Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright (born August 2, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, screenwriter, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. Wright is best known as the author of the 2006 nonfiction book, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. He is a graduate of Tulane University.

Quotes

 * The most worrisome development in the evolution of Al Qaeda’s influence since 9/11 is the growth of pockets of Islamist radicalism in Western populations.


 * The best ally in the struggle against violent Islamism is moderate Islam.


 * The tug-of-war between Scientologists and anti-Scientologists over Hubbard’s legacy has created two swollen archetypes: the most important person who ever lived and the world’s greatest con man. Hubbard was certainly grandiose, but to label him merely a fraud is to ignore the complexity of his character.


 * In response to nearly a thousand queries, the Scientology delegation handed over forty-eight binders of supporting material, stretching nearly seven linear feet.


 * Listen, bin Laden is - you know, he's not irrelevant. He was important all along. Just the fact that he was able to elude capture or being killed for nearly a decade, actually more than a decade if you go back to the embassy bombings in 1998 when we first went after him. He's been a symbol of resistance and also of the failure of American policy to reach out and stop this kind of terror. It emboldened other imitators all around the globe. So getting bin Laden is immeasurably important.


 * Bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida eventually will die. But the model that al-Qaida has created of an asymmetric terror group that has enormous consequences in the world well beyond the size of the group, that's going to endure. Other groups are going to try to follow that model.


 * People are always asking me if I'm frightened, hanging out with al Qaeda, but usually those encounters are one-on-one interviews. I'm talking to people whose views I don't agree with, but that happens all the time.


 * I’ve studied Jonestown, radical Islam. They’re oftentimes good-hearted people, idealistic, but full of a kind of crushing certainty that eliminates doubt.
 * From documentary movie "Going Clear," directed by Alex Gibney

About

 * When I heard the news that Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, I had a lot of questions. And one of the people I wanted to talk to was Lawrence Wright. He's joined us several times on the show. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 book The Looming Tower: Al-Qaida and the Road to 9/11, which is based in part on more than 500 interviews, including interviews with friends and relatives of bin Laden.