New York Times, November 25, 2001
Books in Brief: 'Study of Revenge'
By CHRIS HEDGES
STUDY OF REVENGE
The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America.
By Laurie Mylroie.
AEI Press, $24.95.
One of the most chilling of the wave of books that speak to the Sept. 11 attacks is a careful and
exhaustive study of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. "Study of Revenge," which was
published last year but has been reissued, with a new introduction by the former director of central
intelligence R. James Woolsey, makes a powerful case for Iraqi involvement in the first World Trade
Center attack. Laurie Mylroie has combed through the court documents of the case and pieced
together a series of connections with Iraq that prosecutors, concerned only with indicting those on
trial, ignored. Unfortunately, it was not just the prosecutors who failed to heed the warning signs.
Mylroie's research challenges the widespread belief that rogue networks of terrorists run by Islamic
radicals like Osama bin Laden work without state sponsorship. Saddam Hussein, she argues,
driven by a desire for revenge following the gulf war, is the single greatest terrorist threat to the
United States. The decision by the Clinton administration to duck the question of Iraqi involvement
in the 1993 bombing may well, according to Mylroie, have led to a series of later terrorist strikes,
including the 1998 bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and
injured more than 4,500. If she is correct, the Sept. 11 attacks, along with other incidents like the
1996 bombing of the Al Khobar base in Saudi Arabia that left 19 American servicemen dead, were
the inevitable consequence of an administration and an intelligence service that has spent the last
decade asleep at the wheel.
Books in Brief: 'Study of Revenge'
By CHRIS HEDGES
STUDY OF REVENGE
The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America.
By Laurie Mylroie.
AEI Press, $24.95.
One of the most chilling of the wave of books that speak to the Sept. 11 attacks is a careful and
exhaustive study of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. "Study of Revenge," which was
published last year but has been reissued, with a new introduction by the former director of central
intelligence R. James Woolsey, makes a powerful case for Iraqi involvement in the first World Trade
Center attack. Laurie Mylroie has combed through the court documents of the case and pieced
together a series of connections with Iraq that prosecutors, concerned only with indicting those on
trial, ignored. Unfortunately, it was not just the prosecutors who failed to heed the warning signs.
Mylroie's research challenges the widespread belief that rogue networks of terrorists run by Islamic
radicals like Osama bin Laden work without state sponsorship. Saddam Hussein, she argues,
driven by a desire for revenge following the gulf war, is the single greatest terrorist threat to the
United States. The decision by the Clinton administration to duck the question of Iraqi involvement
in the 1993 bombing may well, according to Mylroie, have led to a series of later terrorist strikes,
including the 1998 bombings of the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and
injured more than 4,500. If she is correct, the Sept. 11 attacks, along with other incidents like the
1996 bombing of the Al Khobar base in Saudi Arabia that left 19 American servicemen dead, were
the inevitable consequence of an administration and an intelligence service that has spent the last
decade asleep at the wheel.
