Unbelievable account of what has happend.

Not that I want to accuse our government of lying to us or anything, but this book should in the Fiction section.

Even if I scanned not read (official documentation of national defense and prevention plans, quite boring to read) some of the chapters of this book, i gave 4 stars, for the story of the each terrorist participated on 9/11 catastrophe, especially love story of Said Jarrah and Asli, it made me also watch “Copilot” movie to understand Said’s motives for this horrible act.

The book itself starts as if you’re watching a movie, as it describes everything happened on hijacked planes and i so appreciate for such kind of deep narratives.

Although the 9/11 terrorist attack is the main focus of the report and–obviously–the reason why it was written, the 9/11 Commission Report is better described as the history of Al-Qaeda and the US government respond to its threat.

Half of the report is centered on giving context to the attack, with only two chapters (the 1th and 9th respectively) solely centering on 9/11. The rest can be divided into three categories: the ones centered in Al-Qaeda formation, its history and operations against the US, and the preparation of 9/11; the US government and the difficulty of information sharing between departments, its actions against Al-Qaeda, and the multiple missing opportunities that could have prevented the attack; and, finally, the actions that–according to the Commission–the US government should take to prevent new attacks and to stop the spreading of Extremism in the Wuslim World.

In the first two categories and in the description of the attack itself, the Commision does an excellent work on explaining the many difficulties that the US government suffered from, Al-Qaeda history and context, and the struggle of first responders and the heroism that both them and civilians showed during 9/11.

The third category, though, is the reason why I didn't know if I should give the report 5 stars...or 3, ending instead in the middle. This is because in this part the Commission manage to predict a great amount of events that would happen years after the publication of the report (page 367 comes to mind, as in this page they manage to predict the appearance of ISIS in Iraq and the remerge of the Taliban in Afghanistan). Still the reason why they manage to predict them was because their recommendations on how to deal with Islamist terrorism were ignored, meaning that this commission had little influence.

In conclusion, the Commission Report is an essential read to understand the world in which we live–as 9/11 has deeply affected the West, not only the US–but while knowing that this report fell in deaf ears, meaning that many of the problems that this commission tried to resolve have survived to the present.

I read about 2/3 of this book for a graduate history class on 9/11. It was very interesting to talk about the role of the Report itself in shaping public sentiment. Though I had read the graphic novel adaptation in high school (which is in itself a rather interesting product), I had never read the full text. We considered how some parts of it, with their narrative style, read like a spy novel or thriller, and we considered what aspects may have been omitted. I mostly glazed through the long sections about changes to American policy, in part because that wasn't my research focus, in part because enough time has passed that many of those suggestions feel normal, and in part because they are very dry and boring. I thought a lot about how the Report makes the attacks, and the terrorist organizing leading up to them, are written in a fast-paced, globetrotting manner, while the political recommendations are written in far blander sections. It made me think about what the overall agenda was, and what the Commission wanted the American public to focus on.

Although I read 2/3 of the book and discussed them heavily, I DNF'd the other 1/3.

Those who rule us live under an illusion that they are in control. Not particularly worthwhile.

From Follett: 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.

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 of the facts unearthed in this tome show that perhaps, the attacks were not as "unfathomable" and unpredictable as officials claimed, the majority of people "in charge" were doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. It also reaffirms a respect for our first responders, for the inherent good in human beings, and the good of our nation.

So to sum it up, it was of course a challenging book, not only due to the tremendous scope but the subject matter. However, for anyone who wants to know a bit more about one of the days that will live in infamy for all Americans, I'd say give it a shot, but bargain on spending some time here. I read it much more slowly than other works, simply because it's a lot to digest: twenty pages at a time seemed my average intake.

I know it is kind of weird to rate the 911 Commission Report. My rating only reflects the report as a reading experience for those who have ever been interested in reading it. I would say it is well-written, thorough, and thoughtful, although not every party of it is super compelling. For example, there's lots of national security bureaucracy stuff that was a bit dull. Still, the report does a great job showing the origins of the attack, the missed chances to maybe unravel the plot, the response to the attacks, and, in the intense first chapter, the hijackings themselves. I will definitely draw on it in the future for research and teaching. Quick note: the ratings for the report on sites like goodreads are weighed down by 9/11 truthers, who treat it as fiction. Their feverish opinions should be discounted.

An in-depth study of the 9/11 tragedy and the state of affairs within the nation's various security apparatuses leading up to it. The recommendations of this commission, while seeking to absolve any of the political leadership, still have managed to provide at least a beginning to workable solutions to our various problems regarding the prevention of terrorism. As the commission states, no defense can be perfect, but it should be cooperative, layered, focused, and able to respond both before and after attacks by Islamist fundamentalists are perpetrated against the American people.

The writing style takes the form of a narrative throughout the majority of the book, making it surprisingly easy to follow. Recommended if you want to understand the terrorist threat and the inter-agency developments that have followed 9/11.

What did the commission get right about interagency operations?

The most obvious answer to this question is that the commission report exposed shortcomings within the IC which were already common knowledge, but that had not been acted upon due to a self-serving environment which provided little incentive to engage in activities carrying inherent political risk. There were a host of assumptions in play during the decade prior to 9/11, but the IC had chosen to focus on the wrong things, the old threats, while largely ignoring the developing threats like Al Qaeda that defied convention. It was not only the IC, however, which suffered from these conditions. Every aspect of US bureaucratic infrastructure seems to have been stricken with this short-sighted malaise.

Early on, the commission points out that protocols in place just prior to 9/11 for interagency collaboration between FAA and NORAD for hijacking events were “unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen” (9/11 Commission, 17). This was due to popular presumptions that hijackings would continue to assume their traditional form and would not become suicide missions. A similar presumption, that terrorism would remain a foreign threat best suited to the domain of the CIA, was correctly identified as having prevented the FBI from responding to the several Al-Qaeda miscues in hijacker travel to the United States and their activities within US borders. The Wall of regulation between the intelligence and domestic agencies was erected on the common belief that securing sensitive information from prying eyes was far more beneficial than widely sharing it within the appropriate communities. This attitude only served to maintain an overly cautious attitude of interagency turf warfare, “blocked the arteries of information sharing”, and did little to augment collective anti-terrorism capabilities beyond that of each particular organization (9/11 Commission, 79).

The 9/11 Commission also correctly recognized the problem of stove-piping in intelligence organizations and the inadequacy of the DCI to oversee all of the functions and budgeting of the IC, while still maintaining the objectivity needed to excel in the role of the lead national intelligence analyst. As a whole, “the agencies and the rules surrounding the intelligence community have accumulated to a depth that practically defies public comprehension” (9/11 Commission, 410). The commission rightly called for an overarching intelligence framework, the Director of National Intelligence, which sought to operate free of the systemic failures of the DCI arrangement and exert the control necessary to direct the IC on an aggregate level.

tMost critical of all, the commission firmly grasped the underlying cause of the US’s inability to act in a collectively forceful manner in the years leading up to 9/11. It is not additional resources or personnel which are needed to defeat the current terrorist threats. Rather, “the government should combine them more effectively, achieving unity of effort” (9/11 Commission, 399). Unity of effort has both structural and spiritual components. In terms of information sharing, these two sides must complement each other. Need-to-know can no longer be anticipated, and the commission calls for a “culture in which the agencies instead feel they have a duty to the information—to repay the taxpayers’ investment by making that information available” (9/11 Commission, 417). The same sense of duty and cultural grit that propelled America through WWII has the potential to be reborn in a successful interagency fight against Islamist terrorism.

What did the commission get wrong about interagency operations?

The most obvious answer to this question is that the commission focused primarily on the symptoms and not the disease. In other words, the political developments leading up to 9/11 were not meaningfully questioned. This is, however, quite understandable. The commission’s efficacy to affect any type of interagency restructuring was largely dependent on its being viewed as an impartial, bipartisan effort. Due to these limitations, no significant degree of responsibility was assigned to policy makers within the Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, or George W. Bush administrations. A truly objective assessment, above and beyond the political entanglements the commission found itself immersed in could not have afforded to ignore this other critical side of the interagency equation. As the commission states, “while we now know that al Qaeda was formed in 1988…the intelligence community did not describe this organization…until 1999” (9/11 Commission, 341).

The Reagan administration successfully countered the Soviet threat by allying itself with Saudi Arabia and the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan but apparently gave little thought to the long-term consequences of empowering their “Arab” allies once the politically satiating objective of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan was completed (Clarke, 52). The Bush Sr. administration moved strongly in a conventional military manner against Saddam Hussein’s incursion into Kuwait, and utilized the US’s budding relationship with Saudi Arabia to this end. They did not perceive, however, that the presence of US troops in the most sacred of Muslim nations, even though protecting the House of Saud from Iraq’s aggression, also served to further inflame the religious sensibilities of Islamist Wahhabi extremists such as Osama bin Laden, propelling al Qaeda forward in terms of resonance with the Muslim population.

The Clinton administration, with Richard Clarke’s ascendance as the counter-terrorism czar, finally began to confront elements of al Qaeda militarily, but failed to respond to direct provocations such as the U.S.S. Cole bombing, sending mixed messages and further emboldening bin Laden. Despite a 1995 NIE stressing the potential for Islamist terrorist attacks, Clinton did not make any significant moves against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, constrained as he was by the political implications of his actions in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Despite intelligence reporting pointing to al Qaeda as the primary threat to the US, the George W. Bush administration had a myopic focus on Iraq as a conventional military threat (9/11 Commission, 333) and seemed to dismiss terrorism as a priority until after 9/11 had already taken place.

Finally, the 9/11 commission’s fixation with developing unity of effort through joint operations and bureaucratic restructuring misses the mark in understanding that it is the very diversity of disciplines and ways of thinking found interspersed throughout the IC as a whole which should be leveraged and preserved. While joint structures have served the military generally well, intelligence is a far more esoteric endeavor. This is a case where the catch-phrase “strength through diversity” really has substance, not referring to ethnicity, but to discipline and experience. Standardization should be devoted to high payoff targets of the moment, such as Arabic name standardization for travel documents. Instead, the commission has suggested standardizing education and training, trying to develop generalized rule-based systems to fight terrorism. We don’t need everyone to think the same way; we need tools everyone has the potential to use. 
References

9/11 Commission. 2004. The 9/11 Commission report: Final report of the national commission on terrorist attacks upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Clarke, Richard. 2004. Against all enemies: Inside America’s war on terror. New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc.

It reads as being heartbreakingly naive, especially from twenty years out when many of the recommendations like treating prisoners decently haven't been ignored so much as actively and officially opposed.

Will we in the west ever learn?

Probably not.

A tough read to say the least of this horrible event. This book provides a complete report, a good reference if needed, for research or a term paper.