess you could argue bin Laden, bin Laden's objective was to draw the US into-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah, I think he thought after-
- PAPeter Attia
Into a-
- LWLawrence Wright
... the embassy bombings that he, that would do the trick, and, you know, it was infuriating to him that we ignored it, so, and, and then the Cole bombing, the same thing. Uh, it had to be something more spectacular to get America interested in him.
- PAPeter Attia
And the embassy bombing took place after Al-Jihad and Al-Qaeda had merged?
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah. Yeah, they, uh, and, uh, s- some of the operatives, some of the main operatives in the embassy bombings were Zawahiri's men. So, uh, the, it was a hard... You know, both of these were, you know, catastrophic events that for whatever reason America was not prepared to pay any attention to.
- PAPeter Attia
Why do you think that is? With all the benefits of, with 21 years of hindsight, why is it that neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore during their entire campaigns, including, right, you know, including a campaign that included the, uh, explosion on the USS Cole-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... why was this, why was this not a priority?
- LWLawrence Wright
If it had happened here, it would've been a different story, but it happened elsewhere. And I think that's when, you know, that's one of the reasons Americans were so vulnerable, is our own hubris and, and the sense of ice- isolation that we have t- historically always felt.
- PAPeter Attia
But why wasn't it enough that it had happened abroad? They were still US lives.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yes, they were, and they should've been counted more dearly, but they weren't. And I, you know, s- it's similar with our wars, don't you think? You know, I mean, we have wars, people die. Uh, sometimes there's a tribute to them in the paper and you see their pictures, but not often. And so it's cost of doing business. It, this, you know, we are not as... There's a, there's a gap between our role in the world and the people we think we are, and I think this was especially true before 9/11. The reason bin Laden attacked us is he, you know, the, he felt surrounded. Uh, he felt America was encircling the Islamic world, and they, they were under threat and that why, why would we do that? Well, obviously our, our goal would be to destroy Islam. And then there was at the same time this mandate he had in his mind that Islam has to rise again. You know, once it was the superpower. You know, it went all the way, you know, into Middle Europe and, and to Southern China. You know, it was, uh, an, an expansionist power and that it should resume that role. So, you know, there was the sense of being threatened by the superpower and the feeling that Islam should replace it, and that was, I think, the dynamic that was d- driving him. And nobody in, uh, I don't s- I can't say nobody in America, but very few people in America would have imagined that such, uh, preposterous dreams would motivate, uh, you know, somebody like bin Laden and actually be able to put into effect an attack on this nation that was seemingly invulnerable, that was so distant, how could you even reach it and how could you touch it in a way that would make it suffer? That's what, bin Laden wanted America to suffer, and, uh, and he also wanted to humiliate America because I think he understood the power of humiliation.
- PAPeter Attia
Now, going back to O'Neill and Scheuer, they agreed on one thing, which was Osama bin Laden was a really bad actor-
- LWLawrence Wright
Right
- 2:10:04 – 2:19:40
Al-Qaeda in America: Losing the planners of the 9/11 attacks from our clutches and incompetence at the FBI and CIA
- PAPeter Attia
So as the Cole, as the planning for the Cole bombing is underway, the planning for 9/11 is also underway.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
These were parallel, not serial operations.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
Two men come to the United States January 15th, 2000. Who are they?
- LWLawrence Wright
These men are Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
- PAPeter Attia
Saudis.
- LWLawrence Wright
There's two Saudi guys. Uh, they scarcely speak any English at all. Uh, they had been in a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, uh, with the Cole bombers. And, um, so the Cole bombers went off to, uh, do their thing, and then they, they fly first of all to Thailand and then they fly into LA. And, um, so how can they do anything? You know, they're in a country they don't understand. They, they don't speak English. You know, their mission is to go train as pilots, but they would not qualify because they couldn't even speak enough English to go into a class. So this is the first mystery. What are they doing here? And, um, as it happens, that very day that they arrive, uh, there is a, uh, a fig- Saudi figure named Bayoumi, Omar Bayoumi, who happens to be at the Saudi consulate in LA talking to the minister of religious affairs. That's kind of significant because, you know, they are the, as a result of the Mecca catastrophe, Saudi put, uh, Saudis put, uh, these imams in consulates all over the place, and they had a lot of authority. So anyway, Omar Bayoumi leaves the Saudi consulate and he goes to, uh, a Middle Eastern restaurant where he happens to overhear these two guys speaking in a Saudi accent. It's, according to him and the Saudi government, a total coincidence.
- PAPeter Attia
Do you believe that?
- LWLawrence Wright
No, not at all. No, I think, and, and, uh, you know, the families of the victims of 9/11 are suing the, the Saudi government trying to get, um, more information about the people that are involved in that, and Bayoumi is one of the people that they have on their list of people to talk to. But Bayoumi is such a generous fellow that he offers to help them find a, a housing in San Diego where he has a place. And so he fronts them some money. He sets them up in San Diego. Bayoumi and other people in his circle, uh, begin receiving money from the wife of the Saudi ambassador in Washington, DC, um, ostensibly for an operation for the wife or so, you know, these, you know, but it's significant, thousands and thousands of dollars. And, um, Bayoumi takes, uh, these two guys, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Mihdhar, to meet, uh, a cleric in this Saudi mosque in, in San Diego, um, who was Anwar al-Awlaki, who later becomes, you know, the, the voice of radical Islam. We finally killed him in Yemen. But, uh, whether he was, uh, an Al-Qaeda connection has never been established, but wouldn't it make sense, you know, in any case?
- PAPeter Attia
And, and what, what is, what is your thought on the money that was coming directly from the wife of the Saudi ambassador?
- LWLawrence Wright
Ambassador Bandar, um, was very close to the, you know, the Bush White House. He was, he was sort of the dean of the diplomatic establishment. So there was, uh, a plausibility thing. How, you know, would you really see such a thing happening from the ambassador himself? But It stands that, you know, these Saudis were getting money sent to them in San Diego by Bandar's wife, and now his daughter is the ambassador to the US. So, you know, the, that has never been, I think, satisfactorily accounted for. Another thing that's going on, you know, they arrived in January 15th. Um, in March, the CIA finds out that they're i- in the US. Uh, probably, you know, Prince Turki. You know, Prince Turki told me that he had informed the, um, the chief of station in Riyadh, the CIA man in Riyadh about that. So that's probably where it came from. So in March, this is, uh, 21 months before 9/11, almost two years, the CIA knows that Al-Qaeda's in America, and this is at a time when their, they say their hair is on fire about Bin, you know, about Al-Qaeda, that we're under threat, they're going to the White House, and yet they know that Al-Qaeda is in San Diego. And moreover, um, Midhar's wife is in, in Yemen. She comes from a very, uh, Al-Qaeda jihadi family. Her name is Hoda Al-Hada. And, uh, the Al-Hada household, because it's such a hotspot, we've got wires on-
- PAPeter Attia
We've tapped the phone.
- LWLawrence Wright
We, yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
So I, I think it's on-
- PAPeter Attia
The CIA is listening to the phone calls.
- LWLawrence Wright
14 occasions, the NSA is getting calls to this Al-Qaeda house in Yemen from San Diego. Do you have to draw a picture? You know.
- PAPeter Attia
What's more disturbing than this is that in October, after the Cole bombing, when Ali Soufan is questioning Khousso and the other suspects, he asks specifically... Well, he, he kind of, I think, through that questioning, comes to learn of the meeting-
- LWLawrence Wright
Right
- PAPeter Attia
... that took place in Malaysia-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... and asks explicitly on at least three occasions for information from the CIA about these two guys in the US, and he is stonewalled.
- LWLawrence Wright
It's not casual either. The, a, a request like that goes to the director of the FBI, who sends an, a letter to his counterpart, the director of the CIA, formally requesting information about, in this case, this meeting in Kuala Lumpur. "Do you know anything about it?" "No," is the answer. No information. In fact, the CIA actually covered the meeting. They recruited the Malaysian police to take photographs and stuff like that, so they got pictures of the, the participants, and they hide this information from, from the FBI. And, you know, g- going back to the, you know, the mission of each of these agencies, there was the, the s- the story about the siege was who was fighting, they were fighting over who had control over terrorism in the United States. And in real life, the FBI won that battle, so they have the authority. The CIA does not, is not supposed to operate in our country. But the FBI has the authority, has a warrant on Al-Qaeda and bin Laden and all his fo- followers.
- PAPeter Attia
So how is this not, in the clearest legal sense, obstruction of justice?
- LWLawrence Wright
It is obstruction of justice. The, the CIA obstructed justice w- uh, when s- Ali Soufan was investigating the Cole bombing. You know, they, they hid information about the planning and they hid information about the Kuala Lumpur meeting. Uh, this is a murder investigation, 19 sailors.
- PAPeter Attia
So, so at this point, Michael Scheuer is gone, correct? He has been relieved of his duties at Alec Station?
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Uh, w- what led to that?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, he was relentless in pressing, uh, this, the agency in trying to, you know, get rid of bin Laden. There was a, there was a moment where he thought bin Laden might be at one of the camps in Afghanistan. [lips smack] And he said, uh, and the reason they would, that he might be there is that a lot of the royal family from the UAE was coming to go bustard hunting, this, this endangered bird that, uh, is popular. Um, and so let's bomb the camp, and, uh, we'll kill all the princes, but we might get bin Laden. Well, that was the kind of thinking that Michael Scheuer was capable of, and-
- 2:19:40 – 2:32:49
Problematic policies in Europe, and a direct message warning of the 9/11 attacks
- PAPeter Attia
took over Alec Station when Scheuer was terminated?
- LWLawrence Wright
The, the woman that, um, that took over the, the station, um, [lips smack] is, uh, you know, in FBI view, um, a villain, you know. But she and Scheuer later married, and, uh, so it was, it was an office romance.
- PAPeter Attia
It was an extension of Scheuer anyway.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Um, now one of the things that's interesting about Alec Station is it had a number of I49 agents that sat within it physically.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
So these are FBI agents that are sitting inside Alec Station, but they were kind of handcuffed because they were privy to the information that the CIA had, but they weren't permitted to share it with their colleagues at FBI. One of the things that struck me as odd is that none of them broke rank.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Right? Like you, you, you see an Edward Snowden, you know, a decade later, who, you know, goes completely rogue and decides for right or wrong, this is his conviction, this is what he's going to do about it, this is in the life, this is in the best interest of American lives. And yet amazingly, none of the FBI agents sitting inside of Alec Station, who presumably saw what was happening, didn't think, "I'm willing to jeopardize my job here and maybe face criminal charges to get information," 'cause they saw the wires coming in.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
They saw the requests repeatedly from the FBI, from Soufan saying, "Who are these people? What happened in Malaysia? Why is money leaving to go to these people? Why is this money coming to the United States?" I mean, I've o- did you ever get an insight into why the FBI people inside Alec Station were, were, were muzzled?
- LWLawrence Wright
You know, there was a, a, it was more of a legal conceit ca- they called the wall, and the idea was that information should not travel from the intelligence world into the criminal one, and vice versa. Um, there was really no law. There was... People thought it was a law, but there was a, it was a custom, and then the FBI had its own intelligence division. Um, and so there was part of... Just, it's like grand jury testimony. You know, it's not supposed-
- PAPeter Attia
Sealed
- LWLawrence Wright
... it's supposed to be sealed. You know, it's kept, kept s- pure and secret. Um, but when you're faced with something like that, your only alternative, you know, is to break the law, and there can be very serious consequences, and it's a lonely thing to do, but that's really the only thing you can do. What I can tell you is how broken those people are by what happened. Um, they knew what was gonna, they knew what was underway, and they lost their boss. You know, John O'Neill died as a consequence of their reticence to say anything. I'm not holding them responsible for 9/11, but I do hold the CIA responsible for it. If they had been transparent with the FBI, if they had said, "We have these Al-Qaeda members in America," uh, the FBI had the authority, they had the warrant, they had everything. They could follow them, they could tape them, they could, you know, clone their computers, they, a- and they could arrest them. There were all these things that they could do, but they were kept in the dark. And of course, the question is why? And I've asked, you know, I-
- PAPeter Attia
How many people in the CIA were you able to interview?
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh, [sighs] they were actually working in the CIA. I, there was a, there was a moment where, uh, I think it's, time has passed enough that I can say this. Uh, I wrote an article about, um, Ayman al-Zawahiri for The New Yorker, and the CIA asked to talk to me. And so, um, I was picked up by an FBI agent [chuckles] who was, and, uh, who worked at, at the CIA, and driven to CIA headquarters and gone up to the seventh floor, and there was a conference room, and I met with Alec Station. Uh, there were about 20-something people there, and, uh, the, the meeting started off in Arabic. And I said, " [speaking Arabic] " You know, "I've g- you speak, everybody here speaks Arabic?" And they had learned it in the last couple of years. It was, I was impressed by that. But I was not impressed with their intelligence. You know, I was a reporter on the ground, you know, going around talking to people, and I wasn't trying to hide information from the CIA. I publish it. You know, it's not, I mean, [chuckles] what I find out, I want people to know. So I didn't feel like I was betraying sources or anything like that by talking to the CIA. Um, what I did want was a little bit of information from them in return, and what they confided was that bin Laden was alive. At that time, there was a lot of talk that he was dead.
- PAPeter Attia
What year was that?
- LWLawrence Wright
Uh, I'm guessing it was 2003. It might've been, might've been earlier than that, 'cause I went to Egypt in, I guess in the f- it must've been 2002. Um, bin Laden was keeping h- his, his head down, and so, um, you know, there was a lot of th- talk that maybe we got him, uh, or that he was sick, you know? And, um-
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah
- LWLawrence Wright
... but you know, the, the intelligence agencies, at least my experience with American intelligence agencies, is that, um, they tend to trust information that has been stolen. In other words, y- you know, wiretaps. You know, stuff that people are saying not knowing supposedly-
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm
- LWLawrence Wright
... that they're being listened to. Reporters have a different posture. We go out and talk to people and ask them what they're up to and why and, you know, "Where'd you come from?" And, you know, those sorts of things you don't normally get on transcripts. And so, uh, they apparently taped my phone. [chuckles] You know? One of my sources said he read a conversation I had, uh, he, it came in on his laptop at the agency. Um, it was, um- conversation I'd had with Z- Zawahiri's cousin. And, um-
- PAPeter Attia
So the legal authority they had to tap your phone was because of who you were speaking to?
- LWLawrence Wright
You're not supposed to tap Americans. So that was a, if, if that had been a tap on my line, um, then, y- you know, or if, if I were talking to, you know, as I had been to Zawahiri's cousin, um, they should say Individual A.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
You know? And so I'm not identified. And, um, but you know, obviously I was, and I thought at the time, "Oh, those Egyptians." You know, they, they're on top of, uh, you know, Zawahiri's cousin. They sent this as a gift to the CIA. And, um, the, uh... But then I, you know, then I a couple of years later learned, you know, that, um, we had been, you know, they had, the American intelligence had been taping Americans and some reporters, and I, obviously. I had had an, a visit from, uh, there's a terrorism squad, uh, in, even in Austin, and, uh, they, you know, a couple of guys came over. They wanted to talk to me, and I thought they wanted advice 'cause I had talked to FBI agents before to give them a little background on Al-Qaeda, and I thought that's what this was. And one of them was, uh, from the FDA, but he was on the terrorism squad, and he walked into my office, and there are all these books on Al-Qaeda, and there's, you know, a whiteboard full of Arabic names. And, you know, he was terrified. His, his hands were trembling. And, uh, what they wanted to know was, uh, about a call that I had made to England, and, um, and it was a 44201 number, you know, and it just sounded like a business number in London. And I said, "You, [laughs] surely you know who it is," but I looked on my Rolodex, and it was a barrister who represented some jihadis. And, um, and it turned out, you know, then they said, "Did you know a person named Caroline Wright?" Who's my daughter. She was in college. And they thought it was Caroline calling this barrister to get to these jihadis, and I thought, "This is our intelligence?"
- PAPeter Attia
[laughs]
- LWLawrence Wright
You know, it was, you know... And then, uh, I, as, as I started thinking about it, it was like, wait a minute. How do you know it's my line? How do you know that, you know, that, that Caroline would... How do you know about Caroline at all? You know, and so you wouldn't have gotten that if you hadn't been listening to the call. And I was really outraged as an American citizen, but also shocked by the level of incompetence. The, I mean, I was grateful they came to clear it up. I, I have to say they at least did that. But the pre- the presumptions that they had were so absurd that I could see how we got ourselves into this fix. The two hijackers, the future hijackers in San Diego, uh, the FBI, their line on what was going on is the CIA knew they couldn't operate in America, but the Saudis could, and so they struck a deal with the Saudis to try to follow these guys and turn them. Here they are in our clutches. We have an opportunity to penetrate Al-Qaeda, which is not something the CIA had been able to do. And, uh, although young men from all over the world were simply walking into the camps and becoming Al-Qaeda members, but they thought that the Saudis would do them that f- favor. And then the two hijackers disappeared, and the CIA lost them, and it was then in August of 2001, just, uh, a couple of weeks before 9/11, that the CIA went to the FBI to ask them to find these guys that they had lost, and it was too late. Uh, the FBI never did find them.
- PAPeter Attia
So Mohammed Atta's an interesting character. Um, of all the 9/11 hijackers, obviously he was the, the senior figure, but he was also such an interesting and unusual character, right?
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- 2:32:49 – 2:56:07
The role of political infighting and personality conflicts that helped enable the 9/11 attacks and the lack of accountability
- PAPeter Attia
You talk about how terrorist organizations were allowed to legally operate inside of Germany provided that they were-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... foreign and not domestic terrorist-
- LWLawrence Wright
Right
- PAPeter Attia
... organizations. That's almost an unfathomable statement. C- can you help make sense of that?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, y- y- you know, Germany has a tortured history, and, you know, the, its r- problems with fanaticism, uh, on German soil has h- you know, historically been a corrective. So you cannot, uh, very easily be a fascist in Germany now. Um, you know, there are fascists in Germany, but, you know, it's, it's, it's sort of an underground thing. Other countries, uh, you know, uh, there's this sense in Germany of, of implicit neutrality. We don't take positions on things like that. And, uh, so if you're opposed to your government and you flee to Germany for asylum, what you do with, you know, in relation to your home country is your business, not ours. Just don't screw around with, you know, with our country. And that was ... It's not just Germany. You know, um, there ... Europe was slow to awaken to, you know, the threat on, uh, to their own countries, in part because they, uh, like, uh, you know, in England, uh, you know, terrorists were actually brought into England because they were escaping the death penalty in Egypt.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- LWLawrence Wright
And they still live, uh, with subsidized rent and such a thing, uh, you know, in, in London. Uh, one of my sources is a driving instructor in London, um, and he killed this little girl, uh, Shayma, in Egypt in his attempt to kill the prime minister. Um, that kind of mentality, uh, is o- came about because people just didn't feel threatened. And, uh, and I think to some extent that explains why, uh, these terror groups were allowed to grow up inside the borders especially of England and Germany, and Spain as well.
- PAPeter Attia
When did Atta come to the United States?
- LWLawrence Wright
I don't remember the exact month. Uh, his, his cohorts had begun to assemble, and so I think he was one of the last to arrive. He was in Spain, uh, coordinating with some of the Spanish Al-Qaeda guys. Um, to what end, we're not really sure. But then, you know, he flew into America. Of course, um, unlike the other guys, his, his English was pretty good.
- PAPeter Attia
So his English is good. He's one of the four pilots. How were they coordinating inside the US? What did they communicate by? Did they c- did they speak on cell phones? Did they use email? How did these 19 guys organized in four groups communicate?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, they did use email and cell phones. And what you have to understand, they weren't really hiding. You know, they, it's ... Nobody ... You know, the CIA knew that Al-Qaeda was present, and the, the Al-Qaeda guys didn't know the CIA knew that. Uh, so ostensibly they just lived openly. Uh, you know, they had driver's licenses and stuff in their own names. Uh, w- eventually the FBI would find that they were listed in the San Diego phone directory. Um, so, you know, they weren't in hiding. They didn't feel threatened, uh, and they took advantage of that freedom.
- PAPeter Attia
So after the election, um, Richard Clarke, who's also a very important figure in your book-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... gets a demotion. Why is that? Uh, that was not clear to me in the book.
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, he was ... He had been, under Clinton, the kind of terrorism czar. And, um, when the Bush administration came in, they didn't see the need for that. Uh, and their, their view was about the big picture. We're talking about China and Russia. And so the people in their NSA and, you know, secretary of state and Condi Rice and so on, uh, you know, that's what their ... They came from the old school. Uh, Clarke told me that when he talked to Condi Rice to try to alert her to the danger of Al-Qaeda, he had the feeling she'd never heard of the organization. It, it's hard to imagine that she didn't hear of it at all, but sh- she clearly didn't take it seriously enough to take his counsel, and so he was pushed down the ranks. Um, it w- and Bush was ... You know, I don't think he took it seriously until, um, the Saudis, um, uh, threatened to break off relations with, uh, the US because of Israel, and the, that woke him up. He was very concerned about that. But then there was a CIA memo, I think it was dated August 6, 2001.
- PAPeter Attia
This is the Presidential Daily Brief-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... that was titled, uh, Al-Qaeda Set to Attack in the US.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right. And so, uh, it couldn't have been clearer. And this was about the same time the CIA lost those guys in San Diego. So suddenly things are moving, and they're out of the CIA's control.
- PAPeter Attia
Now, during the 9/11 Commission, when Condi Rice was asked about that memo, August 6th Right? So five weeks before 9/11-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... the president of the United States gets a briefing that says Al-Qaeda is going to strike on US soil. And of course, when Congress questioned her, it was sort of, "Why was this not taken seriously?" Her response was, if I recall, something akin to, "This was dated. There was nothing new in here. This was speculative. There was no real intelligence." Am I, am I remembering that correctly?
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah. Such dodges were characteristic of a lot of the people involved in this massive intelligence failure. You know, I, I've asked people in the CIA, you know, people in high authority about those hijackers, for instance, and, "No, we didn't really know they were... I mean, it, it was just incompetence, actually. You know, we, you know, there were memos that we didn't read and, you know, it was in, yes, it was in the memos, but it, you know, it never really came to the attention of people in authority." And in other words, there's a fog, uh, you know, pixie dust thrown in your eyes, whereas nothing could be more incendiary, uh, to the very same people that are r- you know, ringing the alarm bells saying, "Al-Qaeda's on the warpath and is coming our way." And then they say, "Well, you know, we didn't, we weren't really paying attention to that, and the memo never came to our attention." Bullshit. You know, this was, you know, CIA was well aware by this time, you know, there was the embassy bombers, there was the Cole bombing, there was... And then, you know, they become aware that Al-Qaeda's in America now, so they're moving onto our soil, and that's the origin of that particular memo is that CIA knows they're here, and so they're obviously they're gonna do an attack here.
- PAPeter Attia
Now, O'Neill said this to Condoleezza Rice before he was fired, forced to resign. And she seemed to indicate that this was not a high priority because it, I think in the, in the words at least used in the, uh, in the, uh, dramatized version of this, this was swatting flies, right?
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
This was what? We've got a couple of Al-Qaeda guys in this country. That's not strategic. That's not relevant. Um, one of the things that's just so mind-boggling to me about this story is how, yeah, incompetence is, I mean, this is, uh, obviously a big part of this, but it's the personality conflicts that got in the way. I mean, another character in this story whose role is really quite sad is Barbara Bodine-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... um, then ambassador in Yemen who did not get along with John O'Neill, which I guess you can't fault her for that. I can... John O'Neill struck me, just from everything I've read about him, and I know you did not have the ability to interview him, but you're doing, your reporting is based on interviews-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- 2:56:07 – 3:08:16
What came of the 9/11 commission, the role of the Saudi government, and the trials of Ali Soufan
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah, I mean, let's just think about it through the lens of the family members of 9/11, right? So we had a 9/11 commission. Um, what, what came of that for the family members?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, it was frustrating for the family members. They... It was presented as being the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and then it came out that there were parts of the 9/11 commission that were suppressed, uh, the 28 pages most notably. And of course, there were a lot of pages redacted, but-
- PAPeter Attia
And the 28 pages that were suppressed dealt primarily with the Saudi-
- LWLawrence Wright
Saudis
- PAPeter Attia
... the, the really... Because again, I, and I remember even at the time, one of the things that was odd was, you know, the Saudis l- you know, being given air clearance to leave.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Um, how do you make sense of this? I, I, I... This is a har- this is one that I have a hard time wrapping my head around, which is why would the Saudis have, why would anybody inside of Saudi Arabia had wanted this? W- I'm, I'm talking about not obviously Al-Qaeda, but I, I'm talking about anyone within the royal family, anyone within the Saudi intelligence community. I mean- There's no doubt to me that Prince Turki was a good guy, right? This is a guy who I, I can't imagine there was any part of him that would want to see bin Laden and his organization succeed. So what is the, what is the, what's the explanation for, for how any of the, the quote unquote Saudi good guys could have stood by and knowingly watched this happen, or worse, supported it financially-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... or otherwise?
- LWLawrence Wright
If we think about, you know, these things as an intelligence analyst, you know, just imagine, um, you know, here are the facts, you know, so where, where are the Saudis in this and why are they behaving like this? Um, I think that the Saudis thought, for one thing, they gave us the information that Al-Qaeda's in America. Um, perhaps if this FBI scenario is correct that the, uh, yes, that the CIA thought that they could turn these guys, they work out a deal with the Saudis where they're gonna run these people. You know, they'll use them as potential recruits, and they fund the, uh, Bayoumis and other people that are sort of their supervisors. So they give them money to keep the operation going. And, um, and there's a certain, uh, ambition on the part of the Saudis to show how, what a great job they can do. And also, these are Saudis that are in America, and so they want to try to keep control on them. So I can envision that.
- PAPeter Attia
But does that explain how they would actually, how the ambassador's wife would send money to known-
- LWLawrence Wright
It would explain if Bayoumi, for instance, is a Saudi intelligence operative-
- PAPeter Attia
Yes
- LWLawrence Wright
... and his job is to oversee these guys.
- PAPeter Attia
Oversee them to prevent them from attacking on US soil?
- LWLawrence Wright
Oversee to penetrate their cell and understand what's going on.
- PAPeter Attia
I see.
- LWLawrence Wright
And I don't know if the Saudis knew that they were planning to fly planes into buildings, but they were up to something, so what could it be?
- PAPeter Attia
I see. So that's a more plausible explanation, which is that, again, their failure of imagination was they had no idea that these Saudi kids could accomplish something as grand-
- LWLawrence Wright
Especially given that pair. You know, uh-
- PAPeter Attia
Right. These-
- LWLawrence Wright
I, I, it's hard to imagine that, you know, they would take them that seriously. On the other hand, there they were.
- PAPeter Attia
I see. Th- th- this makes a bit more sense. So, so going back to my analogy, they're not really acting as an arsonist. They're somebody who accidentally sets the house on fire, but then realizes, "Oh, I just set the house on fire. I better call."
- LWLawrence Wright
Right. Call for help.
- PAPeter Attia
"But I also better make sure I'm nowhere near this fire-"
- LWLawrence Wright
Right
- PAPeter Attia
... "when they get here." I'm not gonna stick around to say I was doing this and that.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah. You know, one always hopes for whistleblowers and somebody to come clear the air and there, you know, documents to surface that, and none of that has happened, you know, so far. Uh, I may be wrong about all this. It could be simply incompetence, which explains so many things. Uh, but there were people like those FBI guys in, that are, you ... They knew something was going on, and they were alarmed and, you know, and they were also shut down when they tried to, you, you know, air their concern. So obviously it was important enough, and dozens of people in the CIA at high levels read these memos. So I long for the day when somebody comes up and says, "This is what actually happened." But I, you know, it's, it hadn't happened so far in 20 years, and I think that they're, the longing of the CIA is to bury it in institutional memory and have it never surface.
- PAPeter Attia
Richard Clarke apologized to the family members of the, the, the, the 9/11 victims. How many other government officials apologized publicly?
- LWLawrence Wright
I don't know of any. Um, uh, there was an awful lot of scolding going on, but what made r- what made Dick Clarke's statement so cathartic is he took responsibility. Nobody else did that.
- 3:08:16 – 3:17:52
Lessons from 9/11 and the future of terrorism
- PAPeter Attia
Lawrence, it's hard to believe this has been 20 years.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
Um, I wanna thank you for an unbelievable, unbelievable investigation. Um, uh, uh, just an amazing amount of research. Um, i- it's hard to imagine what you had to do to write this book, how many trips you had to take, to take into the lion's den, um, and at the same time, how infuriating it must have been to, to, to learn the set of events. Um, I, I can't think of anything I've ever done in my life that would be so upsetting, right? Like, I think of, I think of anything I've ever done that's upset me that i- in terms of, like, learning that something happened or didn't happen or-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah
- PAPeter Attia
... this person was incompetent, and it led to this. You know, like the dietary guidelines in the 1970s. Like, none of that compares in some ways to this. Um, but I also think that, you know, you've, y- you've, you've created a place in history for a lot of people who ... wouldn't otherwise be recognized.
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah.
- PAPeter Attia
And I think the Ali Soufans of the world are probably people who would, you know, not become household names. And, and look, I, I hope that as we sit here at the 20th anniversary of, you know, one of the most consequential dates for most of us, [lips smack] um, that people will take time to go back and reflect on the history of that, um, and reflect on the, on the people who, who were trying to make a difference.
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
Um, I guess I'll close with one last question, which is, what do you think the future holds with respect to this type of asymmetric warfare, be it Al-Qaeda or fill in the blank, you know? Uh, you know, pick your favorite organization that operates from the same mindset. Um, is this something that is going to be part of our world for the next century?
- LWLawrence Wright
I think so. Um, you know, just, I mean, there are innumerable terrorist groups around the world and in our own country, you know, the white supremacists most notably. But Al-Qaeda set a template, you know, a, a small group, highly empowered by these kind of judo moves of, you know, using technology against, you know, the countries that developed the technology. But now we have, you know, Al-Qaeda, you know, which was on 9/11, 300 or 400 guys. Uh, now the estimate's 30 to 40,000 members of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, you know, from Morocco through the Sahel, up through Saudi Arabia to India to southern China.
- PAPeter Attia
Yeah.
- LWLawrence Wright
You know, uh, there are Al-Qaeda groups all over the place. Their intentions haven't changed. Uh, they haven't been able to pull off the highly successful attack, um, in America that w- that would equal 9/11, but many smaller attacks, and not just in America, but other countr- many other countries. With technology, I especially worry about drones. Um, you know, small groups can have a tremendous, you know, a far greater influence and power. Um, and then, you know, I've been writing about the pandemic. Um, I worry that, you know, these kinds of episodes can be suggestive. Uh, there are groups like Aum Shinrikyo, uh, was a Japanese cult that, uh, really wanted to, you know, destroy much of the world with, uh, diseases or atomic bombs. You know, they, they... And a lot of very capable scientists were members of it. Um, Atomwaffen Division, one of the white supremacist groups, they have a philosophy of, you know, wanting to eliminate much of the population and so that it narrows down only to white people. Uh, and biological warfare is part of the, you know, the goal of some of those groups. Uh, it's dismayingly easy, uh, to create diseases. And, um, you know, I was talking to, um... Who's the guy in James Bond that creates all the weapons? Is it M? Is that the-
- PAPeter Attia
Oh, I'm not sure.
- LWLawrence Wright
All right. I think it's M. Anyway, I talked to this American version of that, uh, and he didn't show me the good stuff, but I asked him, and this was several years ago, um, "What worries you?" Um, and he said, "What really worries me is those high school kids that are now creating computer viruses will one day soon be able to manufacture biological viruses just as easily." And that day is on us now. Um, so I worry about that a lot. And, you know, I think, you know, we, we live in a hazardous world, uh, a world that is constrained by a lot of loss of freedom because of that. And, you know, it's, you know, it's... We have to keep in mind the idea of freedom and the country that we used to be, and hope that one day we can return to it. We also have to be sober-minded about the challenges, and I don't think our children are gonna live in a world without terrorism, or our children's children. I think that, you know, terrorism is going to be a factor for a long time to come. And I don't, you know, I don't finally know, given the proliferation of terror, uh, how we're gonna s- put brakes on it.
- PAPeter Attia
I mean, you can think of it from two standpoints, right? You can think one of it is you reduce the drive for it, right? So what are the factors that are contributing to terrorism?
- LWLawrence Wright
Right.
- PAPeter Attia
What is the humiliation? What is the disenfranchisement of the individuals who go on to, to perpetrate these things? So what are all those things? What are the forces to reduce them? At the other end of the spectrum, right, that's, is the, is the kind of offensive strategy, which is how much better can our intelligence agencies be? Look, every person who has run for president since 9/11 has said, "Look at the success. We have not had another attack of this magnitude on US soil." Is there something to that? Is that, is that... I mean, that, that-
- LWLawrence Wright
Yeah, that, um-
- PAPeter Attia
Presumably that's not been through a lack of effort on the part of Al-Qaeda or others, correct?
- LWLawrence Wright
Well, we always tend to look over our shoulder at what happened in the past.
- PAPeter Attia
Mm.
- LWLawrence Wright
And we have to keep in mind what's happening right now. You know, the terrorists proliferate. They move around. They adopt new i- ideologies. There's, there's a fluidity about this, and we're going to see eruptions of terror. Um, some will be of small magnitude, but, you know, I've be- just been writing about You know, the massacre in, in El Paso in 2019, um, 23 Mexican Americans killed. This is the largest attack on Latinos in our history, and, um, you know, it wasn't Al-Qaeda, but it was terrorism. And, uh, you know, it's, that idea is so seeded into our culture now that, um, it... You know, things can, you know... No doubt things change over time. You had school shootings, you know, for instance. That's diminished, but, uh, you know, the whole mass shooting thing started here in Austin with the UT Tower shootings in 1966. So in a way, it, there was a wave that was created, and emulators came along. And, uh, and then, you know, currently it seems like, uh, school shootings have diminished, as have drive-by shootings. So it's, it, it, these memes get into our society, and I, I don't know how other than, uh, being displaced by a new meme, you know, that, uh, they get removed from the consciousness of people that wanna do harm. But I do think that we are doing a better job of containing terrorism and, you know, we're far more alert to it. But I do think that we, our intelligence agencies have to improve. They, the, the pandemic was a, a catastrophic intelligence failure. You know, the, this was a national security threat. You know, we've lost, you know, more than 600,000 Americans. If a, if a nation had attacked us and killed half a million of our citizens, we, you know, we'd have been totally on a different track. But we have to take new things into account. And when we're talking about our safety and security, it's not just terrorism. You know, public health, the natural environment, global warming, all of these things, you know, we have real challenges ahead of us. And so far to date, we are not performing adequately to put them at rest.
Episode duration: 3:25:24
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