The motives behind Sept. 11 are far more complex than the presidential assertion that the terrorists "hate us for our freedoms."

	"THE LOOMING TOWER: AL-QAEDA AND THE ROAD TO 9/11" By Lawrence Wright Knopf. ($27.95)

As journalist Lawrence Wright explains in his wide-reaching history of the events and personalities involved in that watershed moment, the roots were born centuries ago and fed by the West's treatment of the Arab world.

The "fatwah" issued against the United States by Egyptian radical Ayman al-Zawahiri, a crony of Osma bin Laden, ignored America's ideology and focused instead on the continued presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. intentions toward Iraq and support of Israel.

"The ruling to kill Americans and their allies -- civilian and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it," Zawahiri warned.

Three years later, after a series of smaller attacks, the ruling was carried out on American ground. Wright, a New Yorker magazine reporter, relates the buildup with the skill of a novelist and the solidly grounded information of a dedicated reporter.

It's a story that all of us in this embattled democracy need to know as the fifth anniversary of the attack nears.

Wright's book, with a 10-page bibliography and a list of more than 400 people he interviewed, stands as the current definitive history on the subject among the pile of 9/11 books that grows daily.

Based primarily on those interviews, Wright traces the origins of al-Qaeda to the quiet college town of Greeley, Colo., in 1949 and the reaction of a reserved Egyptian bureaucrat named Sayyid Qutb.

Although the 43-year-old Muslim educator praised the town and its university, Colorado State College of Education, he came to view the West, with its embrace of the modern, as a threat to Islam.

Back in Egypt, Qutb's writings became the foundation of radical Islamic thought embraced later by Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders. For his efforts, Qutb was executed by Egyptian strongman Gamal Nasser in 1966.

Wright efficiently traces the growth of this movement across the Middle East into Saudi Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan. Thanks to his clear prose and compelling sources, "The Looming Tower" offers a clear overview of the currents of humiliation, hate and revenge that fuel radical Islam.

His chapters on bin Laden, whose periods of failure are eerily similar to Hitler's, are told mostly in the words of men who knew him and his chief aide, Zawahiri. Time and again, both men avoided arrest, eluded death and eliminated rivals, often by sheer luck.

It's not as though the United States was blissfully unaware of bin Laden and his fellow travelers. Specific federal anti-terrorism efforts were under way by 1996. Wright carefully describes how the hard work and sacrifice of the country's experts were minimized and ignored in a depressing story of interservice rivalry.

While much of this emerged from the 9/11 Commission hearings and other journalists' work, Wright goes deeper into the tale through his interviews with officials and agents who were on the scene.

He calls the behavior of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency a "bizarre trend ... to hide information from the people who most needed it."

The role of FBI agent John O'Neill, whose private life is a story worth a book in itself, is a cautionary tale of missed opportunities to thwart the attack. Wright views him as the most determined figure in the FBI investigation of terrorists.

He was pushed to retire in mid-2001, taking the job as security chief of the World Trade Center where he died on Sept. 11.

"The Looming Tower" ends the next day. The story goes on, and I hope, so does the learning of the valuable lessons contained in the book.

Among them is that an open and unfettered press is essential to democracy. Wright, operating as an independent journalist, has written a balanced account of what has become a central fact in our age, the deadly threat of religious extremists for whom life is meaningless.

We should have no illusions after reading this book.