Second Wave: Inside Al Qaeda's Post-9/11 Attack Plan and America's Secret Effort to Stop It

by Michael Lebowitz

Upon the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and after five years of government-clearance battles, Second Wave exposes Al Qaeda’s plan to launch a far deadlier “dirty-bomb” sequel to the 2001 attacks. Drawing on top-secret records and his access as a Guantanamo war-crimes prosecutor, Mike Lebowitz details the heroic yet controversial race within the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon to stop the plot—and forcing readers to ask: Are we truly prepared to prevent the next one?

In 2003, just two years after 9/11, US intelligence uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda had obtained nuclear materials and was plotting to smuggle them into American ports. The nightmare scenario—codenamed the “Second Wave”—triggered one of the most urgent and secretive manhunts in US history.

Told with the cinematic intensity of Zero Dark Thirty and the psychological depth of The Looming Tower, Michael Lebowitz’s Second Wave captures the chaos and human drama of a post-9/11 world: agents risking everything to prevent another catastrophe, families torn apart, and the ethical fault lines still dividing US intelligence.

At the center of the terrorist plot was Saifullah Paracha, a wealthy Pakistani-American industrialist whose import-export business concealed ties to Al Qaeda’s leadership. When investigators discovered that Paracha had met with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—the architect of 9/11—the CIA and FBI clashed over how far they would go to stop him. Along the way, readers meet Majid Khan, a wayward Baltimore convenience-store clerk turned jihadist who mapped US targets; FBI Special Agent Janelle Miller, whose methodical interrogations broke suspects faster than any waterboard; and Charles Anteby, an Orthodox Jewish garment importer, whose betrayal of his business partner prevented large-scale disaster.

As the nation approaches the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Lebowitz’s insider account reveals a global pursuit that tested America’s moral limits, and it asks the urgent question: Is America as prepared to stop a terrorist attack now as it was then?

320 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication August 11, 2026

About the author

Mike Lebowitz is one of the few American war crimes prosecutors who also has experience capturing terrorists as part of an elite Army unit. For almost nine years, he served as a prosecutor in the controversial Guantanamo Bay military commissions where he became an expert on the 9/11 attacks. Based on his institutional knowledge and expertise, Pentagon leadership selected him to be a special counsel for Guantanamo Bay matters. He is the only war crimes prosecutor to appear in a courtroom for the three major contested cases held at Guantanamo Bay: The 9/11 case, the USS Cole case, and a case against al Qaeda’s top commander in Afghanistan.

These positions afforded Lebowitz unique access at all levels to the world of national security and war crimes. As a combat veteran who served in a U.S. Army Pathfinder unit, he was one of the few war crimes prosecutors to have a combat badge on his uniform. Lebowitz until recently was a senior attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Security Division, practiced before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and was a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. He also served as a senior legal advisor to U.S. Army Cyber Command as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. He has extensive cyber law experience and has written extensively on quantum computing. Previously, Lebowitz worked at a non-governmental organization in Uganda and was a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Israel’s English-language newspaper of record. Academically, his work as a national security expert has been published in several legal journals. Lebowitz also has been quoted by media outlets such as the Washington Post, NPR, Associated Press, Wall Street Journal and the Military Times. He also has appeared on various national security podcasts.

Growing up in Cleveland (and suffering through years of sports fan misery), Lebowitz earned his law degree from Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law in 2003 and a journalism degree from Kent State University in 1999. In law school, Lebowitz was a contributing editor for the Case Western Reserve University Journal of International Law. At Kent State, he served as the editor-in-chief of the Daily Kent Stater, the independent, student-run newspaper. As an Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel, he is currently working on a Master’s degree in Strategic Studies from the Army War College.