The forgotten, mysterious threat of an insider agent aboard Air Force One on 9/11

In 2001, Richard Clarke was perhaps the most experienced person working in the White House.A member of the National Security Council, Clarke had spent 23 years in the executive branch and repeatedly warned about the risk of an attack on US soil by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.In June of that year, Clarke sent a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the subject.

He warned her of the very strong possibility of an imminent major terrorist attack and of serious gaps in the nation’s emergency protocols.In July, they met in person to discuss the threat further.That day, he expressed his worry about the continuity of government in the wake of such an attack and presidential succession.

In August, his warnings made their way into a presidential brief.It was titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”At some point in these conversations Clarke even presciently predicted that such an attack could include an unthinkable horror: the hijacking and weaponization of passenger-filled commercial airliners.But as the investigative journalist Jeffrey Robinson describes in his revelatory “Ash and Honor: The Untold 368 Minutes of 9/11 (St.

Martin’s Press), Rice expressed skepticism and “accused the CIA and Clarke of sensationalizing Osama bin Laden, just trying to scare everybody.”Little more than a month later, Rice used a secure phone to tell the president that the World Trade Center had just been hit by the first of four hijacked airliners on a kamikaze mission, the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor.In “Ash and Honor,” Robinson skillfully weaves together underreported stories of that day from around the world.He reviewed scores of documents (and some reports he believes are still classified) and interviewed over 65 eyewitnesses to the day’s events.

Pilots, soldiers, civilians, spies — all their recollections come together to create a new portrait of the chaos and the brave souls who weathered it.When the nation came under attack, the pre...