9/11 Books and the State of Reporting

Josh Marshall posted a recent plea on Talking Points Memo for reader suggetions of good books on 9/11. The overwhelming winners of this informal poll were The 9/11 Commission Report and The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. Marshall observes the dearth of solidly researched, fact-based reporting despite the huge influence the events of that day have had on the decade.

9/11, for better or worse, is the overwhelming, dominating fact of the early 21st century in the United States. It's just totally suffused our politics and our culture and it's been the proximate cause of the other main contenders for importance, like the Iraq War. And while whole book publishing houses have been kept afloat by books about torture, the Iraq War, scary Arabs and Muslims, threats to civil liberties, terrorism and counter-terrorism, at least in relative terms there seems to be a certain eye at the center of the storm as it were. I stress 'relative', but there seems to be a relative paucity of books about the key event itself and what led to it, even as there are vast rivers of writing on various topics related to it and spawned by it.

Terry McDermott, author of Perfect Soldiers, another recommended book on the subject, shared thoughts as to why.

When I was working on Perfect Soldiers, my goal was to write the best sort of near-term, definitive, factual account that was doable given tight time constraints, a book that would stand until a "real" history came along. I've been surprised since that these are not now appearing. I'm not sure they ever will. I spent three and one-half years on 9/11; Larry spent five. About half of my reporting for Perfect Soldiers (which, by the way, despite the title ranges beyond the hijackers themselves) was underwritten by the Los Angeles Times. I calculate the cost at something in excess of $500,000. Who's got that kind of money to throw at a dubious project most of the reporting for which will take places in areas that are inhospitable to reporting?

The craft of reporting as it is practiced in the United States doesn't really exist in much of the world. Britain, Germany, Spain do something that approaches what we do, but they are heavily reliant on official sources. There is relatively little knock-on-1,000 doors sort of reporting that I or Larry Wright did in these countries. There is no tradition at all of doing this within the Arab world (in large part because if you do it, you go to jail). Pakistan has a vigorous press, but its vigor derives largely from presenting different political views, not independently-derived sets of facts.

As McDermott points out, this kind of shoe-leather reporting is difficult, time-consuming and expensive. Its results may also not turn out to be pleasing in political terms to those footing the bill. Therefore, it is a vanishing art--to the detriment of our nation in my opinion.

--Ballard Burgher