Before the Towers Fell: The warnings, Intelligence Failures, and Missed Opportunitues before 9/11

Before the first aircraft struck the North Tower on 11 September 2001, the United States already possessed fragments of warning.

Known al-Qaeda associates had entered the country.

Future hijackers had attended flight schools.

An FBI agent in Phoenix had raised concerns about extremists seeking aviation training.

Zacarias Moussaoui had attracted suspicion at a Minnesota flight school.

Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had already appeared on the intelligence radar.

And on 6 August 2001, President George W. Bush received a briefing carrying the now-famous title:

Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.

Yet the attacks still happened.

Before the Towers Fell asks the question that has haunted investigators, intelligence officers and the families of those lost ever since:

Where did it all go wrong?

Drawing on the findings of the 9/11 Commission, congressional inquiries, FBI investigations and the wider documentary record, Bill Stewart traces the road to 11 September from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 through the rise of al-Qaeda, Kuala Lumpur, the Hamburg cell, flight training, visa failures, watchlists, the Phoenix memorandum, Moussaoui and the final frantic search for men already inside America.

This is not a book about conspiracy.

It is an investigation into failure.

Failure of information sharing.

Failure of imagination.

Failure of coordination.

Failure to recognise that scattered warnings might belong to the same threat.

The United States did not possess a complete blueprint of the coming attack.

But neither did 9/11 arrive without warning.

Before the Towers Fell examines what was known, when it was known, where the information went, and whether different decisions might have changed history.

Twenty-five years after the attacks, one question remains as important as ever:

Were the lessons of 9/11 truly learned?