1115.org

We first heard about Peter Lance and his book 1000 Years for Revenge when he was interviewed on KGO-AM. The idea that the tragedies of 9-11 were preventable was compelling, and as Lance made a very matter-of-fact case for just how preventable they were, our outrage rose along side that of the host. Soon after, we had both read the book, and mentioned it several times in this space. While it is a piece of investigative journalism, it reads like a crime thriller. Lance takes what could have been a dry exercise in interviews and document discovery and weaves it into a gripping novel-like story. The lead blurb on the dust cover reads “Astounding…a 500-page smoking gun,” and that might be an understatement.

We put 1000 Years for Revenge on our Best of 2003 list, and for good reason. We highly recommend picking this book up, it is truly a must read for anyone who is interested in the truth about how something as catastrophic as 9-11 was allowed to happen to our country.

Through the wonders of the internet, Lance found 1115.org and agreed to grant us the following interview. He has also provided us with a signed first edition copy of 1000 Years for Revenge to give away to one lucky 1115.org reader. To enter, use the comment section below to send us your name and hometown. Make sure to enter a valid email address so we can contact the randomly selected winner.

What went into your decision to write 1000 Years for Revenge?

I had been working on the screenplay for a Showtime film, dealing, in part with Ramzi Yousef, the original World Trade Center bomber. In the 6,000 page transcript for the Bojinka trial in 1996 (after Yousef was captured) it referenced the fact that his partner, a fellow Baluchistani named Abdul Hakim Murad had been to four U.S. flight schools.

The Bojinka (Manila Air Bombing) plot involved a scheme by Yousef and three cohorts to smuggle the components of bomb triggers aboard U.S. jumbo jets inbound from Asia. The devices would be assembled on the first leg of two-leg flights. The conspirator would then exit the plane which would take off, only to blow up, hours, days, maybe even weeks or months later.

Thus, the plot did NOT involve suicide bombers and there was no reason for Murad to have attended U.S. flight schools in order to participate in such a plot. So after 9/11 when it became clear that the plot was perpetrated by al Qaeda members trained as pilots (some in U.S. flight schools) I thought to myself, “I wonder if this could have ANYTHING to do with Yousef.”

This led me to the Philippines where I did the most extensive interview to that date with Col. Rodolfo B. Mendoza, chief interrogator of Murad. He told me and provided heretofore classified documents to support the fact that Yousef and Murad had set what became the 9/11 plot into motion as early as 1994 and that after Yousef’s capture the plot was executed by Yousef’s uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, one of the original 4 perpetrators of the Bojinka plot.

You obtained a lot of documents that had been either previously classified or unknown as well as talking to several people who probably didn’t want to have their story in print. What hurdles did you have to overcome to get the information that you needed to make 1000 Years for Revenge as thorough and gripping as it is?

As an investigative reporter my work involves convincing people with access to information that is often not public to trust me. My job in investigating the road to 9/11 was made easier because in the year 2000 I stood up to a subpoena and threat of jail for contempt when CBS/Viacom hit me with a 13 page subpoena after I wrote a book questioning the ethics of those involved in their hit series “Survivor”.

At the time the California Shield law did not protect book writers or internet writers. So in defending myself vs. the subpoena (which sought to discover my confidential sources) I issued a press release noting how ironic it was that the great network of Edward R. Murrow and 60 Minutes was seeking to discover the confidential sources of an investigative journalist who had written a book embarrassing to an asset of their Entertainment Division. Within hours of that release going public “the Eye Blinked,” as one of the New York tabloids, commented. The network wisely pulled the subpoena.

Several of the New York papers covered the story and I preserved the coverage on my website here.

In researching 1000 Years for Revenge, I referred a number of potential sources to those news stories, so that the sources would know that I would go to jail before giving them up. After all, if I was willing to stand for a contempt citation and do jail time over the principal of protecting sources on a book about a TV game show, I would certainly do the same for a book that dealt with matters of national security.

The principal is worth fighting for and while no reporter invites a contempt citation, the principal of protecting confidential sources is crucial to the ability of investigative reporters to ferret out the truth.

The book exposes quite a bit of incompetence and territorialism in high places. Were you pressured either while you were writing it or since it was published?

If you mean have I been pressured from the Government, not so far.

Keep in mind that my research went back 12 years prior to 9/11 and my revelations were, I believe, equally embarrassing to three separate Administrations: that of George Herbert Walker Bush, on whose watch Ramzi Yousef could have been stopped BEFORE he set the 1993 WTC device, Bill Clinton, on whose watch Yousef’s “third plot” - the 9/11 plot was ignored by the Justice Department and the FBI despite probative evidence from the Philippines National Police (PNP) and the incumbent George W. Bush, whose administration ignored a staggering number of warnings in 2001 leading up to the attacks.

I’m now working on a new book for Harper Collins on the work of the 9/11 Commission and the intelligence and defense failures on “the day of” 9/11 and, given that this is an election year and Mr. Bush has been widely criticized by 9/11 family members for stonewalling the Commission and refusing to testify for more than an hour, I expect that as my book nears publication, the heat on me will increase.

The story of FDNY firefighter Ronnie Bucca was particularly tragic. Was it difficult to remain objective in the face of such a heartbreaking tale?

The challenge is to stay objective — to check your personal baggage each morning when you sit in front of the word processor. Every day of my life as a report I vet myself and challenge myself, asking this question: Am I doing my best to find the truth and laying out the facts as I discover them, come what may? Or do I have some pre-ordained political agenda that I’m trying to bend the facts to in support of a conclusion?

My job - and I think that my book (heralded on the right and the left) supports this - is to be the former. To stay impartial and let the chips fall where they may.

I got close to Ronnie’s family as I wrote the book. I kept his picture on the wall next to me as I wrote. He was also a seeker of the truth. He did his best, as a fire marshal, with top secret security clearance in an Army Reserve Military Intelligence Unit, to learn the unexpurgated truth about the threat that was facing this country.

Rather than being compromise by my feelings for Ronnie, I was inspired by him to push as far as I could to get the truth out.

Bucca tried at every corner to get the FDNY to evolve with the times, share information and act more intelligently. He didn’t have much luck as of September 11th. Has anything changed since then?

In August of 2002 the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) the elite unit set up to pair Bureau agents with local law enforcers, admitted its first Fire Marshal. While this was more than 20 years overdue, it was a step in the right direction.

But just as the Joint congressional inquiry found fault with the competition between intelligence agencies in failing to connect the dots on 9/11, there has been an ancient rivalry in New York City between “the reds” and “the blues.” (FDNY vs. NYPD - ed.)

I wrote a novel in 1997 called First Degree Burn which underscores this competition. You’ll recall that post-9/11 there was a near riot one day down at “the pile” (Ground Zero) when the police sought to limit the number of firefighters searching for remains.

This competition which occasionally flares to the point of hatred between the FDNY and the NYPD resulted, I believe, in Ronnie Bucca, an extraordinary investigator being closed out of the JTTF and the FDNY’s Bureau of Fire Investigation from being effectively excluded for the original WTC bombing investigation - ironically, the best arson investigators in the world, were kept out by the Bureau from the probe of what was then, arguably the greatest act of arson on U.S. soil.

What kind of response did you get from your publisher Regan Books? Did they offer any resistance because of the sensitive subject matter?

As mentioned I’m now in the process of doing another book for Regan Books, a division of Harper Collins. That suggests an endorsement of my work in 1000 Years for Revenge.

What kind of reaction, if any, did the book receive from the government? Has anyone asked you what they could be doing better?

The New York office of the FBI, which I was critical of in the book, issued a terse comment a few days after publication calling it “a rehash” of old stories. But in fact, the book has, for the first time told the story of FBI Special Agent Nancy Floyd, a remarkable “brick” or street agent who came within a hair’s breath of stopping Ramzi Yousef in the fall of 1992 as he built the bomb that killed six and injured 1000 in the WTC on 2/26/93.

In any case, a number of members of the 9/11 Commission have read the book and taken it seriously, including its chairman Gov. Tom Kean and I will be testifying before the Commission in their New York office very soon.

After the book was published, you did an extensive media tour. Give us an idea as to what that was like. What was the consensus of the media?

I sent the book in galleys to Dan Rather, who I knew years ago when I was a correspondent for ABC News. In August, a month before publication Rather called me and said that he would read the manuscript and, if he found it “worthy”, would do at least one piece on the CBS Evening News. He did better than that. On the eve of publication he reported the first of two consecutive stories on the book while he anchored the program from Iraq. CBS Evening News video: Part One / Part Two

The overwhelming majority of reviewers on Amazon.com gave you five stars. The small fraction that did not give you positive reviews all accused you of tabloid journalism. How do you answer this charge, and to what degree does the fact that the book is a dramatic and compelling read play into their hands more than if it were a dry, clinical tome?

We got a few one star reviews. If you examine them they appear to be from either disgruntled FBI employees who we criticized in the book or authors with competitive books. But the overwhelming number of reviews (more than 40 out of 49 are five star reviews. They come from a very diverse group of people across the country. Many are or were in law enforcement. Peter Bergen, one of the last journalists to interview Osama bin Laden, also gave the book a good review. It’s been acclaimed by people on the right and the left and in the same week it was positively reviewed in both Al Hayat, the Arab language paper in London and Al-Haaretz, the Hebrew language paper in Tel Aviv.

Obviously a work of this depth and breadth can only be fully expressed in the form of a book. Are you making any effort to take the message of the book to a wider audience? We read about a possible deal with the FX Network, did anything come of that?

I recently turned in the script for what we hope will be a three hour film “event” for FX to be produced by Warner Brothers TV It’s what we call a script development deal. There is no production commitment, but we’re hopeful.

How did you feel when Senator Max Cleland read passages from 1000 Years for Revenge at the 9-11 Commission?

I was thrilled when Sen. Cleland used the book to kick off the questioning of the 10/14/03 Washington D.C. hearing of the 9/11 Commission. Recently the book was read by Gov Tom Kean, the Chairman and he’s made arrangements for me to testify before the Commission on my findings.

In the book, you make the point that pre 9/11, the FBI was set up to make cases after the fact rather than to prevent crimes from happening. Do you have a position on the USA Patriot Acts I and II? Other than these acts, has the FBI taken any steps to address the abject failures that you chronicled in the book?

I believe that 9/11 could have been prevented without the passage of The Patriot Acts or an expenditure of a single extra dollar in the War on Terror. All of the tools and the personnel were in place but people in high level intelligence positions for a number of reasons didn’t taken the al Qaeda threat seriously until it was too late. My book is a probe into how the FBI, with the tools and man/woman power it had, simple dropped the ball dozens and dozens of times.

What, if any, help has the reorganization of the various agencies into the Department of Homeland Security been? Have these changes been substantive or is it merely a case of window dressing?

Unfortunately the public has zero ability to judge the effectiveness the [Department of] Homeland Security. Every time the alerts go from yellow to orange, we, the public, simply have to trust them and take their word for the threat level is real. Unfortunately we see time and time and time again examples of where the intelligence community failed. A multitude of sins can be obscured in the name of secrecy and national security.

That’s one of the problems facing the 9/11 Commission. Some of the very men who were part of the problem in the 1990’s are on the Commission staff and are effectively being asked to determine how they, themselves went wrong.

The title of the book refers to a Baluchistani (the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan)saying that translates to “If it takes me ten centuries to kill my enemy, I will wait 1000 years for revenge.”
This is particularly chilling given the notoriously short attention span of Americans. Are you surprised that there has not been another attack on U.S. soil? Have our officials been effective in counterterrorism, or is Al-Qaeda just that patient?

I expect a major al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil in the future. Frankly the danger has increased exponentially since the invasion of Iraq.

Based on your research of Al-Qaeda and keeping in mind reports of the administration’s progress is disrupting their network, to what degree do you feel that the threat to us has diminished?

See my answer above. My book went to press in August and it’s one of the first books to examine the intel failures that led up to the Iraqi misadventure. We had, in Saddam a self-contained dictator who preyed on his own people. There was ZERO evidence that he had any times to bin Laden or al Qaeda and we now know ZERO evidence that he possessed WMDs that would have posed the “imminent” threat to U.S. security that the Bush Administration got the nation hyped up about in the weeks and months leading up to the invasion.

Once Saddam was decapitated it united the Arab street because our invasion was unprovoked. It garnered sympathy for Saddam among Islamic radicals who really abhorred him prior to the invasion. Now there is evidence that al Qaeda elements have entered the new “liberated” Iraq and if a democratically elected virulently anti-American Shiite majority ends up running the country we could have another Iran in the late 70’s.

As an American it hurts me to see good young men and women getting maimed and killed on a daily basis - both U.S. service personnel and Iraqi citizens in a campaign that was COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY when it came to advancing U.S. interests in the war on terror. No. We’re not safer. We’re in a much more dangerous position since the invasion in March of 2003.

The administration (specifically FBI Director Robert Muller and Vice President Dick Cheney) is on record saying that the government had no way of knowing that this country would be attacked. But your work shows that there was substantial evidence waiting to be connected. This month another important book comes out, Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke, a former member of the National Security Council. Advance word is that the administration was warned on August 6th 2001 that Al Qaeda had plans to hijack and use passenger jets. Does this square with anything that you uncovered?

It’s all in one of the last chapters of my book, including Clarke’s canceling of all non essential travel by his staff in July, 2001 with the prediction that “something really spectacular is going to happen and happen soon,” or words to that effect.

The last 2 1/2 years have seen an odd split between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats (for their own reasons) have pointed to official reports and books like yours in an effort to show that the administration didn’t do everything they could have done. Republicans (especially the administration) have tried to shut down the dialogue claiming “national security” and “we don’t want the evil-doers to hear us talking about our weaknesses.” Has there been a difference between reactions on the book from the right versus the left?

It�s been predictable. The Right unearths all of the evidence I found of mistakes on Clinton’s watch - and they were numerous, believe me. The Left points to the fact that the first real opportunity to stop 9/11 came in the fall of 1992 during the Administration of the President’s father.

My new book will examine the failures of the Bush Administration on “the day of.” (9-11 -ed.)

You started as an investigative journalist and eventually won 5 Emmy awards for your work. It must have been satisfying to win those awards and the recognition of your peers. What made you give up that type of journalism, and has 1000 Years for Revenge changed your mind about doing that kind of work?

I left investigative journalism in the late 1980’s when our son was in utero. I was traveling about 100,000 miles a year and I wanted to be able to live in one town and watch him grow up. I got back to investigative journalist after writing fiction for years, quite by accident and that story is chronicled in The Stingray: Lethal Tactics of The Sole Survivor, a book that rips the lid of the Survivor phenomenon and is available on Amazon.com and from my website as an e-book.

Once I got reminded what a thrilling job it was to work as investigative reporter, I couldn’t wait to get back into it. The night after 9/11 I wrote an essay on my site announcing that I was finished covering “reality” television because the new reality was so much more terrifying.

How did the process of writing 1000 Years for Revenge differ from your other investigative works such as covering Laotian rebels, corrupt surgeons, and the Gambino crime family?

Investigative reporting is actually much easier to do as a print journalist because it’s essentially you and a phone and a reporter’s notebook. The stories mentioned above were covered for ABC News where I had to get “picture” to go along with my words. Given that 7/8’s of the iceberg is below the surface, the real substantive issues that you cover as a television investigative journalist are, by their nature, out of site. So getting those pictures can be difficult and dangerous.

Try hanging out for weeks camped above a mob controlled oil reprocessing plant in New Jersey or going into the Deep South to record allegations of unnecessary surgery where the hospital in question is the biggest business in the County, or trying to navigate through a Laotion field still strewn with “bombies,” unexploded CBU’s (cannisterized bomblet units) dropped by U.S. planes during the undeclared air war over Vietnam.

The public had a right to know about all of those stories and I was privileged to be able to tell them.

What made you temporarily give up journalism to write for television? Was your work on Miami Vice, Wiseguy, Crime Story and JAG as satisfying as it was profitable?

As mentioned, a six pound, ten ounce baby boy named Christopher who now at 17 dwarfs me in height, weight, muscle and intellect.

Episodic drama writing is very profitable - that’s why brain surgeons leave their practices to come out to Hollywood and do it. But I’ve always been a bit of a lone wolf and I never quite fit in an office/staff environment.

The most enjoyable series I worked on was the first one - and the one that I think was groundbreaking, innovative and a decade ahead of it’s time - Michael Mann’s Crime Story starring Dennis Farina. Now that was fun.

What can you tell us about your current projects?

I’m working on a new book for Harper Collins on the 9/11 Commission and I’m hopeful that we’ll get a green light for production on the film version of 1000 Years for Revenge for FX.

We would like to thank Peter Lance for granting this interview. Much more info (including video and in depth information) is available at PeterLance.com. Signed first edition copies of 1000 Years for Revenge are available for sale here.