The FBI was prepared to begin asking KSM pertinent, specific questions based on their intense study of the man, but instead inexperienced CIA agents were given the job, much to the country’s detriment. In 2009, President Obama finally placed the FBI in charge of interrogating high-value terrorists, which the bureau has important experience with, having looked after the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

If there is one flaw in McDermott and Meyer’s book, it is its failure to discuss the worldview of policymakers in the years before and after the 9/11 attacks. The Clinton administration pursued bin Laden vigorously prior to 9/11, but it was reluctant to take serious military action on a man who, after all, was largely unknown to the American people because he had not yet attacked them. The George W. Bush administration downgraded the threat of terrorism and deprived the intelligence community of badly needed resources, mistakenly focused as it was on the alleged threat posed to the U.S. by states such as Iraq and Iran. Especially in the chapters on the two years leading up to the 9/11 attacks, this context would have been useful.

Such quibbles aside, The Hunt For KSM is a valuable document. Future writers will need to pore through its findings, and readers will find it a horrifying, thrilling read.

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