The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the...
In November 2002 the United States Congress and President George W. Bush established by law the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U...
read full description
reviews
Sep 17, 2007
Nathan
rated it: 
Stunning and informative and depressing and scary. It is hard to say what is more unnerving about the revelations of this tome; that so many conspiracy theories persist, or that the true lessons of it seem to have gone completely unheeded by both sides of the political divide. One startling implication of the report is the freezing effect the Republican campaign to impeach Bill Clinton hindered our ability to get Bin Laden. Many times, apparently, opportunities were halted for political reasons,
More...
0 comments
like
(6 people liked it)
Sep 26, 2011
Merritt
rated it:
Be prepared for a long read. At 428 pages, it's a bit of a doozy, but I felt it was important for me to read this.
Overall, it's fascinating. Some parts were too technical for me (especially towards the end, it discusses restructuring of government entities, and I just lacked some of the knowledge and/or interest to find it totally understandable). Some parts were difficult to read. Some parts were frustrating. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, and we must remember that while a lot More...
Overall, it's fascinating. Some parts were too technical for me (especially towards the end, it discusses restructuring of government entities, and I just lacked some of the knowledge and/or interest to find it totally understandable). Some parts were difficult to read. Some parts were frustrating. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20, and we must remember that while a lot More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jun 18, 2011
Jason
rated it:
I think every American should read this or at least listen to the audio CD at least once in their lives, even the conspiracy theorists. There is a reason this report was a finalist for the National Book Award, it is a staggeringly skillful enunciation of the back story to 9/11. Although, because this is a government panel, blame on other government officials is not dealt with much. Rather, the commission recommends broad institutional changes in our government (many of which have been heeded). S
More...
Oct 28, 2010
Chibineko
rated it: 
When someone mentioned that The Academy was pretty much the same story as The University, they weren't kidding. The two stories are so incredibly similar that Little is almost plagiarizing himself when he wrote Academy.
UC Brea isn't your normal school. The student body is interested in all sorts of extracurricular activity, such as kidnapping, rape & extreme violence. Meanwhile the professors themselves have decided to go the extra mile, their lesson plans including anything from ext More...
UC Brea isn't your normal school. The student body is interested in all sorts of extracurricular activity, such as kidnapping, rape & extreme violence. Meanwhile the professors themselves have decided to go the extra mile, their lesson plans including anything from ext More...
May 05, 2009
Jesse
rated it:
I decided to read this book after some of the hype died down surrounding its release. I also wanted to have a little more perespective as 9/11 was such a nationally traumatic event (even when you live in Phoenix and have never visited New York). The report starts off with an insanely dramatic recounting of the events of the morning of Septemeber 11th, 2001. Nearly every sentence has a footnote listing the commission's source for the information conveyed in that sentence (which all you "Loos
More...
3 comments
like
(5 people liked it)
Jul 28, 2011
Tim
rated it: 
There's not a whole lot to say on this report as there quite frankly is not a whole lot to the report. This is one of the worst pieces of "investigative committee work" that I have ever seen. They provide NO alternate viewpoints to the questions that so many are asking as to the holes in the official version. The complete collapse of building 7 is not even mentioned, and the report reads like a work of fiction, which in many cases one is compelled to believe that it is. This book and t
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Aug 08, 2011
Mark
rated it:
I used to sleep safe at night in the knowledge that there was an apparatus in place that protects me and works. After reading this book i sleep a little less safely. here is a book thats is better than anything a fiction writer can dream up because it is all true. The massaive failure of the US in not stopping what was painfully obvious is laid bare. A list of screw up after screw up after screw up after screw up leaves me scratching my head wondering just how much they are not telling. The fi
More...
Dec 15, 2008
Elizabeth
rated it:
Been a while since I read this book but at the time I was thinking damn this book is a lot to read & no it's not an easy read but a worth it one. What I took from it was that Bush is not to blame for 9/11 but that terrorist have been on our tails for a long time. Don't forget 1993 & it goes beyond that too. I also took from it that the terrorist who have that mind set won't change. Some of those guys (the terrorists) lived in America for a while & still attacked us, they didn't come to the land
More...
May 30, 2011
Vicki
rated it: 
There was a book I read within the last year that explained it better than this book, and the book in question wasn't even about what happened on September 11, 2001.
The book was called 'Last Seen Leaving' and it was a fiction story about a girl who goes missing and her mother, who tries to find her.
When it talks about the mother asking questions about the father, who dies suddenly, the mother gets no answers or replies that are designed for beating around the bush. So, in the end, t More...
The book was called 'Last Seen Leaving' and it was a fiction story about a girl who goes missing and her mother, who tries to find her.
When it talks about the mother asking questions about the father, who dies suddenly, the mother gets no answers or replies that are designed for beating around the bush. So, in the end, t More...
May 06, 2011
Austen
rated it:
In-depth look at the opportunities missed, the glaring errors, the ingenuity and creativity used by the terrorists that lead to the worst attack on American soil in its history.
The shortest chapter "Heroism and Horror" detailing the attacks in print form was minimalist. Reading almost like a checklist, focusing mainly on the NYC attacks, briefly on the Pentagon and none at all on the Shanksville, PA plane, its print tabulation of the madness of that day is just as powerful More...
The shortest chapter "Heroism and Horror" detailing the attacks in print form was minimalist. Reading almost like a checklist, focusing mainly on the NYC attacks, briefly on the Pentagon and none at all on the Shanksville, PA plane, its print tabulation of the madness of that day is just as powerful More...
Mar 21, 2010
Carla
rated it:
This is a fascinating read; there are three major things I learned from it.
First, I started reading it about a week before the “Christmas-Day-Panty-Bomber” incident, and it appears that most of the “intelligence failures” that surrounded the 9/11 attacks are still a huge problem, because many of the same things happened (or, more importantly, didn’t happen) with that incident ... five years later.
Second, a huge part of what we know about the planning and execution of the 9/ More...
First, I started reading it about a week before the “Christmas-Day-Panty-Bomber” incident, and it appears that most of the “intelligence failures” that surrounded the 9/11 attacks are still a huge problem, because many of the same things happened (or, more importantly, didn’t happen) with that incident ... five years later.
Second, a huge part of what we know about the planning and execution of the 9/ More...
Aug 14, 2008
Cordell
rated it:
This books was written as a report but even so it reads very well and is very interesting. I think that it is important that people read this book to see how complex the events leading up to the attack and the events around the world are. I also think it is an eye opener which shows just how hated the USA is by some other nations. My personal though on this is that they can kiss my butt, were the greatest nation in the history of the world and I could care less what they think. But, its importan
More...
Jun 11, 2008
Eric
rated it:
The first part is the best. It begins with the actual attack told from several different points of view - passengers and crew on the doomed planes, air traffic controllers, FAA officials, and NORAD and military personnel. It also describes how the President and other government officials were informed and how they responded. For example, Bush knew before he entered the school that a commercial airliner had crashed into one of the Twin Towers, but that's all the information he had. Like myself an
More...
Jan 05, 2010
Scott
rated it:
The first 10% of this book is very well worth reading, offering as it does a detailed, minute-by-minute breakdown of exactly what happened on September 11, 2001, from the perspective of the various aviation and federal organizations. If you were mesmerized, like I was, by the documentary-like vision of the movie "United 93" and interested in the particulars of how it and the other three planes were hijacked -- especially how the casual ineptness of human agency allowed it to happen --
More...
Oct 21, 2007
http://nhw.livejournal.com/184890.html[return][return]it's a gripping story, told well, and basically leaves little room for conspiracy theorists - including conspiracy theorists who wanted the Iraqi government to be linked to the horrors of 9/11. The structure of the report is easily digestible, with the first (and probably the best) chapter a straight narrative of the events of the hijackings, told essentially from the point of view of the victims as far as that can be done. The point is repea
More...
Jul 22, 2007
David
rated it: 
This is an important starting point for anyone who wants to understand what happened on September 11 and try to put events in perspective. The commission did an excellent job of writing a report that could easily be understood by ordinary readers and scholars alike. But it is necessary to read more than one book to understand what has shaped the Middle East over many decades and centuries. You can read novels and non-fiction and each will contribute only a small portion of the information you ne
More...
Jul 02, 2007
Eric
rated it:
The aphorism goes that hindsight is 20/20. In "The 9/11 Commission Report," we learn that sadly, hindsight is not enough.
The warning signs were all there: Saudi exile Osama bin Laden declared war on the West and with his family's millions created and funded a terrorist network dedicated to the fall of the United States, Israel, and democracy; extremists had tried unsuccessfully to bring down the Twin Towers once in 1993; noise was building in the late 90s and the dawn of More...
The warning signs were all there: Saudi exile Osama bin Laden declared war on the West and with his family's millions created and funded a terrorist network dedicated to the fall of the United States, Israel, and democracy; extremists had tried unsuccessfully to bring down the Twin Towers once in 1993; noise was building in the late 90s and the dawn of More...
Dec 17, 2009
Jojo
rated it:
This book is an incredibly good read considering the genre (committee report). Keeping track of all the names is harder than reading War and Peace and I hope that one day they'll publish and indexed version so that it would be easier to go back and link up people with their various roles in the plot and its aftermath. Compelling, scary, instructive, but also makes you wonder what isn't in there that we also ought to know.
Reading this while I was also watching 24 on DVD was an inter More...
Reading this while I was also watching 24 on DVD was an inter More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Sep 15, 2008
Cleverusername2
rated it:
I bought this book soon after it came out and I made it my dedicated reading material until I reached the back cover. Why? Because I felt it was important to understand as fully as I could one of the most significant events of my lifetime, hopefully there will not be many more to rival the attacks. That’s a new word in our vocabulary, I noticed in conversations and news reports soon after 9/11 people would sometimes slip up and call it “the hijacking” or “the bombing” when it was not really thos
More...
Jan 11, 2009
Nick
rated it:
There's "radiation hazards" associated with having people gather on the roof for rescue (pg 317)? What the hell is that (surely not solar UV, that's ridiculous given exposure timing)? I racked my brains for thirty seconds and couldn't figure it out. The book was admirably annotated, but this bewildering claim lacks a footnote. Combined with the regrettable lack of an index, a star must be struck from this otherwise admirable effort.
Jan 03, 2010
Craig
rated it:
The chapters that deal with the intelligence are interesting. The chapters that deal the the bureaucracy are very boring. It is an enlightening book. We had all of the pieces of the puzzle to possibly prevent the attack, but the walls between government bureaucracies prevented the various intelligence bodies from assembling the pieces. Clinton should have taken out bin Laden when he had the chance (on two occasions).
Sep 01, 2008
Carrie
rated it:
You would think this would be the most boring imaginable book -- 600 pages of excruciating detail about what happened on 9/11, written by government bureaucrats. But in fact, this is one of the best -- not just most important -- books I've read in my lifetime. Whoever commissioned the report clearly must have hired journalists to actually write the book, because by no means is it dull. There are no holds barred. The authors don't hesitate to call out when agencies failed in their duties, and whe
More...
Mar 12, 2010
Madeline
rated it:
Since this came out, I've been meaning to go through it. After finishing "Ghost Wars" just a little while ago, I thought it was a good time to pick it up.
Overall, not a bad read. The intern or whoever they had writing this thing kept the prose pretty punchy. The content could be a little disturbing, though, and I'm not just talking about the systemic intelligence and institutional failures that led to 9-11: in the entire 700-odd pages, only two paragraphs were devoted to th More...
Overall, not a bad read. The intern or whoever they had writing this thing kept the prose pretty punchy. The content could be a little disturbing, though, and I'm not just talking about the systemic intelligence and institutional failures that led to 9-11: in the entire 700-odd pages, only two paragraphs were devoted to th More...
Aug 18, 2010
Jim
rated it:
If you are unfortunate enough to have the NYT copy of the report, skip the first 100 pages where the NYT tears down the country. It was sickening. The report itself is fairly comprehensive and unbiased. I tried to read the NYT slant and was truly surprised to see how anti-American they are and that was back in 2004 when it was published.
Read the report, skip the anti-American rhetoric at the front.
Read the report, skip the anti-American rhetoric at the front.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jun 05, 2009
Brian
rated it:
As far as I can tell, this is a thoroughly researched narrative of the events leading up to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Also, it is straight-forward and surprisingly readable. I am impressed that the commission was able to issue a unanimous report. Certainly there are holes in the research, but if you are interested in the full the story of 9/11, this is a good place to start.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jan 01, 2012
Frederick
rated it:
This was the report of the 9/11 Commission chaired by Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean. It tracks the origin of 9/11, both from the side of the terrorists and the government. It outlines the failures in policy and thought that led to the disaster. It is really sad how close the government came on several occasions to finding out what the terrorists were doing.
Feb 02, 2011
Bicefalus
rated it:
tutta la storia degli attacchi dell 11 settembre come ricostruita da una commissione by partisan americanaa... se se si pensa che sia stato tutto in inside job per portare avanti un regima fasciasta in america questo libro non dice nulla ... se invece non si crede alla teoria del complotto allora è una lettura molto interessante ed educativa ...
Aug 09, 2011
Stacy
rated it:
I had to read this book for graduate school and really enjoyed it. As with many non-fiction (at least for me), the book is a little dry. But having lived through these events made it easier on the attention span. A definite read for those that want to know US government investigation into 9/11.
Mar 23, 2011
Chad
rated it:
For anyone looking to understand the events of 9/11, you have to start here. It gives a step by step account of what really happened. An important read for any American who wishes to have a working understanding of an event that has shaped the last 10 years of our lives in massive ways.
Dec 31, 2010
Jim
rated it:
I didn't know how to rate this...it's not a matter of like or not like, and of course this publication is not meant to garner literary accolades.
If you want to participate in the continuing debate on national security, this is essential reading- however difficult.
If you want to participate in the continuing debate on national security, this is essential reading- however difficult.
