Book excerpt: This book series contains some 18 years of warning and analysis published within the U.S. Congress by an organization known as the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. During its remarkably long life, the Task Force issued hundreds of reports comprising thousands of pages of warnings and analyses of the growing specter of the Islamist movement, its increasingly violent nature, and its selection of the Western world as its ultimate target. The depth and breadth of the Task Force's analytical efforts were unparalleled, as were its productive capacity and broad product distribution efforts. The Task Force's astonishing knowledge of the gathering storm that finally broke over New York City and Washington on that fateful September morning is represented in these pages.