Mini series on 911 hits screens
– Published 12 years ago, best-selling and Pulitzer-prize winning book The Looming Tower remains a definitive account of US intelligence failures that littered the path to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Yesterday, it aired as a television mini-series, narrating the power struggle between the CIA and the FBI, whose refusal to cooperate may have prevented the world’s greatest superpower from failing to stop 19 al-Qaeda hijackers training at US flight schools and smashing passenger jets into New York and Washington, killing nearly 3 000 people.
The 10 episodes of roughly 50 minutes each trace the rising threat of al-Qaeda and puts a rarified CIA pressing for pre-emptive military action on a collision course with the law enforcement muscle of the FBI, which together failed to avert the world’s deadliest terror attack, ushering in wars still being fought today.
The Looming Tower miniseries begins in 1998, shortly before the al-Qaeda bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, and closes on September 11, 2001, that date seared into global infamy.
The drama romps from Afghanistan to London, from Nairobi to Washington, spliced with archive footage of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire outcast who founded al-Qaeda.
Shooting took place across three continents and six countries, with the bulk of filming in New York, Morocco and Johannesburg, in not altogether convincing efforts to portray the Hindu Kush or an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.
Woven in are period features from the late ’90s. The Monica Lewinsky scandal engulfing a distracted Clinton presidency is a constant backdrop. Look out for chunky cell phones, green-screen computers and sexist dialogue in the workplace.
Lawrence Wright, the New Yorker journalist who wrote the book, shares an executive producing credit with Dan Futterman and Oscar-winning documentary maker Alex Gibney.
Early reviews are largely positive, predicting it will be Hulu’s second major success after The Handmaid’s Tale and tipped for future awards.
Jeff Daniels, 63, plays the lead role of John O’Neill, the charismatic ladies’ man and agent who heads up the FBI’s counterterrorism unit in New York. – AFP
New York