Road to 9/11

We begin in New York in November 1990 when an extremist rabbi, Meir Kahane, is gunned down in a midtown Manhattan hotel ballroom by El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen. Agents discover a Brooklyn-based terrorist cell with connections to Osama bin Laden. Egyptian immigrant Emad Salem is recruited by the FBI to go undercover and expose the cell before members execute an attack. However, in 1993 a group of cell members, including Ramzi Yousef, successfully set off a bomb in the World Trade Center killing six people and wounding dozens. Another plot to blow up five New York City landmarks is foiled with the help of Salem. Yousef, who fled to the Philippines after the World Trade Center attack, begins formulating the Bojinka plot, a plan to bomb 11 airlines. In New York, investigators learn that Yousef's uncle helped to finance the attacks; his name is Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the future mastermind of the 9/11 plot.

Part two moves from New York to Washington, DC where the CIA and Clinton Administration officials are trying to understand and react to the rise in jihadi terror. A number of classified operations are planned during this time targeting Osama bin Laden resulting in near misses or shots not taken. An intimate profile of bin Laden emerges through rare interview footage with him and commentary from people who knew him personally including former fighters, friends and journalists.

The final episode explores how the September 11th attack came to be. A portrait emerges of the true mastermind of the attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Part three explores his past, including time spent in the US as a college student, through interviews with friends, journalists and the agents who devoted their lives to finding him. The episode also looks at the men recruited to enact the attacks--their backgrounds, terror training, their lives in the US and their flight training. In Washington, there is a disconnect between government agencies--information withheld, missed signals, and ensuing tensions. The film also details the experience and emotion of 9/11, and how the United States and the world were changed forever.