Hacker Cinema
The Looming Tower
2018 · TV series · 50 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Lawrence Wright, Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney
While Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda become a global threat, the rivalry between the CIA and FBI inadvertently sets the stage for the tragedy of 9/11 and the Iraq War.
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3 comments on Hacker News
It was, and did. The FBI and CIA both knew pieces of the 9/11 plot before it was executed. That's not conspiracy, it's plain fact. Intelligence agencies have a very hard time working together. The domestic unit tasked with tracking Al Qaeda did not know agents were on American soil, when the CIA and NSA (foreign intelligence) did.
The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright is a great book about this, and the TV show by the same name (a Hulu original) is also fantastic and largely accurate to the true story. Rare gem for Hulu.
You might be interested in Wright's lecture/one-man-show My Trip to Al-Qaeda, where he talks about his research for the book The Looming Tower, going overseas to meet Al Qaeda members and their relatives.
It's available for free several places online, e.g. https://tubitv.com/movies/312561/my-trip-to-al-qaeda
The second part of the book, which was about the FBI's pursuit of Al Qaeda, was turned into a dramatized series on Hulu. It's very much from the FBI's point of view. One of the main "characters" in the series is Ali Soufan, played by an actor. The real Ali Soufan was one of the producers.
Coincidentally I re-watched The Looming Tower[1] yesterday night. While it may have dramatised the rift between CIA and FBI based on what I have read it was quite vicious at that time.
Another great example is how Apple beat Sony to iPod. Sony had key pieces in place -- terrific content and an iconic portable music device (Walkman). Yet the company's DNA and culture meant they wouldn't talk to each other (for whatever reason) to integrate them both to launch the next generation portal music device. Some VP may have felt awesome at winning a turf war but look what happened at a bigger game.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looming_Tower_(miniseries)