The Looming Tower

The last episode, which begins when the first plane hits (not a spoiler), brought me up against my own memories of 9/11. My son was in the city, and on that day I worried about him and listened to him on the phone. Aside from that, I was numb. It seemed utterly incomprehensible that this should have happened. Who? Why? How? Equally incomprehensible was the speed with which these questions were in fact answered, for reasons the Hulu series makes clear: the answers were already at the fingertips of various players who didn't know what to do with them (though the finale implies that various parties were prepared to exploit the bombing instantly). The series begins at the (or a) beginning, including the Kenyan embassy bombing, the USS Cole bombing, and interactions among the players on both sides. The questions have been answered, the lines drawn in such a way as to meet at this point, with the bombings. As I watched the last episode, I was able to feel for the people I love who were breathing that dust that day. I could finally weep for them, as well as for John O'Neill and Ali Soufan, whom I had not known about until now.

When I read that there was a TV adaptation of Lawrence Wright's book I had great hopes. The result is not disappointing, the show is quite good, Jeff Daniels is perfect in his role and the story of John O'Neill is perfect for a movie. But the writers decided to focus only on the final part of the book, which details the internal wars between CIA and FBI which allowed the 9/11 plans to proceed unchallenged. The first part of the book, which describes the history of bin Laden and al Qaeda, starting from the ideology of Qutb, would have been much more interesting to understand what is going on in the world today. But I understand that story would be perhaps more suitable for a documentary than for a TV show, but it's a story that Wright wrote beautifully at that will deserve to be put on screen someday.

I had to watch the whole series twice, mainly to identify the "good" and "bad" players. It certainly doesn't speak well of the CIA. Amazing performances, by all players, but Jeff Daniels and Tahar Rahim were outstanding. Curious about Ali Soufan, I watched several interviews with him, and Tariq nailed his accent/speech totally. We all know how it ended, but this series adds to the human element, the frustration and ultimate sadness.

The whole series was fine, as other reviews suggest. As an Arab, it is irritating to see all the Arabic language spoken in this series was from an egyption Dialect, regardless of their origin/nationality.

Who could ever fathom that the main reason the terrorists of al-Qaeda lead by the independently wealthy Osama bin Laden would have cost so many lives to be lost in the air attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001, could have been neutralized only if the American CIA and FBI intelligence agencies would have shared vital information between their respective and unfortunate independent intelligence operations.

This is a well acted ten (10) part mini-series that is based on actual events and many of the key American and foreign personnel who were actively involved in the gathering of intelligence on terrorists such as al-Qaeda.

Mrs. Shullivan and I were glad to see that much of the horrific events that occurred on September 11th, 2001, were not the focus of this mini-series, but rather how the events leading up to this tragic day in the history of mankind evolved over the preceding years and by the key players responsible for fighting the terrorists organizations such as al-Qaeda.

This is most definitely a must see. A 9 out of 10 rating