Out on 101
A journalist, a neuroscientist, and the quest for memory Writer Terry McDermott. Photo by Tom Sanders Terry McDermott spent three and a half years in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia pursuing the story of the 9-11 hijackers: who they were and why they did it. This was a ridiculously difficult task. He found himself in places like Karachi, Pakistan asking the hijackers’ friends and families questions almost nobody wanted to hear. Improbably, Terry, who at the time was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, got the story. The four major Times stories he wrote about the terrorists and the 9-11 plot were later expanded into a book called Perfect Soldiers that was widely praised as a remarkable feat of reportage. “We’ll never know it all, but Terry McDermott comes as close as anyone has – and perhaps ever will – to explaining how nineteen zealots came to the place they did,” wrote the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh, the dean of investigative reporters. “It’s in all the details, and they are all here. This is journalism at its best.” The work took its toll. He returned to his wife and two daughters in Manhattan Beach looking for respite. “I came back and I was just exhausted,” Terry said…
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