Blowback: How the Feud Between the FBI and CIA Led to 9-11

by Peter Kross

This book begins with a detailed summation of what the author calls the Terror Timeline, a series of events that led up to the attacks on 9-11. Among the events covered are the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen and the investigation led by FBI agent John O'Neill; the Beirut bombings which left hundreds of US Marines dead; the 1998 East African embassy bombings by Al Qaeda; the Oklahoma City bombing and the Middle Eastern connection; the destruction of Pan Am 193 over Scotland; the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia; and more. Kross gives a detailed description of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and the role played by Ramzi Yousef. He discusses the New York cell which was connected to bin Laden, and the FBI's failure to connect the dots as to its real purpose in New York; also the role of the blind Sheik Rahman who spewed anti-western rhetoric out of his Mosque in Brooklyn and his plans to destroy certain New York landmarks. The book describes the secret relationship between the US and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, and the US-Saudi connection. It also covers the role of the CIA's secret unit to find bin Laden, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Able Danger program, the failures of intelligence-sharing between the FBI and CIA which directly led to the 9-11 attack, the role of mobster Gregory Scarpa and his jail-cell talks with Ramzi Yousef regarding threats to blow up American airplanes.

388 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2020

Reviews

[Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Comedian Irwin Corey’s most famous sketch was as “the world’s foremost authority.” Parodying experts on news programs Corey would be asked a question which he would then start to answer, but would be caught up in his own vague language that it would rapidly veer into nonsense. Corey’s punchline after going on for a bit would be “what was the question again?”
Peter Kross does a fantastic imitation of the late, great Foremost Authority but he hasn’t got Corey’s timing. This book goes on, and on. It is neither particularly well written, nor particularly original. His sources are often better books that he’s managed to pare down to their least insightful passages. His attempts at folksy prose is just hideous. The editing is atrocious and spelling errors detract from the text further.
The book closes on an appendix that looks more like a chapter that could almost be part of a different book while the book’s subtitle: a feud between the CIA and FBI is never addressed. In his more lucid moments Kross describes two separate bureaucracies that aren’t feuding but are themselves engaged in their own Irwin Corey-esque performances. In his most opaque Kross just lists names. He lists dates. The dates and names are out of order and the text jumps back and forth before, long before, and after 9/11. It wasn’t long before I, as the reader, began asking the authority: I’m sorry, what’s the question again?