PARTING SHOT
IT’S EASY TO SEE WHY HULU WOULD TURN LAWRENCE WRIGHT’S 2006 Pulitzer Prize–winning book, The Looming Tower, into a TV series. His deepdive account of the Middle Eastern politics and Islamic militant rivalries that culminated in the birth of Al-Qaeda was eminently cinematic. The result is the gripping 10-episode adaptation, which began streaming on February 28. The show concentrates on the poisonous FBI-CIA rivalries and feckless policies of two administrations that effectively provided Osama bin Laden’s network with an opportunity. As the 9/11 plot developed in the summer of 2001, one of the leading FBI agents assigned to stop it was Lebanese-born Ali Soufan (played by Tahar Rahim). As seen in the series, he and his boss, John O’Neill (Jeff Daniels), encountered CIA resistance to sharing information on Al-Qaeda militants in the U.S. “There was never true accountability for the failure to prevent 9/11,” says Soufan, now CEO of a private intelligence firm. “Hopefully, this show can bring some understanding to what happened and put us closer to closure.”
Illustration by BRITT SPENCER