Frontline takes on allegations that FBI agent John O'Neill warned about al Qaeda but was ignored. He died in the World Trade Center:
- When the Twin Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, among the thousands killed was the one man who may have known more about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda than any other person in America: John O'Neill.
The former head of the FBI's flagship antiterrorism unit in New York City, O'Neill had investigated the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen. For six years, he led the fight to track down and prosecute Al Qaeda operatives throughout the world. But his flamboyant, James Bond style and obsession with Osama bin Laden made him a controversial figure inside the buttoned-down world of the FBI. Just two weeks before Sept. 11, O'Neill left the bureau for a job in the private sector—as head of security at the World Trade Center. He died there after rushing back into the burning towers to aid in the rescue efforts.
FRONTLINE's "The Man Who Knew," chronicles John O'Neill's story—a story that embraces the clash of personalities, politics and intelligence, offering important insights into both the successes and failures of America's fight against terrorism.
Drawing on exclusive interviews with many of O'Neill's closest friends and associates, this report opens with O'Neill's introduction into the new world of terrorism—the capture in 1995 of one of the world's most wanted terrorists—Ramzi Yousef, the ringleader of the group that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
Former U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White credits O'Neill with quickly grasping the danger Yousef and other terrorists represented to America.
"Yousef is one of the most dangerous people on the planet—also very smart," she says. "Getting and incapacitating him was a significant public safety issue. And John O'Neill recognized that and was not about to take 'no' for an answer before he was taken into custody."
O'Neill immersed himself into learning everything he could about global terrorism and Islamic fundamentalist militancy. In 1997, O'Neill was promoted to special agent in charge of the national security division in the bureau's New York office. Observers say O'Neill grabbed at the chance to head the team that was investigating and prosecuting most major international terrorism cases. The job would also be the perfect base from which to continue his pursuit of bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
But while John O'Neill had succeeded in winning allies among CIA and international intelligence agencies, not everyone within the FBI was so enamored of him. A fixture on New York's celebrity social circuit, O'Neill's flamboyant style and his unconventional personal life—he had several longtime girlfriends and a wife he never divorced—had long raised eyebrows within the FBI.
"The Man Who Knew," gives viewers an insider's perspective on O'Neill's investigations as well as the internal territorial debates among the FBI, the State Department, and the White House over how to deal with U.S. terrorist investigations in East Africa in August 1998 and the Yemen in October 2000.
"[O'Neill] believed the New York field office had the greatest depth of expertise of anybody in the country on this issue, and if it's Al Qaeda, how could you send anybody else but the people who know the most?" recalls Fran Townsend, former head of the U.S. Justice Department's office of intelligence policy.
Article comments
1 - Robin Goodfellow
I happened to catch most of that show. As always with Frontline it was well researched, insightful, and thought provoking. It proved to me that the state department needs a major enema, or else they're petty politicking is going to get us killed (well, more killed). The FBI is not much better (if at all). When I think about how the best man for the anti-terror job is now dead, how none of the boneheads who farked up his al qaeda investigation have been fired (or ever will be), and how the solutions coming down the pike are more bureaucrats with cushy job security I want to scream.
I say we rape civil service job security to hell and back and get some friggen' accountability into federal intelligence and investigation agencies.