The Looming Tower (83 page)
*
He wrote a damning biography titled
Ayman al-Zawahiri as I Knew Him,
which was withdrawn by his Cairo publisher because of pressure from Zawahiri’s supporters.
Return to text.
*
Zawahiri’s brother Mohammed was sentenced in absentia, but the charges were later dropped. The youngest brother, Hussein, spent thirteen months in prison before the charges against him were also dropped.
Return to text.
*
More familiarly known to Westerners as Ibn Saud.
Return to text.
*
The company styles the name slightly differently in variant English renderings, as do members of the family.
Return to text.
*
Like his father, Salem died in an air crash. He was piloting an ultralight craft outside San Antonio, Texas, when he died in 1988.
Return to text.
*
He is not related to Ayman al-Zawahiri’s mother’s family, the Azzams of Cairo.
Return to text.
*
Interestingly, this former Palestinian guerrilla makes the case that Afghanistan takes precedence over the Palestinian struggle against Israel. The war in Afghanistan was intended to bring forth an Islamic state, he says, whereas the Palestinian cause has been appropriated by various groups, including “communists, nationalists, and modernist Muslims,” who were fighting for a secular state.
Return to text.
*
One candidate, in bin Laden’s case, is Addison’s disease, a disorder of the endocrine system marked by low blood pressure, weight loss, muscle fatigue, stomach irritability, sharp back pains, dehydration, and an abnormal craving for salt. This is purely speculation, but bin Laden manifested all of these symptoms. Although the disease can be controlled with steroids, an addisonian crisis, as bin Laden may have been experiencing, can be fatal if the patient is not treated with saline and glucose immediately.
Return to text.
*
Most of al-Qaeda’s relationship with Iran came through Zawahiri. Ali Mohammed told the FBI that al-Jihad had planned a coup in Egypt in 1990. Zawahiri had studied the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, and he sought training from the Iranians. He offered information about an Egyptian government plan to storm several islands in the Persian Gulf that both Iran and the United Arab Emirates lay claim to. According to Mohammed, in return for this information, the Iranian government paid Zawahiri $2 million and helped train members of al-Jihad in a coup attempt that never actually took place.
Return to text.
*
On April 6, 1994, the first Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Afula, Israel.
Return to text.
*
Bin Laden told Abdel Bari Atwan that he was able to recover about 10 percent of his investment after the Sudan government offered to repay him in grain and cattle that he could resell to other countries (Atwan,
Secret History,
52). Mohammed Loay Baizid told me that bin Laden invested only $20 million in Sudan, and that he probably left the country with about fifty thousand dollars. Hassabulla Omer, who held the al-Qaeda file for Sudanese intelligence, places bin Laden’s total investment at $30 million and says he left the country with “nothing.”
Return to text.
*
These suppositions are based on remarks made by the former interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi, who claims to have discovered the information in the archives of the Iraqi secret service.
Return to text.
ALSO BY LAWRENCE WRIGHT
God’s Favorite
Twins
Remembering Satan
Saints and Sinners
In the New World
City Children, Country Summer
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright 2006 by Lawrence Wright
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Constable & Robinson Ltd. and Michal Snunit for permission to reprint an excerpt from
The Soul Bird
by Michal Snunit. Reprinted by permission.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wright, Lawrence, [date]
The looming tower: Al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11 / by Lawrence Wright.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001. 2. Qaida (Organization)
3. TerrorismGovernment policyUnited States.
4. Intelligence serviceUnited States. I. Title.
HV
6432.7.
W
75 2005
973.931dc22 2006041032
eISBN: 978-0-307-26608-8
v3.0
