Controversial book asks the 'hard questions' about 9/11
By Paul Lomartire, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 5, 2002
Of the more than 150 books about Sept. 11, there's one controversial volume most people haven't heard about: The War On Freedom: How and Why America Was Attacked September 11, 2001.
This book was put together using more than 700 news sources found on the Internet, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Al-Jazeera.
Author Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed decided to write The War on Freedom after prowling the Internet and finding "a web of connections needed to be looked into." He sifted through worldwide print and TV news and academic papers, then verified sources to create the linking pieces of a puzzle.
"I'm not a conspiracy theorist," he says from his home in England. "I'm just offering some hard questions that could have horrible answers."
For example: Why did the United States hire Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda "as thugs" to do its bidding in Kosovo, the Balkans and Afghanistan? What are the details of past oil and construction deals between the Bush and bin Laden families? Why did the United States allow princes in Saudi Arabia to give protection money to Al-Qaeda that was used to pay for terrorism?
The War on Freedom could prove to be prophetic based on the limited public testimony before Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Eleanor Hill, the committee's chief investigator, has testified that the government knew before Sept. 11 about Islamic groups' plans to use planes as weapons, terrorist warnings from field offices that were ignored by FBI bosses and other crucial information not shared or acted on by intelligence agencies. All of that and more is detailed in The War On Freedom.
Graham's committee, Ahmed says, must go past superficial problems such as a lack of FBI/CIA Arabic language translators and law-enforcement turf wars.
"Obviously," says Ahmed, "if we've already made up our mind that the intelligence failure was due to systemic failures, then what is being investigated? Once you have adopted that line about systemic failures, however sincere you are, you won't be looking in the right direction."
The right direction, he continues, starts with knowing the details of President Bush's intelligence briefings before Sept. 11. But that information was recently ruled by the CIA director to be classified: national security.
"The hard question you have to ask is: Why?" suggests Ahmed.
Investigator Hill asked the same question in testimony last week, saying, "We believe the American public has a compelling interest in this information and that public disclosure would not harm national security."
Ahmed had no luck finding a major publisher, so he initially sold his book, which has 734 footnotes, as an electronic book. Then he found publisher John Leonard at tiny Tree of Life Publications (www.treeoflifebooks.com) in California.
Leonard spent $20,000 to produce 10,000 paperback copies ($16.95 each) in July. Until recently, he had little luck getting on big-chain bookshelves, but Barnes & Noble recently agreed to sell the book online and in stores. It can also be ordered at Books-a-Million and online at Amazon.com.
Leonard sent 300 copies to mainstream and alternative newspaper book critics and earned one review.
"I was talking to one of my distributors about the lack of book reviews," says Leonard, "and he said, 'When you have something anti-Establishment, you don't stand much of a chance.' "
Says author Ahmed: "I'm not surprised. I am disheartened."
'A double negative'
Ahmed is a 23-year-old political analyst for a think tank based in Brighton, England, but he supports his wife and infant daughter by managing a hotel.
