'Cell' asks why 9/11 wasn't prevented

By Bob Minzesheimer
USA Today

"The Cell" delivers simplistic answers to difficult questions.

Over the next month, at least five books will be published that go beyond what happened Sept. 11 to ask a more important question: Why weren't the terrorists stopped?

The first, out next week, is "The Cell," likely to get the most attention if only because one of three co-authors is ABC's crime reporter John Miller, co-host of "20-20."

"The Cell" is about a series of loosely linked terrorist cells that go back to the 1990 assassination of militant rabbi Meir Kahane in New York. It traces how the top levels of law enforcement were slow to recognize the threat.

It is written with the same bravado Miller displayed as a crime reporter in New York and as an aide to the police commissioner.

Nearly all the police officers he cites in the book are described as close friends, which reflect both the book's strength and weakness. Miller and his collaborators, Michael Stone ("The Gangbusters") and Chris Mitchell ("The Crime Fighter") basically are New York police reporters who treat Sept. 11 as the biggest crime story of our time, bigger than even John Gotti.

The book's heroes, and apparently its prime sources, are former FBI agents and New York police officers whose efforts on the Joint Terrorism Task Force often were compromised by cautious supervisors and bureaucratic rivalries.

A bigger problem is a question of trust. The authors use second- or third-hand information but write about events as if they had been there. It makes for dramatic narrative but questionable accuracy.

Their sources are often vague. "According to some reports," they write or "the theory goes," without indicating whose reports or theories. They say the U.S. Capitol was the target of United Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania without a hint of how they know that.

Some of their fact-checking is sloppy. New York Fire Department Chaplain Mychal Judge wasn't killed by a falling body as initially was reported and which they repeat in the book. He died of a heart attack in the World Trade Center lobby. They have 46 people aboard Flight 93. After the early confusion, authorities said there were 44.

Miller contributes a revealing account of his 1998 interview with Osama bin Laden, who refused to allow an immediate translation, thereby avoiding any follow-up questions. But Miller's first-person, diary-like entries about sharing the anchor desk with Peter Jennings and his reporting scoops call attention to himself, not the story.

Despite flaws, it is s a useful reminder of how terrorists targeted the United States long before Sept. 11. It asks the tough questions, even if its answers seem simplistic.

Here's hoping the other books move beyond a crime reporter's narrative.