The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition) [Paperback]

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 17, 2004

Nearly three thousand people died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In Lower Manhattan, on a field in Pennsylvania, and along the banks of the Potomoc, the United States suffered the single largest loss of life from an enemy attack on its soil.

In November 2002 the United States Congress and President George W. Bush established by law the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission. This independent, bipartisan panel was directed to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks, identify lessons learned, and provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism.

This volume is the authorized edition of the Commission's final report.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The result of months of intensive investigations and inquiries by a specially appointed bipartisan panel, The 9/11 Commission Report is one of the most important historical documents of the modern era. And while that fact alone makes it worth owning, it is also a chilling and valuable piece of nonfiction: a comprehensive and alarming look at one of the biggest intelligence failures in history and the events that led up to it. The commission traces the roots of al-Qaeda's strategies along with the emergence of the 19 hijackers and how they entered the United States and boarded airplanes. It details the missed opportunities of law enforcement officials to avert disaster. Using transcripts of cockpit voice recordings, the report describes events on board the planes along with the chaotic reaction on the ground from nearly every level of government. Going forward, the commission calls for a comprehensive overhaul of what it sees as a deeply flawed and disjointed intelligence-gathering operation. The creation of a post for a single National Security Director is recommended, along with the creation of a National Counterterrorism Center. The report finds fault with the approaches of both the Clinton and Bush administrations but, because they were a bipartisan panel and the problems described are so systemic and far-reaching, they stop short of assigning blame to any particular person or group. Credit must be given to how readable the report is. At more than 500 pages, the writing is clear and forceful and the information is made more accessible since it is fre from election politics and rancor. While the commission notes that future attacks are probably inevitable, a coordinated preventive effort along with a clear plan to respond with efficiency can offer Americans some hope in a post-9/11 world. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly

With a grave resolve that perfectly balances the enormous stakes with the necessity of delving into minutiae, this historic book describes the mechanics of the horrific attacks on the United States and recommends measures for preventing further strikes. Without trivializing any of the events or diminishing the people involved, it reads like a Shakespearean drama. The authors, with grim but charged dispassion, unspool paragraph after paragraph dramatizing the arrival of "muscle hijackers" (as opposed to pilots), the thinking of CIA director George Tenet (regularly referred to, along with most other players here, simply by last name) and plot co-coordinator Khalid Sheikh Mohammad ("KSM") among thousands of others, and the other ways and means by which a "foreign" incursion caused catastrophic domestic damage. Distilling an enormous amount of information in plain language, with unerring pitch and a perfect feel for when to gloss ("Dubai, a modern city with easy access to a major airport..."), the book's implied narrator sticks as close as possible to how real people made real decisions, and, when stymied in considering a factor or set of factors, is willing to say so. In so doing, this multi-author document produces an absolutely compelling narrative intelligence, one with clarity, a sense of shared mission and an overriding desire to do something about the situation. At the same time, with quotational chapter headings like " 'We Have Some Planes' " and " 'The System Was Blinking Red,' " the authors never forget that they are communicating in a medium that has a lot of stylistic resources for holding one's attention; they draw liberally on the most tried and true. Given what hangs in the balance, it is not a stretch to compare this document to The Federalist Papers, in the sense that the book is designed to foster the debate by which the country will reimagine itself through its bureaucracy.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (July 17, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393326713
• ISBN-13: 978-0393326710
• Product Dimensions: 1.5 x 5.5 x 8.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (240 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #83,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

254 of 357 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars A National Disgrace Riddled with Omissions & Distortions November 25, 2004

By David R. Griffin

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Many people have said that this Report "reads like a novel." It is indeed surprisingly good when judged in terms of criteria appropriate to works of fiction. But the 9/11 Commission was supposed to conduct a serious investigation into the question of who was responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Instead, it simply presupposed the official conspiracy theory, according to which the attacks were planned and carried out solely by al-Qaeda. The Commission entirely ignored all evidence for the alternative conspiracy theory, according to which the attacks succeeded only because of complicity by members of the US government.

Having written a book that summarizes much of the evidence supportive of this alternative theory ("The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11"), I read "The 9/11 Commission Report" to see how it handled this evidence. I found that it simply omitted most of it and distorted the rest.

For example, the Report simply repeats the official story about the 19 Arab hijackers, failing to mention that at least six of the named men have shown up alive. It even suggests that Waleed al-Shehri, who visited the US embassy in Morocco after 9/11, stabbed a flight attendant on AA 11 before it hit the North Tower (page 5). This sloppy scholarship proves to be no aberration.

With regard to why jet fighters failed to intercept any of the flights, the Report provides a radically revisionist account of 9/11. Claiming--in contradiction to the timeline provided by NORAD on September 18, 2001--that the FAA never notified the military about Flights 175, 77, and 93 until after they crashed, the Report fails to explain why NORAD had earlier said otherwise. This new timeline also changes the starting times of all the teleconferences, in order to claim that they could not have been the means for the military to have learned about the hijackings from the FAA. Also, to bolster the claim that the shootdown order was not given until after Flight 93 had crashed, the Report also contradicts by 45 minutes all prior testimony--including Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's eyewitness testimony to the Commission itself--as to when Vice President Cheney descended to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.

With regard to the World Trade Center, the Report fails to mention that fire had never caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse. It also, by way of suggesting why the Twin Towers could have collapsed so easily, says that the core of each building consisted of "a hollow steel shaft" (541n1), whereas in reality the core of each consisted of 47 massive steel columns. While mentioning that the South Tower collapsed in 10 seconds (305), the Report otherwise fails to mention the fact that the collapses manifested 10 standard features of controlled demolitions. The Report handles the collapse of Building 7, which even FEMA admitted it could not explain, by simply failing to mention it.

With regard to the Pentagon, the Report fails to mention that the West Wing would have been the least likely target for terrorists, that its facade did not collapse until 30 minutes after the strike, and other facts in tension with the idea that the Pentagon was struck by Flight 77. And while claiming that al-Qaeda operatives did not strike a nuclear plant for fear that their plane would be shot down (245), the Report fails to point out that the Pentagon is even better protected, so that any aircraft without a military transponder would have been automatically shot down.

With regard to the FBI, the Report fails to mention many stories that are damaging to the official account of 9/11. These omitted stories include attorney David Schippers' report that several FBI agents told him of their advance knowledge of the New York attacks, the complaint by Coleen Rowley (Time magazine person of the year) that FBI headquarters sabotaged the Moussaoui investigation, and the damning allegations made by FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in her 3.5-hour testimony to the Commission.

What about the allegation by Craig Unger (popularized in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11") that the White House authorized a private flight carrying Saudis on September 13, before private flights were otherwise allowed? The Report "refutes" this allegation by simply saying that US airspace had been reopened at 11 AM that day (329, 556n25), thereby ignoring the crucial distinction between commercial flights, which were then allowed, and private flights, which were not.

The Report also provides radically ahistorical accounts of the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, ignoring all the evidence that these attacks were motivated by desires to establish military bases and to take over the oil (rather than by desires to protect human rights and promote democracy). In this and other ways, the Report omits all evidence that the Bush administration had plans of the sort that could have provided motives for allowing or even engineering the attacks of 9/11.

I have documented these and dozens of other problems in my book "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions." These problems are so great that the Report, instead of being nominated for a National Book Award, should be designated a National Disgrace.

105 of 147 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Smoke and Mirrors December 7, 2004

By Shorebreak

Format:Paperback

The first thing I'd like to say about the book is that there was no 9/11 Commission until the protests of families of 9/11 victims reached a level that could no longer be ignored. That foundation set the tone and the strategy that the government would take in reluctantly forming an investigative committee - and the logic is clear - without the persistance of 9/11 family members no such Commission would exist.

Kean was appointed to head the Commission only after Kissinger stepped aside. Kissinger and the Bush administration probably didn't have the stomach to face questions regarding his questionable activities in the past, including this quote from a 1992 speech in Evian, France: "Today American's would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government." So Kean became the first choice.

Second in command was Zelikow, who was charged with determining which information was suitable for review by the committee. His filtering of Whitehouse documents caused such upset that former Georgia senator Max Cleland left the commission, telling the media that it's a whitewash. Zelikow worked with Condaleeza Rice on national security in Bush Sr's administration. He also co-authored a book with Rice in 1999, and worked on the Georgw W. Bush transition team in 2000-2001. After 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, he again worked in the Whithouse before being appointed to the independent 9/11 Commission - to determine what information the Commission would consider.

The book has a lack of depth, has many incredible discrepencies between what the report states happened and what actual evidence shows did not happen, and omits many grave and startling activities that were not investigated or discussed. For example, there was no Commission investigation or discussion of the fact that on the morning of 9/11, the NRO was conductiong a secret excercise that simulated a plane crashing into a government building in the Washington DC area. Or that other service branches, including the Air Force, were involved that morning in an air defense excercise that included multiple unidentified planes on their radar screens. Considering that there were no effective air defenses that morning, why were neither of these issues raised by the investigation?

The answer is clear. As the former senator from Georgia said, the 9/11 Commission is a whitewash. With that in mind, I recommend that everyone read the book in it's entirety. But don't do so without reading at least one of the books listed on the following website, or thoroughly reviewing the contents from the homepage of the website. Only then will you have enough information to determine where the truth resides.

[...]

68 of 95 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Too many unanswered questions, too much of a whitewash. September 29, 2005

By J. Surjanto

Format:Paperback

9/11 is the worst terrorist attack ever done in US soil. It's a big shame that the commission investigating this is, instead of doing their work as expected, just sit there spending lots of money to produce a complete whitewash of this big tragedy in US history.

There are just too many unanswered questions. And some even border to lying to the American public.

One such example is the question of the involvement of foreign nation such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with this attack. The evidence that traced Saudi's ambassador for america, Mr Bandar bin Sultan (or also known as Bandar Bush) wife's transferring money, supposedly to help a family with medical problem that end up in the hand of Mohammad Atta.

Or testimony by officials that lead to these foreign nations government's involvement are being ignored, instead of being given a follow up to find whether they're telling a truth or not (which is very easy given today's technology, not to mention the amount of money at the commission disposal).

This is not independent investigation. The keyword is not independent objective investigation, but more accurately bi-partisan politicized whitewash.

Try read the book 9/11 Commission Report Omission and Distortions written by David Ray Griffin, and you will see all the things and evidences that this commission choose to ignore, Professor Griffin did a good job in dissecting the whole book and refuting what's wrong inside it.

Good luck finding the truth.