Summary

Chapter 19 begins with the marriage of bin Laden’s son Mohammed to the daughter of another al-Qaeda, rare celebration in the community at which bin Laden reads a poem he had written to commemorate the Cole bombing. Shortly after, al-Qaeda fully absorbed Zawahiri’s al-Jihad group, ending years of infighting and making bin Laden the clear leader of the new joint organization. At the same time, Zawahiri’s fellow Egyptians maintained dominant roles in al-Qaeda’s leadership. Bin Laden would ask these Egyptians to take the lead in assassinating Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan who, with U.S. support, prevented bin Laden’s allies from taking full control of the country. Two men posing as journalists killed Massoud on September 9, 2001, the same day that Prince Turki resigned as the chief of Saudi intelligence.

While foreign intelligence...