SECOND WAVE

How the U.S. sought to prevent a sequel to 9/11.

In the years after 9/11, al Qaeda continued to plan attacks within the United States, with a particular interest in detonating a so-called dirty bomb that would disperse radioactive material. This book by Lebowitz, a war-crimes prosecutor, follows that story, focusing on the charges laid against a father and son who, while never proven to be directly involved in plotting an attack, seemingly assisted members of al Qaeda while aware of their sinister intentions. Having served as a prosecutor of several 9/11 conspirators, the author is well-positioned to offer an insider’s account of the U.S. government’s efforts to root out national security threats. The reader is given detailed portraits of the scheming involved in setting up sleeper cells, the intricacies of surveillance and counterterrorism strategies, the rationale for and outcomes of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (torture), and the political maneuvering that shaped the pursuit of suspects. Much of this material is engagingly rendered, with clear explanations of how various arms of U.S. law enforcement came to perceive and prosecute a significant security threat. Conditions at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay’s Camp 5, where suspects were detained and interrogated, are intricately described. The psychological portraits of the two central protagonists can seem, at times, a bit superficial—their broader motivations remain rather opaque—we are nonetheless given genuinely revelatory insights into how al Qaeda recruited and manipulated a web of enablers. Perhaps most compelling is the book’s conclusion, which offers an urgent warning about the misallocation of law-enforcement resources to immigration enforcement during the past two decades, especially during the second Trump administration. “Failing to prioritize international terrorist investigations,” Lebowitz writes, “is done at the nation’s peril.”

An intriguing investigation of a little-known terror plot.