Product Description

W.W. Norton is proud to have been selected by the 9-11 Commission to be the authorised publisher of the report.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14767 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 568 pages

Customer Reviews

Bordering on fiction
This "report" is a disgrace. Nay, an outrage. How dare this comission release such a half-baked excuse for a report. For shame.
Do not expect to gain any accurate knowlege of the atrocities that were committed on 9-11 from this compilation of hearsay.
Some examples:
- WTC building no. 7 is not even mentioned. Yes, you read correctly: IT IS NOT EVEN MENTIONED.
- Operation Vigilant Guardian. Again: It is not even mentioned.
- According to this commission, finding out who bankrolled the attacks is "of little practical importance".

I could go on like this all night, but I won't. Read David Ray Griffin's "The 9/11 Commission Report: Ommissions and distortions" and you will begin to understand.

That said, I would consider this "report" well worth reading. It is going to be considered a classic example of state progaganda in the future.

Full of fiction and half-truths...
This Report, while worth reading should not be considered in isolation as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as some people would like us to.

There is a large and growing body of evidence supported by an even larger and faster growing group of ordinary and extra-ordinary Americans that points with crystal clarity towards a radically different view of the attacks of 9/11, who caused them and why. Dissecting the official report, and the government's own version of events, leads to more questions than answers, and uncovers a considerable catalogue of half truths, ommissions and even blatant outright fiction.

Readers of the Commission's official Report who consider themselves to be of fair and balanced minds will naturally want to make themselves aware of 'the other side of the story'. It is not unpatriotic to consider these things carefully. It is patriotic. I am not talking about anything pro-Islamist, or anti-Bush. Far from it.
Merely that Americans should consider the questions raised by the fact that the official version of events, and the official report, are radically different in many different places to the actual recorded history of 9/11 and the events that day.
Readers should at least make themselves aware of the eminant and respected theologian David Ray Griffin's 2 books, also to be found on Amazon, 'The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11' (4.5 out of 5 over 136 reviews) and 'The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions'.

Alex Kerr

Outstanding and Comprehensive Report
It is impossible to review the book in a typical one page Amazon.com short review space. The book has too much good information. Needless to say, buy and read the book; it is inexpensive just a bit more expensive than some fancy magazines; it is the best summary on the subject available. It is not partisan in any way, and it is full of facts, some new. It has stories, testimonies, descriptions, suggestions, photographs, maps, drawings, notes, etc. It covers the entire picture going back decades. Everyone should buy (and read) a copy.

According to the Report "the war on terror" will be won in the future when the Muslim countries develop and offer jobs for their youth. As it stands today, their unemployment is high, there is too much emphasis on religious education and not enough job oriented training, and the young are easy converts to anti-west violence. Only when an economic revival occurs will the radicals will lose their appeal (page 54).

The 9/11 report explains that the Al Qaeda is serious, and we learn in this report that Al Qaeda purchased what they thought was a large cylinder of uranium a few years before 9/11. Fortunately the uranium was a fake and they were defrauded of 1.5 million dollars, but the intent and money were there to buy nuclear materials for weapons (page 60).

Many have debated the reaction by the military on 9/11, but according to the Report there was almost no time to react. The FAA discovered the hijacking at 8:24 am, the military was alerted 13 to 14 minutes later at 8:37 am, the F-15's were scrambled 9 minutes later at 8:46 in Falmouth, Massachusetts, at the Otis air base almost simultaneously with the first strike on the WTC north tower.

During the next hour, and all this according to the 9/11 Report, the Air Force never received accurate targeting information and nor the permission from the White House to actually shoot down the other three planes. Approval to strike any planes did not come until 10:25 AM, one hour and 40 minutes later. The latter point is somewhat mute since the F-15's lacked the targeting information from NORAD. With thousands of flights the hijacked planes were not detected until just before each hijacked plane crashed or hit its target.

After time line summary of the events of September 11 at the beginning of the Report, the report goes on to chronicle the history of Al Qaeda, the funding from Saudi Arabia, the transfers of monies, attacks on the Cole, WTC Bombing, Somalia, Kenya, etc. That takes us to page 277 of 428 pages total excluding the notes.

The story of the evacuation of the WTC and many basic details are all written up in the report (pages 278-325 in Chapter 9) in a comprehensive fashion with diagrams, drawings, and dramatic but familiar pictures of the WTC showing the evolution of the fires, the evacuations and the collapse.

During this disaster the failures of radio and other communication gear were a major hindrance to organizing the evacuation. Also some of the emergency command and control centers, plus various resources, and door release controls and communication cables were located in the WTC and quickly became inoperative once the crisis started. In general, coordination among the responders failed or seriously broke down during the rescues.

There is one section dedicated to the Pentagon attack but that section of Chapter 9 is brief.

The rest of the book - 4 chapters or the last 1/4 of the book pages 325 to 428 - contains more comments on the response and a series of recommendations that hopefully will be long-term solutions. That is followed by reference material.

What is particularly stunning in the report is the testimonies before the 9-11 Commission by various the government departments, agencies, and bureaus - now years later - that contradicted each other on the chronology and the various communications that transpired on 9-11 (see for example page 34) and on dates before. But the 9-11 Commission and its staff seem to have carefully examined all the records, transcripts, telephone calls, etc. and then created some semblance of the actual facts both on 9-11 and the years before, and some years after.

For trivia buffs, the 9/11 Report contradicts the Craig Unger book and Michael Moore movie. The report claims that the FBI cleared all Saudi nationals leaving the US shortly after 9/11 (see special boxed section highlighted - page 329) and that they did not get special White House clearances above the level of Richard Clarke.

This is clearly a monumental work clarifying and distilling the facts into one all encompassing report.