A Little Summer Reading Got Me Thinking....

On a completely unrelated note to my trip this summer, I have just finished a book that was recommended to me by my favorite professor. I have to say that besides tourist adventures in a foreign country, almost nothing beats returning to my air conditioned room after another hot and humid day to read a captivating book.

I just finished The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, one of the best narratives I have read on Al-Qaeda and 9/11. Wright starts the narrative at the beginning of modern Islamic Fundamentalist ideology and masterly describes the evolution of Al-Qaeda and similar organizations. The last 150 pages are dedicated to what the U.S. government knew about Al-Qaeda (or didn't know), and more importantly what went wrong. I read the last 150 pages with that sickening feeling that one gets when you know exactly what is coming. Lawrence Wright really goes to such depth to describe the intelligence known about 9/11 and the massive bureaucratic politics, political infighting, and secrecy between CIA, FBI, State, NSA, etc. that led to no agency piecing the puzzle together. The role of the CIA in keeping information secret (sometimes illegally) from FBI's John O'Neill and Dan Coleman is particularly troubling because, according to Wright, it could have led to the detection of the 9/11 plot and hijackers on U.S. soil. The story told reminds me almost exactly of the Pearl Harbor intelligence failure that my Intelligence Operations class at UNC studied. The reasons for the failure were almost identical.

I bring all this up because upon reading the final pages of the book, it hit me that I will eventually be working for the State Department and may find myself working in similar topics as described by the book. On the one hand, it is intimidating, but on the other hand, I am deeply excited and inspired by the important work that I will get to do in the future. The stakes could not be higher, but I am thrilled that I will be involved in such meaningful work around the world.