What do you think?
Rate this book
The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot & Why the FBI & CIA Failed to Stop It
September 11, 2001 marked the beginning of a new era in history, but the forces that triggered those attacks have been in place for years and continue to operate within the United States and abroad. Experts estimate that as many as 500 terrorist cells exist in America today. ABC News journalist John Miller has been tracking this story since his coverage of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. He was the first American journalist to interview Osama Bin Laden, and he has a sophisticated knowledge of the structure and workings of extremist organizations. The Cell contains information gleaned from sources within the FBI, CIA, and the local law enforcement communities currently conducting the investigation into the September 11 attacks.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
46 people are currently reading
611 people want to read
About the author
John Miller
66 booksLibrarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
John 2^ Miller: Anthologies, Short Stories
John 3^ Miller: Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield
John 4^ Miller: GR Author, Health
John 5^ Miller: GR Author, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Gay and Lesbian
John 6^ Miller: Children's
John 7^ Miller: Biography
John 8^ Miller: Mystery, Babineaux series
John 9^ Miller: 1787-1858
John 10^ Miller: Russian-speaking British journalist
John 14^ Miller:
John 2^ Miller: Anthologies, Short Stories
John 3^ Miller: Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield
John 4^ Miller: GR Author, Health
John 5^ Miller: GR Author, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Gay and Lesbian
John 6^ Miller: Children's
John 7^ Miller: Biography
John 8^ Miller: Mystery, Babineaux series
John 9^ Miller: 1787-1858
John 10^ Miller: Russian-speaking British journalist
John 14^ Miller:
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
October 4, 2016
September 11, 2001 is a date etched in our memories. It is a day the world changed. I still remember what I was doing that day, people I spoke with and what they said. I think for many people it was seen as an affront to our humanity. I have pictures I took atop the lookout of the twin towers. It is such a strange eerie feeling looking at them now. Never again can I go up and take another picture.
This book gives us a logical and detailed background of the long lead-up to September 11. We can see that many clues were overlooked – and significant events minimized.
The first one happened in November 1990. It was the assassination of Meir Kahane the founder of the Jewish Defense League. Instead of pursuing the background and infrastructure behind the assassin, El Sayid Nasair, the courts decided to keep it simple and prosecute only Nasair as if he had acted alone. If they had explored, they would have discovered an entire network of armed Islamic jihadists operating in Brooklyn and New Jersey. It was these groups under the ideological leadership of Omar Abdel-Rahman and the bombing expert Ramzi Yousef that the second event occurred on February 26, 1993 with a huge truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center
Page 95 (my book)
Now, what was once the B-2 level garage is a much bigger place. It is a crater that spans downward to a train station several floors below and upward to a hotel ballroom three stories above. The concrete floors that once separated each level are gone, blasted into dust.
Ramzi Yousef remarked, after he was captured a few years later, that if he would have had more money he could have added more to the explosion and the towers would have collapsed – and that was the purpose of the bomb that day in February.
It was at that time that some investigators began to feel that these people were serious. Unfortunately they never had enough clout and power within the F.B.I. (and other institutions) to press forward. Even after the embassy bombings in Africa (1998) and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole (2000).
This book is mostly focused on the New York perspective – don’t look for insights into radical Islam in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. But we do get a portrayal of Mohammed Atta (what a dour personality).
Other Remarks:
What was this fellow John O’Neill of the F.B.I. thinking of when he arrived in Yemen with over 100 investigators after the U.S.S. Cole attack? Did he think he was going to Kansas? Could he “maybe” have perceived this invasion as an affront to Yemen?
We are again presented with the canard that the U.S. was solely responsible, through its support of the Mujahedeen, for defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia (and other rich Arab states) provided more money – and men – for the Afghanistan war. All of this (including U.S. aid) went via Pakistan into Afghanistan. Pakistan was leveraging much of what happened in Afghanistan.
The U.S. during the 1990’s was far more interested in the shenanigans of the Lewinsky-Clinton debacle and the O.J. Simpson trial, than the trial of the bombers and the plot behind the 1993 twin towers bombing.
The book changes abruptly from third person to first person perspective (there are three authors involved). It is very annoying not having an index. A list of the characters involved and their roles would have helped even more.
Even so we are provided with an excellent historical build-up. There was a lot of tenacity and relentlessness behind these people, their plans changed and evolved, they had cells world-wide. There was a lot of traveling and meeting places – with a lot of money supporting this.
It does make – as can be expected – for depressing reading. These people, over a long period of time, were solely bent on destruction and killing on an enormous scale. Very sadly they succeeded.
This book gives us a logical and detailed background of the long lead-up to September 11. We can see that many clues were overlooked – and significant events minimized.
The first one happened in November 1990. It was the assassination of Meir Kahane the founder of the Jewish Defense League. Instead of pursuing the background and infrastructure behind the assassin, El Sayid Nasair, the courts decided to keep it simple and prosecute only Nasair as if he had acted alone. If they had explored, they would have discovered an entire network of armed Islamic jihadists operating in Brooklyn and New Jersey. It was these groups under the ideological leadership of Omar Abdel-Rahman and the bombing expert Ramzi Yousef that the second event occurred on February 26, 1993 with a huge truck bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center
Page 95 (my book)
Now, what was once the B-2 level garage is a much bigger place. It is a crater that spans downward to a train station several floors below and upward to a hotel ballroom three stories above. The concrete floors that once separated each level are gone, blasted into dust.
Ramzi Yousef remarked, after he was captured a few years later, that if he would have had more money he could have added more to the explosion and the towers would have collapsed – and that was the purpose of the bomb that day in February.
It was at that time that some investigators began to feel that these people were serious. Unfortunately they never had enough clout and power within the F.B.I. (and other institutions) to press forward. Even after the embassy bombings in Africa (1998) and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole (2000).
This book is mostly focused on the New York perspective – don’t look for insights into radical Islam in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. But we do get a portrayal of Mohammed Atta (what a dour personality).
Other Remarks:
What was this fellow John O’Neill of the F.B.I. thinking of when he arrived in Yemen with over 100 investigators after the U.S.S. Cole attack? Did he think he was going to Kansas? Could he “maybe” have perceived this invasion as an affront to Yemen?
We are again presented with the canard that the U.S. was solely responsible, through its support of the Mujahedeen, for defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia (and other rich Arab states) provided more money – and men – for the Afghanistan war. All of this (including U.S. aid) went via Pakistan into Afghanistan. Pakistan was leveraging much of what happened in Afghanistan.
The U.S. during the 1990’s was far more interested in the shenanigans of the Lewinsky-Clinton debacle and the O.J. Simpson trial, than the trial of the bombers and the plot behind the 1993 twin towers bombing.
The book changes abruptly from third person to first person perspective (there are three authors involved). It is very annoying not having an index. A list of the characters involved and their roles would have helped even more.
Even so we are provided with an excellent historical build-up. There was a lot of tenacity and relentlessness behind these people, their plans changed and evolved, they had cells world-wide. There was a lot of traveling and meeting places – with a lot of money supporting this.
It does make – as can be expected – for depressing reading. These people, over a long period of time, were solely bent on destruction and killing on an enormous scale. Very sadly they succeeded.
June 6, 2011
Read this for a class called "Terrorist Cells" Wow. Miller's writing is captivating to say the least. He manages to turn this messy story with many characters and motives into something coherent that reads like a hard-boiled detective novel. The passage, "Norris felt that Nosair was involved in something much larger, something that would come back to haunt law enforcement - hell, even the whole city. And Eddie Norris didn't know the half of it." sounds like the opening line from the trailer of the latest Hollywood blockbuster (starring Bruce Willis with Samuel L. Jackson).
However, this sort of "bad-guys vs. good guys, cops vs. robbers" kind of narrative seems to me to be the wrong way of looking at the issue of homegrown or imported radical Islamic terrorism. I guess I would call it the "Fox News" way of telling a story, where events almost seem to fall into a carefully crafted storyline. In reality, or at least on an international level, our enemies and allies are not so clear-cut.
As the events in the first part transpire in the early 1990's, it's amazing to look at the news today and see how evolved our methods of counter-terrorism have become. Today, it's much harder for terrorists to have phone conversations or wire money to each other due to increased surveillance. I sure hope the crime-fighting agencies communicate better today than they did leading up to the 1993 attack.
Ironically, the 1993 bombing of the WTC was very similar in its methodology to McVeigh's 1996 Oklahoma City bombing, in which he likewise rented a Ryder truck (man, that's got to be some bad PR), and filled it with fertilizer and accelerants. One would hope the FBI/NSA now see some red flags pop up whenever someone rents a Ryder truck after purchasing large quantities of chemicals.
However, this sort of "bad-guys vs. good guys, cops vs. robbers" kind of narrative seems to me to be the wrong way of looking at the issue of homegrown or imported radical Islamic terrorism. I guess I would call it the "Fox News" way of telling a story, where events almost seem to fall into a carefully crafted storyline. In reality, or at least on an international level, our enemies and allies are not so clear-cut.
As the events in the first part transpire in the early 1990's, it's amazing to look at the news today and see how evolved our methods of counter-terrorism have become. Today, it's much harder for terrorists to have phone conversations or wire money to each other due to increased surveillance. I sure hope the crime-fighting agencies communicate better today than they did leading up to the 1993 attack.
Ironically, the 1993 bombing of the WTC was very similar in its methodology to McVeigh's 1996 Oklahoma City bombing, in which he likewise rented a Ryder truck (man, that's got to be some bad PR), and filled it with fertilizer and accelerants. One would hope the FBI/NSA now see some red flags pop up whenever someone rents a Ryder truck after purchasing large quantities of chemicals.
December 22, 2012
A gripping account of the evolution of the counter intelligence agencies and people who have been in pursuit of al Qaeda since the early 1990s. Miller takes on the responsibility of answering the most basic yet complicated questions to come of the 9/11 attacks: "how could we have let this happen?" As one of the only Western journalists who has first hand experience with bin Ladin having met and interviewed him in 1998, Miller is the perfect person to write this story. His writing style is completely engrossing, and you get the sense that he is trying to explain all of this to himself as much as he is trying to offer an answer to the general public. I finished this book feeling like Miller had accomplished what he set out to do, and also feeling like I had just finished reading an action novel. I am definitely using this book as a text in the future.
April 5, 2012
The Cell was the first 9/11 book i have read. The catastrophe of 9/11 is mired with so many conspiracy theories that i have been turned off of researching this subject. This book was incredible. Not in the wow sense but in the I just don't believe a lot of what the authors have written. There are many implied scenarios when facts were light or nonexistent. The book read as if it were a funding campaign to increase the national security budget, although it may have been the case.
October 25, 2016
An excellent analysis of a systemic failure that involves too many politically mi nded agency heads and basic incompetence from the White House
Not much has changed and in the word of our next President, what difference does it make to
them. Politics over protection and performance.
Not much has changed and in the word of our next President, what difference does it make to
them. Politics over protection and performance.
January 26, 2023
Enjoyable. Pedant alert: they misspelled Mombasa (Kenya) throughout the book. Weird.
September 2, 2015
One of the best non fiction I've read in a long long time. A book which scores equal points for crisp narrative, information, in-depth analysis and commentary on events. One after the other, the chapters unfold the story of how 9/11 was a disaster which could have been avoided or atleast the damage could have been reduced considerably. The two organisations, generally considered the best in the world, CIA and FBI made blunders after blunders in spite of repeated warnings, information at hand and even smaller terror plots (both failed and successful)to warn them. Of course with hindsight everything looks very believable but one cant help but see the fatal errors made by the top heirarchy and how red tape and bureaucracy hampered the fight against terrorism when terrorism was still in its infancy. Also, a conclusion for all governments to follow that terrorism is not a law and order situation but is a full fledged war to be faced head on. A sentence which would echo much after one has read the book is "Left alone, terrorism will strike again in a bigger and bolder way"
October 14, 2013
Amazing book. The author clearly showed both the dogged determination to track down terrorists, to act on information obtained and the bureaucratic nightmare that allowed turf battles, power struggles, political correctness and disinterest to prevail. September 11, 2001 could have been prevented. It happened because of an inability for agencies like the CIA, FBI, and NSA to work together and respond to the many, many red flags that popped up all over. When the Patriot Act was signed into law, I had mixed feelings about the privacy issues. To cut off the head of the snake, you need a sharp knife. If anything, after reading this book, the agencies charged with the security of this nation need more tools and more freedom to ferret out terrorists, even at the cost of a loss of privacy. The terrorists are still out there, some still in our borders, waiting for the right moment to strike and bring America to its knees. Every member of the CIA, NSA, and FBI should read this book.
April 25, 2013
Three-four years after the event I start reading the books appearing about 9-11. Meanwhile, at work, our IT director, not a political guy, tells me about the film Loose Change and I pick up that and the 9-11 Commission Report. Watch the first, read part (yawn) of the second (it's mostly about preventative measures). Cognitive dissonance, big time. Watch a few other documentaries, read a few more books. Big gaps, unanswered questions, much suspicion.
This is a relatively early, mainline approach to the whole 9-ll thing. It's not written particularly well and I'm not impressed. Give it another decade and maybe a good history will become available. In the meantime, the best work I've seen thus far is Worse Than Pearl Harbor, a well-nuanced book written by an academic ethicist.
This is a relatively early, mainline approach to the whole 9-ll thing. It's not written particularly well and I'm not impressed. Give it another decade and maybe a good history will become available. In the meantime, the best work I've seen thus far is Worse Than Pearl Harbor, a well-nuanced book written by an academic ethicist.
August 8, 2016
Very intriguing account of pre-9/11 counter-terror efforts, based largely on the work of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force. The Cell pulls no punches in laying the blame for the intelligence "failures" that led to the 9/11 attacks. The intel was there and a handful of counter-terror operatives were tracking al Qaida's efforts to cultivate cells in the US and around the globe, but they ran into the obstacles of bureaucracy, self-interest, and ignorance of the real threat in those at higher levels in the FBI and State Department. This book leaves little doubt that had the warnings been heeded and investigations green-lighted rather than compromised, 9/11 could have been prevented.
April 2, 2013
I read this book as research/background for a novel I want to write. I have to say, it was riveting. Even with all the notes and annotations I made, I couldn't put it down and finished it in days.
Horrifying because of the reality of it, it's so well written you forget it's non-fiction. It's almost mind-bending, the amount of coincidence involved. I lived in New York during the first WTC Bombings - so parts of this were so hard to read, but I'm glad I did.
This is non-fiction writing at it's finest.
Horrifying because of the reality of it, it's so well written you forget it's non-fiction. It's almost mind-bending, the amount of coincidence involved. I lived in New York during the first WTC Bombings - so parts of this were so hard to read, but I'm glad I did.
This is non-fiction writing at it's finest.
September 6, 2011
Very well done book. The detail is amazing and the whole thing extremely sad, and frustrating. There are a lot of true heroes that are working their butts off every day trying to bust these bad guys and I think this book does a good job of honoring their hard work even though they couldn't prevent the big attack. It also does a good job at bringing to light the absolute evil of these terrorists. At the tenth anniversary of the attacks, I thought it an appropriate read.
November 6, 2011
The book was written by John Miller the last Western journalist to interview Osama Bin Laden. In this book he outlines the rise of radical Islam from the assassination of Meir Kahane to the first World Trade Center Bombing, the war against the Russians in Afghanistan, the bombings in Saudi Arabia, the bombings of the US embassies in Africa and the Cole and the 9/11 plot. A nicely laid out history of the war of radical Islam and Al Queda against the West.
December 6, 2009
I remember John Miller as a journalist when I was growing up in northern New Jersey. His yeoman-like effort on this book is outstanding. The subject matter is uncomfortable at times, and I felt angry more than once. Even the answers don't supply all the answers, so don't expect that. But expect a terrific history and timeline leading up to 9/11.
January 14, 2012
I was surprised at how interesting I found it. There was so much the FBI and NYPD knew about jihadists living in and around NYC prior to Sept. 11th. There are ironic moments like how they caught the bombers involved in the 93 bombing.
Lots of muslim or arabic names which can be disorientating when you're not used to it.
Lots of muslim or arabic names which can be disorientating when you're not used to it.
October 4, 2014
Good reading. This book shows how much our government knew prior to 9/11 and did nothing about it. The higher ups "looked away" when they were given authentic information concerning pre-9/11 terrorist activities throughout the world including many US States. Makes you wonder what the government is really concerned about throughout the world.
June 19, 2015
Chronicles the woeful sharing of intelligence between agencies before the events of 9/11. Written by a crime reporter who actually got to interview bin Laden shortly before he became a very wanted man. Great stories and buildup at the beginning, but toward the end felt in a hurry to wrap up.
June 22, 2011
Interesting. Even though we had the information on the 911 terrorists we were unable to use the information to stop the attacks from happening. Hopefully we have learned something and it won't happen again.
June 10, 2015
Excellent - I was looking for information on an FBI operation briefly mentioned in Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower called TERRSTOP. It saved so many American lives but we never hear about it. I had to go directly to the former FBI agent Ali Soufan to find information & he recommended The Cell.
December 16, 2008
Interesting background on events leading up to 9/11. Slow reading with lots of details, but good to help understand what happened and those behind it.
October 1, 2009
Heavy on facts, but light on analysis. The 9/11 report gives more insight. It shows again how big government doesn't work. People have to provide intellegence, not machines and beaurocrats
November 6, 2010
FASCINATING READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The FBI and CIA are ALL F*CK UPS!!!!!!! 9/11 was an INSIDE JOB! OPEN UR POLITICALLY CORECT MINDS U SHEEPLE!!!!!!!!!!
May 5, 2012
Insightful and gripping. This book details the history of Al Qaeda and the impact on the US. Very engaging and vivid, with insight into the personalities and challenges they faced. Great!
August 3, 2012
Read this for my college class on terrorism. Very good introduction to the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks. Much easier to read than the 9/11 commission report.
September 27, 2023
The first World Trade Center incident awakened law enforcement and the planned bombing of the U.N. was thwarted by the FBI. Four terrorists were convicted in a Manhattan courthouse. Meanwhile, a worldwide search for the mastermind continued. The inept CIA was of little help. An informer led to his capture and he boasted of his exploits.
Flight 800 went down and conspiracy theories abounded. Evidence showed that the crash was due to mechanical failure and not a Stinger missile. We had supplied Afghan rebels with arms in their war with the Soviets. In this case, blowback was not the reason for the incident.
Twenty-six months before the original attack, Rabbi Meire Kahane was gunned down by Egyptian radical Elsayyid Nosair. In a twist of fate, he was defended by a Jewish attorney, William Kunstler. The warning signs were all there and ignored.
Enter Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani/Palestinian with an engineering degree. He fled to Pakistan after the WTC bombing and Osama bin Laden funded his escape.
A strange alliance between Black American and Middle Eastern Muslims formed in an jihad against America.
In a similar manner to the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, a Ryder rental truck loaded with explosives was used at the WTC. The difference being that Timothy was not a Koran inspired Muslim, but a former military veteran.
The highlight of the book is the clandestine meeting between reporter John Miller and bin Laden, surrounded by AK-47 toting bodyguards in Afghanistan.The interview aired on ABC News in 1998 and it was America's introduction to the fanatic.
In a warmup to 9/11, embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed and the U.S.S Cole was attacked in Yemen. NY based FBI agent John O'Neill was sent to investigate but was sent packing by the ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, another paper pushing bureaucrat.
Mohamed Atta was the Cairo-born man whose name would achieve worldwide infamy after 9/11. He lived in Hamburg for several years and spoke fluent German. He traveled to America and with three cohorts took flight training at schools in Florida and Oklahoma. Along with fifteen Saudi nationals, the jihadists struck on September 11, 2001. At the time of the publication of the book, bin Laden was still on the loose.
He finally was granted his wish of eternal paradise in 2011 in a successful military raid.
The book is an excellent read.
Flight 800 went down and conspiracy theories abounded. Evidence showed that the crash was due to mechanical failure and not a Stinger missile. We had supplied Afghan rebels with arms in their war with the Soviets. In this case, blowback was not the reason for the incident.
Twenty-six months before the original attack, Rabbi Meire Kahane was gunned down by Egyptian radical Elsayyid Nosair. In a twist of fate, he was defended by a Jewish attorney, William Kunstler. The warning signs were all there and ignored.
Enter Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani/Palestinian with an engineering degree. He fled to Pakistan after the WTC bombing and Osama bin Laden funded his escape.
A strange alliance between Black American and Middle Eastern Muslims formed in an jihad against America.
In a similar manner to the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, a Ryder rental truck loaded with explosives was used at the WTC. The difference being that Timothy was not a Koran inspired Muslim, but a former military veteran.
The highlight of the book is the clandestine meeting between reporter John Miller and bin Laden, surrounded by AK-47 toting bodyguards in Afghanistan.The interview aired on ABC News in 1998 and it was America's introduction to the fanatic.
In a warmup to 9/11, embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed and the U.S.S Cole was attacked in Yemen. NY based FBI agent John O'Neill was sent to investigate but was sent packing by the ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, another paper pushing bureaucrat.
Mohamed Atta was the Cairo-born man whose name would achieve worldwide infamy after 9/11. He lived in Hamburg for several years and spoke fluent German. He traveled to America and with three cohorts took flight training at schools in Florida and Oklahoma. Along with fifteen Saudi nationals, the jihadists struck on September 11, 2001. At the time of the publication of the book, bin Laden was still on the loose.
He finally was granted his wish of eternal paradise in 2011 in a successful military raid.
The book is an excellent read.
April 23, 2024
Overall
Worth a Read
For a book that was written shortly after September 11, it was filled with good information.
Review
This book does a good job with providing the important events and other attacks that lead up to the actual attack on September 11. John Miller does a good job at pointing out mistakes of intelligence agencies and how they could have been prevented. This book is good for those who want more of an understanding on how can an event like September 11 was possible.
Worth a Read
For a book that was written shortly after September 11, it was filled with good information.
Review
This book does a good job with providing the important events and other attacks that lead up to the actual attack on September 11. John Miller does a good job at pointing out mistakes of intelligence agencies and how they could have been prevented. This book is good for those who want more of an understanding on how can an event like September 11 was possible.
March 24, 2018
Written in 2002, this book is an eye-opener not only into what was known about the terrorist organization hell bent on destroying America but also into the bureaucracy in American government that blocked information dissemination pre-9/11. Interwoven into the "world story", the "news story" are personal stories of real people, some of whom lost their life on that day.
June 29, 2019
Nice anecdotal style. Much about Bin Laden, the Afghan War, and everything from the '98 embassy bombings and on has been written and documented. However, the best part about the book is the look into the NYC Islamic fundamentalist scene that gave way to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Great research and context there.
June 28, 2020
A book about the importance of interdependence
The book was a really good book about antecedent and aftermath of 9/11. The authors inscribed many information to the events and individuals involved in this atrocity. The book pointed out the lack of interdependence between law enforcement agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, in which the results were horrendous.
The book was a really good book about antecedent and aftermath of 9/11. The authors inscribed many information to the events and individuals involved in this atrocity. The book pointed out the lack of interdependence between law enforcement agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, in which the results were horrendous.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews