Tubegazing: 'Inside 9/11'

One of the more provocative statements in "Inside 9/11," an ambitious four-hour miniseries on the National Geographic Channel (Aug. 21, 22), comes from an FAA whistle-blower named Bogdan Dzakovic: "What happened on Sept. 11, 2001, was not a failure in the system; it was a system that was deliberately designed to fail. And the 9/11 Commission failed in not documenting why that was allowed to happen."

With such open criticism, it's easy to dismiss the show as heavy-handed and one-sided. But it's not quite so simple to turn away from the case built by more than 60 interviews around the globe, to support the claim that this country should have known the attack was imminent. The series tracks the evolution and developing power of the radical Islamic movement from as far back as the 1979 Soviet-Afghan war. CIA, FBI, National Homeland Security experts, and 9/11 survivors, answer the question, "Is there really more to learn about the most well-covered event in America's history?"

There is, says a former CIA expert on Osama bin Laden, because "America has never had an enemy who has been more precise in warning us what we're in for."

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