The Secret History of al-Qa’ida
By Abdel Bari Atwan
236 pages, London: Saqi, 2006

In November 1996, five months after al Qaeda’s bombing of the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia and less than five years before al Qaeda would attack New York and Washington, Osama bin Laden’s “ambassador” to Britain approached the editor in chief of the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi. After exchanging some pleasantries, Khaled al-Fawwaz got to the point. His offer? A trip to Afghanistan to meet and interview Osama bin Laden, who had recently gone into hiding.

For the editor, Abdel Bari Atwan, an influential critic of both authoritarian Arab regimes as well as U.S. foreign policy, the proposal was both intriguing and odd: Usually it is the journalist who requests an interview. Nevertheless, Atwan wasn’t about to let the usual protocols stand in his way. He took al-Fawwaz up on his offer and several weeks later would spend two days interviewing, talking to, observing, and sleeping next to the internationally sought terrorist leader.

The result is Atwan’s new book, The Secret History of al Qa‘ida. In it, Atwan describes why he was called to meet the man who he “fully expected ... would play a significant role in the history of his homeland, Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim world in general.” Bin Laden “developed a very good sense of how to use the media over the years, and when he decided to declare war on the United States, he wanted it to be known the world over.” Early on, bin Laden recognized that the media war is as important, if not more so, than the real war. He invited selected foreign journalists, such as Atwan, whom he considered sympathetic to Muslim causes.

Atwan is not the first to detail the media...