Based on Lawrence Wright's 2006 book, The Looming Tower tells the story of how the 9/11 attacks were made possible by the internecine squabbling between the CIA and the FBI. However, whereas the majority of the book deals with al-Qaeda, the series focuses almost exclusively on the American perspective, which makes sense as it's an American show with American financing aimed at an American audience. Certainly, there are depictions of some of the terrorists; but this is an American story. And although the binary of CIA=bad/FBI=good is too neat, and there is a series dearth of information on al-Qaeda, this is sobering TV, which is at its best when it shows us how easily these events could have been prevented.
Although framed by the 9/11 Commission in 2004, the story begins in 1998. Both the CIA and FBI each have a dedicated "bin Laden unit". The CIA's Alec Station is run by Martin Schmidt (Peter Sarsgaard playing a thinly-fictionalised Michael Scheuer), whilst the FBI's I-49 is run by John O'Neill (Jeff Daniels). Each unit is required to share intelligence with the other, but, in reality, neither shares much of anything except insults. In between the two is Richard Clarke (Michael Stuhlbarg), National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism. As the show begins, Ali Soufan (Tahar Rahim), a Muslim Lebanese-American, has just been assigned to I-49, and shortly thereafter, bin Laden (referred to primarily as UBL) is interviewed for ABC News, promising a grand statement unless the US pull out of the Middle East. But with the Monica Lewinsky scandal in full-swing, the country's attention is elsewhere.
The Looming Tower was developed for TV by Wright, Dan Futterman, and Alex Gibney. An element to which it returns time and again is how both the Clinton and Bush administrations underestimated UBL. This is initially touched on in the first episode, "Now it Begins... (2018)", after the ABC interview, with Soufan telling O'Neill, "he used the interview to appear strong by threatening the United States as he looked an American directly in the eye." With a semen-stained dress to worry about, however, no one pays much attention. Subsequently, in the fourth episode, "Mercury (2018)", Soufan explains, "al-Qaeda is not going to be defeated by simply gunning down the boss. To them, martyrdom is the purest kind of poetry. It's beyond poetry. It's eternity. Each time we snuff a part of it out, it'll keep resurfacing. It goes that deep. Killing Bin Laden is only going to secure his legend and inspire more and more martyrs." The theme of failing to understand the nature of the threat comes up again later in the same episode when Schmidt proposes bombing a bird hunt that might include bin Laden, and O'Neill counters, "within days, there will be a million more recruits ready to sign up. Do you even understand the concept of martyrdom? This isn't a war about one man. Bin Laden is an ideologue, not some plutocrat running a banana republic. His people actually believe. It's bin Laden-ism we're up against, not just bin Laden."
This tendency to underestimate UBL becomes even more pronounced under the Bush presidency, leading to some of the show's best scenes. In the eighth episode, "A Very Special Relationship (2018)", shortly after her appointment as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice (Eisa Davis) interrupts Clarke as he is giving a presentation on al-Qaeda, telling him, "when you put something in writing, if you want it to get to the President, keep it pithy." A later scene in the same episode has a similar tone as Rice meets with Clarke, CIA Director George Tenet (Alec Baldwin), Schmidt's right-hand woman Diane Marsh (Wrenn Schmidt), and O'Neill, at which O'Neill is stunned when Rice asks him who he is. It's an extraordinarily well-written scene, and the only time we see O'Neill lost for words, with Daniels nailing his utter incredulity at her not knowing his name.
Another major theme is faith. However, the show is less interested in the blind devotion of UBL's followers than in the lapsed faith of O'Neill and Soufan. O'Neill's loss of faith deeply troubles Liz (Annie Parisse), one of his two mistresses, who's a practising Catholic, and who believes him (incorrectly) to be divorced. This is rendered even more complicated when he's told that to marry Liz in the church, he must first nullify his marriage to Maria (Tasha Lawrence), who's an even more stringent Catholic than Liz, and doesn't believe in divorce. In "Mercury", he asks a cardinal, "you sure there's not some little crack in the magisterium that would allow Maria to maintain her good standing?" However, he's told, "well if you were to die".
In regards Soufan's faith, although he's initially introduced as no longer practising Islam, the faith-based nature of al-Qaeda's ideology deeply troubles him ("when people use my religion to justify this s**t, it affects me"). Indeed, one of the most welcome elements of the show is that although there isn't a huge amount of time spent depicting the Muslim community, there are a few scenes that give a positive presentation, such as a social gathering in "Mercury" where Islam is barely even mentioned. Even some of the terrorists are given interesting context, much of which challenges the notion that all Muslims subscribe to Islamic fundamentalism; for example, Hoda al-Hada (July Namir), who is married to one of the hijackers, doesn't subscribe in any way to her husband's belief in UBL. Instead, she's more concerned with her young children knowing their father than the otherworldly blessings of Allah.
When it comes to the acting, the show excels, with Bill Camp (playing Robert Chesney, one of O'Neill's most reliable agents) and Michael Stuhlbarg as the standouts. Camp is given an amazing scene in "Mistakes Were Made (2018)" when he interrogates Mohamed al-Owhali (Youssef Berouain) in the wake of the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi. An eight-minute scene of two men just sitting in a room, Camp is quiet and calm, fondly remembering his military service, drawing al-Owhali in, gaining his trust, making him comfortable, before exploding at the right moment. It's an extraordinarily well-acted, well-directed, and well-edited scene, and a masterclass in dramatic pacing. Although Stuhlbarg plays Clarke as perennially frustrated, he never lets his quiet politeness slip, although on several occasions, he hovers tantalisingly close. He's especially good in a scene late in "9/11 (2018)", after the attacks have happened, and Rice tells him, "Rumsfeld wants the attacks linked to Saddam Hussein and Iraq." This, of course, is an allusion to the illegal war pursued by the Bush administration after 9/11, itself a narrative of American incompetence, ineptitude, and arrogance, and Clarke's simple "what did you say", his voice subtly modulating, is as important a moment as the series has.
Elsewhere, Daniels plays O'Neill as boisterous and foul-mouthed, who doesn't care about the feathers he has to ruffle to get what he wants. Sarsgaard, on the other hand, plays Schmidt as the pretentious polar opposite; calm, patient, and insidious. Whereas O'Neill is all passion and rage, Schmidt is cold and emotionless.
Of course, the show does have problems. For one, there's almost nothing on why al-Qaeda hated the US so much (one of Wright's main themes), and literally nothing on the group's background. This kind of context is hugely important to any depiction of al-Qaeda, so for the series to offer us nothing on their origins is disappointing.
Elsewhere, a subplot in the first episode sees Chesney strike up a romantic relationship with Deb Fletcher (Sharon Washington), chief of station for the US embassy in Nairobi. The storyline is intended to give us an emotional connection to the bombing, but the plot is tonally divorced from everything surrounding it, coming across as emotionally inauthentic. Along the same lines, the show is at its weakest when depicting O'Neill's labyrinthine personal life, Soufan's relationship with his girlfriend Heather (Ella Rae Peck), and the tentative romance between Schmidt and Marsh. Much of this material feels rote and generic, romantic subplots forced into the story so as to counter the testosterone-soaked main narrative (although to be fair, Scheuer did marry Alfreda Bikowsky, on whom Marsh is partly based).
The most egregious problem, however, is the rigid binary distinction between the FBI and the CIA, wherein the FBI are the honourable team players whilst the CIA are the paranoid and duplicitous pseudo-villains, a distinction personified in O'Neill and Schmidt, and which never feels completely authentic. O'Neill was far from perfect, but Schmidt is a dishonest, permanently smirking jerk, convinced of his own genius. To be fair, there can be little argument that Scheuer is a toxic and thoroughly arrogant individual, but there's also some nuance that Schmidt doesn't possess.
Nevertheless, The Looming Tower is taut, complex, and politically fascinating. Sure, the story is streamlined and simplified, but even so, it hasn't been drained of moral complexity, as it serves as a reminder of something with great importance today - with UBL literally telling the US that he was going to attack, everyone was focused on how a cigar was used as a toy. And living, as we do, in an era where the American media is routinely distracted by irrelevancies, it seems the lessons of history have not been heeded.
Although framed by the 9/11 Commission in 2004, the story begins in 1998. Both the CIA and FBI each have a dedicated "bin Laden unit". The CIA's Alec Station is run by Martin Schmidt (Peter Sarsgaard playing a thinly-fictionalised Michael Scheuer), whilst the FBI's I-49 is run by John O'Neill (Jeff Daniels). Each unit is required to share intelligence with the other, but, in reality, neither shares much of anything except insults. In between the two is Richard Clarke (Michael Stuhlbarg), National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism. As the show begins, Ali Soufan (Tahar Rahim), a Muslim Lebanese-American, has just been assigned to I-49, and shortly thereafter, bin Laden (referred to primarily as UBL) is interviewed for ABC News, promising a grand statement unless the US pull out of the Middle East. But with the Monica Lewinsky scandal in full-swing, the country's attention is elsewhere.
The Looming Tower was developed for TV by Wright, Dan Futterman, and Alex Gibney. An element to which it returns time and again is how both the Clinton and Bush administrations underestimated UBL. This is initially touched on in the first episode, "Now it Begins... (2018)", after the ABC interview, with Soufan telling O'Neill, "he used the interview to appear strong by threatening the United States as he looked an American directly in the eye." With a semen-stained dress to worry about, however, no one pays much attention. Subsequently, in the fourth episode, "Mercury (2018)", Soufan explains, "al-Qaeda is not going to be defeated by simply gunning down the boss. To them, martyrdom is the purest kind of poetry. It's beyond poetry. It's eternity. Each time we snuff a part of it out, it'll keep resurfacing. It goes that deep. Killing Bin Laden is only going to secure his legend and inspire more and more martyrs." The theme of failing to understand the nature of the threat comes up again later in the same episode when Schmidt proposes bombing a bird hunt that might include bin Laden, and O'Neill counters, "within days, there will be a million more recruits ready to sign up. Do you even understand the concept of martyrdom? This isn't a war about one man. Bin Laden is an ideologue, not some plutocrat running a banana republic. His people actually believe. It's bin Laden-ism we're up against, not just bin Laden."
This tendency to underestimate UBL becomes even more pronounced under the Bush presidency, leading to some of the show's best scenes. In the eighth episode, "A Very Special Relationship (2018)", shortly after her appointment as Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice (Eisa Davis) interrupts Clarke as he is giving a presentation on al-Qaeda, telling him, "when you put something in writing, if you want it to get to the President, keep it pithy." A later scene in the same episode has a similar tone as Rice meets with Clarke, CIA Director George Tenet (Alec Baldwin), Schmidt's right-hand woman Diane Marsh (Wrenn Schmidt), and O'Neill, at which O'Neill is stunned when Rice asks him who he is. It's an extraordinarily well-written scene, and the only time we see O'Neill lost for words, with Daniels nailing his utter incredulity at her not knowing his name.
Another major theme is faith. However, the show is less interested in the blind devotion of UBL's followers than in the lapsed faith of O'Neill and Soufan. O'Neill's loss of faith deeply troubles Liz (Annie Parisse), one of his two mistresses, who's a practising Catholic, and who believes him (incorrectly) to be divorced. This is rendered even more complicated when he's told that to marry Liz in the church, he must first nullify his marriage to Maria (Tasha Lawrence), who's an even more stringent Catholic than Liz, and doesn't believe in divorce. In "Mercury", he asks a cardinal, "you sure there's not some little crack in the magisterium that would allow Maria to maintain her good standing?" However, he's told, "well if you were to die".
In regards Soufan's faith, although he's initially introduced as no longer practising Islam, the faith-based nature of al-Qaeda's ideology deeply troubles him ("when people use my religion to justify this s**t, it affects me"). Indeed, one of the most welcome elements of the show is that although there isn't a huge amount of time spent depicting the Muslim community, there are a few scenes that give a positive presentation, such as a social gathering in "Mercury" where Islam is barely even mentioned. Even some of the terrorists are given interesting context, much of which challenges the notion that all Muslims subscribe to Islamic fundamentalism; for example, Hoda al-Hada (July Namir), who is married to one of the hijackers, doesn't subscribe in any way to her husband's belief in UBL. Instead, she's more concerned with her young children knowing their father than the otherworldly blessings of Allah.
When it comes to the acting, the show excels, with Bill Camp (playing Robert Chesney, one of O'Neill's most reliable agents) and Michael Stuhlbarg as the standouts. Camp is given an amazing scene in "Mistakes Were Made (2018)" when he interrogates Mohamed al-Owhali (Youssef Berouain) in the wake of the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi. An eight-minute scene of two men just sitting in a room, Camp is quiet and calm, fondly remembering his military service, drawing al-Owhali in, gaining his trust, making him comfortable, before exploding at the right moment. It's an extraordinarily well-acted, well-directed, and well-edited scene, and a masterclass in dramatic pacing. Although Stuhlbarg plays Clarke as perennially frustrated, he never lets his quiet politeness slip, although on several occasions, he hovers tantalisingly close. He's especially good in a scene late in "9/11 (2018)", after the attacks have happened, and Rice tells him, "Rumsfeld wants the attacks linked to Saddam Hussein and Iraq." This, of course, is an allusion to the illegal war pursued by the Bush administration after 9/11, itself a narrative of American incompetence, ineptitude, and arrogance, and Clarke's simple "what did you say", his voice subtly modulating, is as important a moment as the series has.
Elsewhere, Daniels plays O'Neill as boisterous and foul-mouthed, who doesn't care about the feathers he has to ruffle to get what he wants. Sarsgaard, on the other hand, plays Schmidt as the pretentious polar opposite; calm, patient, and insidious. Whereas O'Neill is all passion and rage, Schmidt is cold and emotionless.
Of course, the show does have problems. For one, there's almost nothing on why al-Qaeda hated the US so much (one of Wright's main themes), and literally nothing on the group's background. This kind of context is hugely important to any depiction of al-Qaeda, so for the series to offer us nothing on their origins is disappointing.
Elsewhere, a subplot in the first episode sees Chesney strike up a romantic relationship with Deb Fletcher (Sharon Washington), chief of station for the US embassy in Nairobi. The storyline is intended to give us an emotional connection to the bombing, but the plot is tonally divorced from everything surrounding it, coming across as emotionally inauthentic. Along the same lines, the show is at its weakest when depicting O'Neill's labyrinthine personal life, Soufan's relationship with his girlfriend Heather (Ella Rae Peck), and the tentative romance between Schmidt and Marsh. Much of this material feels rote and generic, romantic subplots forced into the story so as to counter the testosterone-soaked main narrative (although to be fair, Scheuer did marry Alfreda Bikowsky, on whom Marsh is partly based).
The most egregious problem, however, is the rigid binary distinction between the FBI and the CIA, wherein the FBI are the honourable team players whilst the CIA are the paranoid and duplicitous pseudo-villains, a distinction personified in O'Neill and Schmidt, and which never feels completely authentic. O'Neill was far from perfect, but Schmidt is a dishonest, permanently smirking jerk, convinced of his own genius. To be fair, there can be little argument that Scheuer is a toxic and thoroughly arrogant individual, but there's also some nuance that Schmidt doesn't possess.
Nevertheless, The Looming Tower is taut, complex, and politically fascinating. Sure, the story is streamlined and simplified, but even so, it hasn't been drained of moral complexity, as it serves as a reminder of something with great importance today - with UBL literally telling the US that he was going to attack, everyone was focused on how a cigar was used as a toy. And living, as we do, in an era where the American media is routinely distracted by irrelevancies, it seems the lessons of history have not been heeded.