Parting Shot
Ali Soufan
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.”
“There was never true accountability for the failure to prevent . America deserves the truth.”
What’s your favorite scene in the series?
I’m haunted by one. There is a moment when John O’neill tells Martin Schmidt [the CIA counterterrorism unit chief played by Peter Sarsgaard] that if one American gets killed because of information withheld by the CIA, he would hold Schmidt to account. The haunting thing is that it was John himself who got killed because of information not shared. He died in the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11.
You testi ed against torture before ongress. How do you feel about Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel—who ran the IA black site where “enhanced interrogation techni ues” were conducted—as IA chief?
I know rsthand how brutal and counterproductive torture is. It’s not just about the moral issue, though that’s crucially important to discuss openly. The torture program has gotten in the way of justice: We still cannot prosecute terrorists, including the masterminds behind the USS Cole and 9/11 attacks, in large part because the evidence against them is tainted by torture. The Haspel nomination exempli es the lack of accountability for the torture committed after 9/11. Did she condone it, or was she following a superior’s orders? Have her feelings changed over the years? These are fair questions to ask at her con rmation hearing.