With the media, timing is everything,” says Craig Unger, whose book “House of Bush, House of Saud” is just out. “And now is the time to get to bottom of the events leading to 9-11.”

Formerly deputy editor of the New York Observer and editor-in-chief of Boston Magazine, (Full disclosure: I wrote several articles for Boston Magazine during Unger’s tenure) Unger is back to his first love — investigative reporting — and the results are explosive.

“Without the Saudis, there is no 9-11,” he says. “That’s the ugly truth. When we delve into it, we begin unraveling a thread that is central to American political culture.”

Questions raised in Unger’s book have never been asked in a White House press conference — but should be.

Questions like: Why did the Bush Administration authorize the airlift of 140 Saudis out of the United States immediately after 9-11, when airspace was so restricted that, as recounted in the book’s dramatic opening, a plane carrying a heart transplant for a desperately ill man was forced from the air?

Those flown out included 24 members of Osama bin Laden’s family — and one Saudi prince with reported links to Al Qaeda.

Questions like: Did investments, contracts and donations to individuals and entities connected to the Bush family totaling 1.4 billion over 20 years — the closest financial relationship ever between our rulers and those of another country –enable the Saudis to buy undue influence?

Unger isn’t the only journalist probing the Bush-Saudi connection, but he is one of the most authoritative. Filmmaker Michael Moore has already interviewed him extensively for “Fahrenheit 9-11,” Moore’s Bush/bin Laden-centered follow-up to the Oscar-winning “Bowling for Columbine.”

Like Moore, Unger is highly critical of the role our media has played thus far in telling the story of 9-11. “America’s media have been terrible,” he states. ” They’ve essentially been uncritical, just taking handouts and becoming a bullhorn to broadcast stuff that is demonstrably untrue.”

Meanwhile, says Unger, the truth is there for all to see. “The amount of information that is part of the public record — but NOT part of American discourse — is extraordinary,” he says.

Why aren’t most Americans more aware? Unger blames media consolidation. “It has left us far fewer real voices than is apparent,” he says, “And very little room for independent voices.”

“Those voices heard most often and loudly are tied to powerful media institutions, which must have close relations with those in power,” Unger notes. “There is a deal between those in power and the media — a form of self-censorship. Access is crucial — and tough questions don’t get asked.”

That may be changing, however. “The media is opportunistic, not ideological,” Unger believes. “Are we at a point when the White House loses the battle for control of the narrative, and another story becomes more salable? My book is the counter narrative to what we have been told.”

Whether salable or not, the book has already begun to make waves, with an excerpt in Vanity Fair and substantial serialization in Salon.

“9-11 did not come out of the blue,” Unger concludes. “A series of events led to it, and the best way to understand the story is through the prism of the Bush, bin Laden and Saud families . . . and the secret deal that they-and we as a people-made.”