I read the book. Here are some observations:

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1) The mainstream coverage of this story has been awful. Mainstream journalists are quick to deride 9/11 truthers but have never accounted for their own conduct. By that I mean the al-Hazmi/al-Mihdhar story is an open conspiracy with no credible government explanation and some of the most respected journalists in the country have simply not covered it. Duffy and Nowosielski deserve credit for their effort.

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2) The book is FBI-centric. Many of the the sources are from the FBI. This factor contributes to a narrative that puts most of the blame on the CIA. There is little mention of the UBLU. The authors fail to note that Dina Corsi's claimed confusion about the wall was basically proven to be total BS. For example NSLU attorney Sherry Sabol stated that her advice to Corsi was the opposite of what Corsi claimed. Also FBI General Counsel Larry Parkinson stated in a 9/11 Commission MFR that the wall wasn't applicable. In the book the authors state that FBI agent Jack Cloonan initiated the search by assigning a rookie intel side agent. I don't recall ever seeing this information anywhere else. If true this is difficult to understand. Anyone who has deeply researched this aspect of 9/11 wonders why the FBI didn't assign every intel side agent they could spare if the concern was truly wall related. Why on earth was a single rookie agent assigned? I was under the impression that the UBLU controlled the search and they assigned a rookie agent in order to prevent a proper search from taking place. In the same section of the book where Cloonan is associated with the search the authors note agent Bongardt's complete disgust with the UBLU for acting inappropriately to the urgent circumstance. Richard Clarke is on record stating that the CIA sharing in late August was low level. This is simply not true. The UBLU was the FBI Bin Laden unit at Washington headquarters:

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The UBLU, as it is called in the bureau (because the FBI spells it Usama, not Osama), had only existed for about four years. Before that, bin Laden and al-Qaida were the responsibility of the Radical Fundamentalist Unit.

The UBLU's mission was to track bin Laden, his actions, his intentions and anything related to al-Qaida.

The unit consisted of 18 people, including analysts who ate, slept and breathed bin Laden.

"They knew his underwear size, they knew his shoe size, they knew what hand he picked his nose with," Foust said.

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UBLU

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It stands to reason that the UBLU would understand the gravity of two al Qaeda guys inside the US. Unit chief Rod Middleton and IOS (at the time) Dina Corsi have never spoken to the media about their pre 9/11 conduct. Corsi has been repeatedly promoted in a manner that is consistent with the Alec Station promotions. One reason the conduct of the UBLU is such a huge issue is because we are talking about FBI vs. FBI obstruction. So all the FBI vs. CIA turf war excuses do not apply. Why would fellow FBI agents interfere with the ongoing USS Cole investigation? I would suggest that one reason the FBI sharing is passed off as low level is to protect high level FBI officials. We are supposed to believe that once the FBI Bin Laden unit learned that two al Qaeda guys were in the US they decided that it made no sense to let Rolince, Watson or Pickard know. Does that sound remotely plausible to anyone who isn't a mainstream journalist?

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3) The authors are pretty clear in interviews that they do not want to be associated with 9/11 truthers. Are the authors hoping to be respected by the mainstream media? Are they worried about the stigma of the conspiracy theorist label? Are their views based on fears of being linked to sloppy research? I don't know. I don't know how anyone can research 9/11 and not come to the suspicion that corruption by US officials is likely. It comes across as somewhat naive to take evidence at face value. For example the notion that the Saudis facilitated 9/11 in a brazen manner. Should we believe al Qaeda sympathizers in the Saudi government are amateurs at tradecraft? Why wouldn't they simply give Bayoumi a suitcase of cash instead of cashier checks?

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The double agent recruitment theory seems to be taken at face value by the authors. To their credit the authors note that the CIA should have collected a lot of intel about the plot while conducting a recruitment op. Clarke's theory of withholding is that CIA officials were afraid of being charged with obstruction. The authors note in the book that such a concern (if real) would have been easy to neutralize by claiming the info was overlooked until Gillespie went back through the cables. Is Clarke really suggesting CIA officials decided that their only real play was to let a massive terrorist attack proceed?

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4) There is another theory to explain CIA and UBLU conduct. That is that the agents and officials were set up. For what reason? To assure they didn't cause trouble after 9/11. What better way to keep the agents from being a problem than to make them believe they facilitated a terrorist attack? As Mark Rossini noted in the book there was a real fear that anyone who talked to investigators would be targeted as a fall guy. One oddity has always been the hijackers' use of their real names to buy the plane tickets. This is horrible tradecraft. It has never made much sense. There is no way in the world they could have known that this wouldn't be an issue. Yet real names on the manifests are the basis of the intelligence failure explanation. I will note that the actual gate agents of the 9/11 flights have never been interviewed by the media. Ticket/gate agent Michael Touhey was the only gate agent interviewed but he was at Portland Jetport.