Category Archives: Reviews

The Looming Tower, Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11–Part II

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I wrote in the first part of this review of the book by Lawrence Wright that I thought it should be required reading for any public official who refuses to use the term “war on terror.”The first part focused on the origins of the radical Muslim organization called al-Qaeda. This part will cover the many failures in initial attempts by bin-Laden to develop a fighting force of world Arabs to help the mujahideen combat the Soviets in Afghanistan. That is followed by his struggles to keep his ideas about combating the west and the U.S. in particular alive after the Soviets were defeated. However, Soviet defeat wasn’t expected in the early days after the invasion. The Muslim world was shaken by the invasion, and Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal travelled to Pakistan to gauge what was going on there. He and other visitors to follow were appalled at the conditions in the refugee camps. He believed Afghanistan was lost, and that the only hope was to delay the expected invasion of Pakistan. The U.S. was hoping that the Soviets now had their own “Vietnam war.”

The mujahideen standing against the Soviets were little more than disorganized mobs. The Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) insisted that they would only provide aid to six factions with a warlord at the head of each, and the estimated 3.27 million refugees had to sign up with one of those six parties to be eligible for aid. Turki insisted on a seventh party that would better represent Saudi interests. The seven mujahideen leaders became known to the CIA and other intelligence agencies as the Seven Dwarves. Bin Laden stayed away from the battlefield for years in “Fear of Bodily Participation,” a fact that caused him great shame. He also lost his business in Medina and forfeited about $2.5 million in profits. In 1984 he was taken to a mujahideen camp that was attacked by Soviet jets, but the missiles failed to explode. The Afghans had not even jumped into trenches with the frightened Arabs. Bin-Laden was so impressed by the bravery of the Afghans that he immediately returned to Saudi Arabia and raised millions of dollars to support efforts to help refugees. A fatwa was issued that required every able-bodied Muslim to support the jihad in Afghanistan, which was even to take precedence over the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Bin Laden was “paying the rent” for the Arabs who arrived to join the fight. Continue reading →

The Looming Tower, Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11–Part I

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This book by Lawrence Wright should be required reading for anyone who thinks the term “War on Terror” is insensitive or politically incorrect. The book describes the history of al-Qaeda and the disturbing story of how the failure U.S. intelligence agencies to cooperate assured that they wouldn’t detect the plans to fly airplanes into the Twin Towers, Pentagon, and White House. I intend to do the review in at least four parts, and this part will focus on the origins of al-Qaeda. The doctrine of the modern Islamic movement was developed by Sayyid Qutb (pronounced “Kuh-tub”), who at the age of 42 was a student for six months at what was then the Colorado State College of Education in Greeley, Colorado. He was an Egyptian, a fervent nationalist, and anti-communist who was radicalized by the British occupation of Egypt. He and other Arabs admired how the immigrant nation of America was “…the anticolonial paragon…,” but felt betrayed when America supported the Zionist cause beginning with Harry Truman endorsing the transfer of a hundred thousand Jewish refugees into Palestine. Qutb was influenced to join the Muslim Brothers that had been founded by Hasan al-Banna, and he gained fame as an Islamic thinker by his writings. Qutb found Greeley to be beautiful, but he was scandalized by the behavior of the students and especially the open sexuality of the women.

Qutb withdrew from classes, but spent another eight months in America. He became even more radicalized, and wrote that “The white man crushes us underfoot…” Gamal Abdul Nasser had overthrown King Faruk after Qutb had returned to Egypt, and Nasser invited him to be an advisor. Qutb advocated that the country be controlled by religion, and Nasser believed in control by a strong military. Nasser eventually threw Qutb in prison, released him in three months to be the editor of the Muslim Brothers magazine, and then shut the magazine down after several critical articles by Qutb. The Muslim Brothers attempted to assassinate Nasser and he had six hanged and thousands of others, including Qutb, imprisoned in concentration camps. Qutb smuggled a manifesto titled Milestones that would have a major influence on radical Muslims, including Osama bin Laden. Qutb plotted from prison to overthrow Nasser with money and arms supplied by Saudi Arabia. He was released from prison, but his plots were revealed. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. He declared after the sentence, “Thank God, I performed jihad for fifteen years until I earned this martyrdom.” Nasser knew Qutb was more dangerous dead than alive, and offered to spare him if Qutb appealed his sentence. He told his pleading sister, “My words will be stronger if they kill me.” He was hanged on August 29, 1966. Continue reading →

The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant I Remember; Its Rise and Fall

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This book by Clayton Lagerquist could be considered a companion to my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked.” We write about many of the same subjects and issues. However, I was careful not to identify other people and he was careful to identify everyone he could remember. I worked with Clayton after I was transferred from production support research and development to the environmental and health organization in the early 1970s. (He calls himself “Clayt” in messages, so I’ll begin using that name.) He is an interesting person who holds numerous technical degrees, and much of the book is about his role in the early days of Health Physics Department and the people in that organization. He is complimentary to most of those people, but there are others who receive less than glowing reviews. He refers to one manager “an arrogant ass.” He describes another manager as “easy to dislike.” But then he writes, “For some reason, I liked him.” Clayt’s assessment of the FBI raid and ensuring fiasco is quite blunt. He writes at the end of the Introduction, “The Federal Government closely supervised all activities with an on-site office and conducted numerous audits using outside experts. I say all this to remind everyone that in the end, the Federal Government sued Rockwell International for environmental misconduct in federal court and won. This has to be the most colossal act of arrogant stupidity that I have ever seen.”

The book would be of interest to anyone wanting to know more about the people of Rocky Flats and the constant efforts to improve the technology for monitoring external and internal dosimetry. There are descriptions of an unfortunate incident involving a gentleman who lost a thumb and forefinger from an explosive reaction between plutonium chips and carbon tetracholoride in the glovebox where he was working. There are details about the actions that followed to treat the worker and measure the extent of plutonium contamination in his hand and body. Clayt writes that he spent considerable time with the injured man, “…and was amazed at the patience he exhibited during this time. He was a first case in many ways and was willing to go along with all suggestions even though it involved inconvenience to him.” Clayt also writes about the autopsy program and the research program using beagles to investigate how plutonium translocates in the body following a contaminated puncture wound. Continue reading →

Warning to the West–Part II

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The first review about this book discussed the speeches given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the AFL-CIO union and the U.S. Congress. This review is about a speech he gave to the members of the Senate and House of Representative on July 15, 1975 and both an interview and a speech on the BBC. His first comment in the speech to Congress was to thank the Senate for “…twice endeavoring to declare me an honorary citizen of the United States.” He quickly transitioned to his warnings to the West. He pointed out that in 1973, the year the United States embarked on detente and “…was precisely the year when starvation rations in Soviet prisons and concentration camps were reduced even further. He then mentions that the United States had the burden of leadership “…for at least half the world.” “We do not look upon you as Democrats or Republicans…we see statesmen, each of whom will play a direct and decisive role in the further course of world history, as it proceeds toward tragedy or salvation.”

The next entry in the book is the text of an interview, which I read to be contentious at times, on the BBC March 1, 1976. Solzhenitsyn responded to a question as to why the Soviets had exiled him instead of sending him back to the concentration camps. He observed that this was an instance where the West took a strong stand, and “…the Soviet Politburo simply took fright.” “I think now …they do regret it–we must remember they …had no choice. This was a rare moment when the West demonstrated unprecedented firmness and forced them to retreat.” However, Solzhenitsyn expressed dismay about the West’s reactions in most circumstances. Russians believed that the West would help raise them from slavery, but the West separated their own freedoms from the fate of the Russians. The press is accused of participating by not understanding their responsibility to publish the truth instead of mediocre headlines. He accuses that the West stood by while several countries fell to Communist rule. Continue reading →

Warning to the West–Part I

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This book contains the texts of speeches given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the United States and Britain after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974. The first two in this review will be were given to the AFL-CIO. Solzhenitsyn condemned the Soviet Union and “…its intolerable policy of repression, yet also sharply criticizes those complacent Westerners who support their government’s misguided policy of detente and timidly fear to take up the obligations that freedom-hungry people expect from the leading democracies of the world. ‘Interfere more and more, he pleads…We beg you to come and interfere’.” As an aside from the speeches, Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Gerald Ford for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1974-1975 with warnings about detente with the Soviets. Solzhenitsyn said in one of his AFL-CIO speeches that the USSR was “the concentration of world evil.” Detente with the Soviets did not end until Reagan replaced Carter and declared the USSR to be “The Evil Empire.” 

Solzhenitsyn begins his first speech to the labor leaders with a short history of the Russian Revolution and tells them “…only four months after the October Revolution…all the representatives of the Petrograd factories were denouncing the Communists who had deceived them…” The Communists had fled from Petrograd to Moscow, and had given orders to open fire on the crowds of factory workers demanding election of independent officers. A lathe operator named Alexander Shliapnikov led the Communists before the Revolution: Lenin wasn’t even in the country. Shliapnikov charged in 1921 that the Communist leadership had betrayed the interests of the workers, and he disappeared.

Solzhenitsyn thanked the AFL for publishing a map of Soviet concentration camps to counteract charges by Liberals in the U.S. who were claiming the camps did not exist. He points out that Liberals weren’t the only group supporting the Communists. Capitalists were encouraging business dealings with the Soviets, which of course gave badly needed economic support. He mentions Armand Hammer by name. Some American businessmen arrange an exhibit of criminological technology in Moscow. The KGB purchased the equipment, copied it, and used it to spy on citizens. Solzhenitsyn tells a story about Lenin predicting that Western Capitalists would compete with each other to sell the Soviets everything they needed without any concern for the future. He predicts that “…when the bourgeoisie a rope and the bourgeoisie will hang itself.” Lenin is asked where they would get enough rope for that, he replied, “They will sell it to us themselves.” Continue reading →

Gulag Voices, Surviving the Gulag

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The first two parts of the review of Anne Applebaum’s collection of writings by survivors of the Soviet slave complex were about daily life and women in the Gulag, which Applebaum writes is an acronym for the Soviet term “Main Camp Administration.” (Wikipedia says it is “Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.”) The people who wrote the memoirs were remarkable because they were literate and they survived. A large number of the estimated 25 million people who were sentenced to the concentration camps, labor camps, exile villages, criminal and political camps, and prisons did not survive. One writer observed only a few people in the slave camps would survive the first few months of imprisonment. There was mention of an unfunny joke that the first few years were the hardest. This part of the review is about how people used cleverness and religious faith to survive.

Dimitry S. Likhachev was an intellectual who was imprisoned after he was accused of counter-revolutionary activities. He and fellow literature club members saluted one another in ancient Greek, which was interpreted to mean he was an enemy of the state. He was arrested after an acquaintance visited him and asked whether his library had anything anti-Soviet after looking at a copy of Henry Ford’s The International Jew, describes Jews as “vicious capitalists and Bolsheviks.” He describes his initial imprisonment and some of the people in detail. One person in his cell had been the head of the Petrograd Boy Scouts. He mentions that a favorite game of the “warders” was to sweep a rat back and forth with brooms as it attempted escape until the rat died of exhaustion. He writes about the irony that he was arrested for meeting once weekly for intellectual discussions to be thrown in with people who had similar discussions continually while in prison. Likhachev was released after four years and became “…Russia’s best-known literary historian, critic, and scholar.” Continue reading →