Triple Cross

Fell asleep last night reading an advance updated paperback copy of "Triple Cross" by the one and only Peter Lance. Like his last two books, "1000 Years For Revenge" and "Cover Up", the cast of characters reads like a play - if only they were novels.

In this, the third volume in his investigative holy trinity of the bumbling ham-handed World Trade Center bombing investigation, Peter Lance once again rolls back the tape to where it all started: nearly a decade before that fateful fatal Tuesday morning in September.

Through tireless, and downright obsessive, research and interviews Lance has managed to unravel what was a perfect storm of collusion, carelessness and communication failure. Lance is unbiased and absolutely meticulous letting the excavated facts speak for themselves; at times so loudly the words themselves seem deafening.

Now I'm not one of these dolts who screams "Bush was behind 9/11" because frankly, and as you will learn, nothing could ever be that simple. However, the simultaneous occurrence of all these events which, taken individually, would be far less cataclysmic than the result of their chance combination, simply cannot be denied. To put it simply: the amount of people that had to fuck up for 9/11 to happen right under our collective nose is simply obscene and downright criminal; be it connivance, coincidence or diffusion of responsibility. And this was back when W. was still just the Governor of Texas.

As Peter begins in his introduction :

"If the measure of any nonfiction book is how the public officials cricitized in it react, Triple Cross has clearly struck a nerve."

Minor detail: a man named Patick Fitzgerald tried to kill the book. You may know Mr. Fitzgerald as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. You may also recognize his name from the Valerie Plame/CIA leak grand jury investigation, which led to the prosecution and conviction of Dick Cheney's then chief of staff Scooter Libby. Fitzgerald's office is currently investigating the alleged conspiracy to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder which led to the arrest of Rod Blagojevich back in December. Oh, and in his spare time Mr. Fitzgerald has tried to have "Triple Cross" erased from existence. Hmmm... I wonder why one of the most powerful prosecutors in the U.S. Justice Department is writing 50 page letters to Harper Collins trying to have Peter's book silenced? Maybe its because Lance identifies Mr. Fitzgerald as the FBI official most responsible for allowing a senior Al Qaeda operative (and a close friend of Bin Laden himself) to remain operational and at-large under the auspices of our Government. Or maybe its because the truth hurts, and if you needed validation, well, there it is.

Sadly, the pangs of hindsight have never stung quite this hard and this time not only has it all come home to roost but its standing right in our living room with a smoking hot gun.

The updated version of "Triple Cross" hits stores on paperback next Tuesday, June 16.