The Man Who Knew

[2012]

John Patrick O'Neill (February 6, 1952 – September 11, 2001) was a top American anti-terrorism expert who worked as a special agent and eventually Assistant Deputy Director of Investigation until late 2001. In 1995, O'Neill began to intensely study the roots of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after he assisted in the capture of Ramzi Yousef, who was the leader of that plot. He subsequently learned of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and investigated the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen. Partly due to personal friction he had within the FBI and federal government, O'Neill left to become the head of security at the World Trade Center, where he died at age 49 in the September 11, 2001 attacks. In 2002, O'Neill was the subject of a Frontline documentary named "The Man Who Knew."

[2012]

Early life and education

O'Neill was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey and had a desire to become an FBI special agent from an early age. As a youngster, his favorite television show was The FBI, a crime drama based around true cases that the bureau had handled. In 1971, he went to college, first attending American University in Washington, DC. While there, O'Neill also started working at the FBI's Washington headquarters, first as a fingerprint clerk and later as a tour guide. He gained a degree in administration of justice from American University in 1974 and later obtained a Master's degree in forensics from George Washington University.

[2012]

FBI career

O'Neill was hired on as an agent at the FBI in 1976. Over the next 15 years, O'Neill worked on issues such as white-collar crime, organized crime, and foreign counterintelligence while based at the Washington bureau. In 1991, O'Neill received an important promotion and was moved to the FBI's Chicago field office where he was assistant special agent in charge. While there, he established the Fugitive Task Force in an effort to promote interagency cooperation and enhance ties between the FBI and local law enforcement. O'Neill also supervised a task force investigating abortion clinic bombings.

Returning to the Washington headquarters in 1995, he became chief of the counterterrorism section. On his first day, he received a call from Richard A. Clarke, who had just learned that Ramzi Yousef had been located in Pakistan. O'Neill worked continuously over the next few days to gather information and coordinate the successful capture and extradition of Yousef. Intrigued by the case, O'Neill continued to study the 1993 bombing Yousef had masterminded and other information about Islamic militants. He was directly involved in the investigation into the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Frustrated by the level of cooperation from the Saudis, O'Neill purportedly vented to FBI director Louis Freeh, saying that they were "blowing smoke up your ass".

In 1996 and 1997, O'Neill continued to warn of growing threats of terrorism, saying that modern groups are not supported by governments and that there are terrorist cells operating within the United States. He stated that veterans of the insurgency by Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union's invasion had become a major threat. Also in 1997, he moved to the FBI's New York office, where he was one of the agents in charge of counterterrorism and national security.

By 1998, O'Neill had become focused on Osama bin Laden. When his friend Chris Isham, a producer for ABC News, arranged for an interview between bin Laden and correspondent John Miller, Isham and Miller used information put together by O'Neill to formulate the questions. After the interview aired, O'Neill pushed Isham hard to release an unedited version so he could carefully dissect it.

Later that year, two United States embassies were bombed in quick succession in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. O'Neill hoped to be involved in the investigation because he had gained a tremendous knowledge of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network. However, turf wars and dislike of O'Neill by some superiors in Washington first meant that the FBI's New York office was left out of the investigation, and later that O'Neill was left behind when other New York-based agents were sent to the region to pick up leads.

O'Neill's rise through the ranks at the bureau began to slow as his personal style chafed others and he made a few slip-ups by losing a bureau cell phone and Palm Pilot, improperly borrowing a car from a safe house, and losing track of a briefcase with sensitive documents for a short period. After being passed over for multiple promotions, O'Neill was pleased to be assigned as commander of the FBI's investigation into the USS Cole bombing in October 2000. However, upon arriving in Yemen, he complained about inadequate security. As his team investigated, O'Neill came into conflict with Barbara Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen. The two had widely divergent views on how to handle searches of Yemeni property and interviews with citizens and government officials, and they only grew further apart as time progressed.

After a month in Yemen, O'Neill returned to New York 20 pounds (9 kg) lighter than when he left. He hoped to return to that country to continue the investigation, but was blocked by Bodine and others. He continued to investigate the Cole bombing, but eventually decided that the FBI investigation in Yemen must be pulled out due to inadequate security.

In July 2001, O'Neill heard about a job opening at the World Trade Center, and the next month he retired from the FBI.

[2012]

New at WTC job

O'Neill started his new job at the World Trade Center in August 2001. (According to New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, "That Tuesday (9-11) was his first or second day on the job.") He was appointed by Kroll Associates, namely by the controversial managing director Jerome Hauer. Later that month, he talked to his friend Chris Isham about the job. Jokingly, Isham said, "Well, that will be an easy job. They're not going to bomb that place again." O'Neill replied, "Well actually they've always wanted to finish that job. I think they're going to try again."

O'Neill's remains were recovered from the World Trade Center site on September 22, 2001 and identified by Jerome Hauer. Richard Clarke would later recall that only "parts of" O'Neill had been recovered.

In ABC's The Path to 9/11, he was played by actor Harvey Keitel.

The unusual coincidence of O'Neill's death is often cited by supporters of 9/11 conspiracy theories as evidence that the U.S. government was involved in the planning and execution of the attacks.

There is extensive coverage of John O'Neill's anti-terrorist work at the FBI and insights into his character and his private life in the book The Looming Tower (2006) by Lawrence Wright.

[2012]

The original article:

FBI terrorist fighter's body found at WTC
September 22, 2001 Posted: 12:24 PM EDT (1624 GMT)



NEW YORK (CNN) -- The body of John P. O'Neill, a former assistant director of the FBI and an expert on terrorism, was recovered Friday from the rubble of the World Trade Center.

O'Neill had recently retired from the FBI and had just taken over security for the World Trade Center, said New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.

"That Tuesday was his first or second day on the job," Kerik said Friday in an interview with CNN's Larry King Live. . "He was going to go into One World Trade, the tower one, and when the strike came he went into the second tower in an attempt to help people get out of the building and he died there. We found his body today."

O'Neill, 50, was the chief of international terrorism operations for the FBI. He supervised on-site investigations of the bombing by terrorists of the USS Cole in Yemen last year, and the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

A 1996 article published in the Van Impe Intelligence Briefing quoted O'Neill as saying, "No longer is it just the fear of being attacked by international terrorist organizations -- attacks against Americans and American interests overseas. A lot of these groups now have the capability and the support infrastructure in the United States to attack us here if they choose to do so."

In a 1997 speech to a meeting of the National Strategy Forum in Chicago, he called Afghanistan's conflict with Russia "a major watershed event" in terrorism.

Aided by the United States, Afghanistan "beat one of the largest standing armies in the world at that time, which gave them a buoyed sense of success and that they could take on other countries like the U.S. and be likewise successful," he said.

"John was a very good friend ... a great guy, a patriotic American," said New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. "Our hearts and sympathy and condolences go out to his family."

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/21/vic.body.terror.expert/

[2012]

FRONTLINE's story on John O'Neill spotlights two central issues that emerged during the 9/11 Commission hearings held in the spring of 2004 investigating why the U.S. intelligence community failed to prevent the Sept. 11th terrorist attack:

 
- The 9/11 Commission's investigation revealed that America's $30 billion intelligence community, spread over more than a dozen agencies, was disorganized, fractured and impaired by organizational and legal restrictions on the sharing of information.

These disclosures directly relate to John O'Neill's story. He came tantalizingly close to possibly uncovering the 9/11 plot. But his investigations into the USS Cole terrorist attack and into Al Qaeda's presence in the United States were both undermined by the CIA and FBI's failure to share information with each other. Read FRONTLINE's "What If" report for details.

 
- The 9/11 Commission hearings also revealed how the FBI was not capable of functioning as a domestic intelligence service because of limited resources as well as a culture and organization that emphasized a traditional law enforcement approach to counterterrorism. FBI agents were trained to build criminal cases that could be prosecuted. As the 9/11 Commission's Staff Statement noted, "The Bureau rewarded agents based on statistics reflecting arrests, indictments and prosecutions. As a result, fields such as counterterrorism and counterintelligence, where investigations generally result in fewer prosecutions, were viewed as backwaters."

John O'Neill had run up against this FBI culture; his counterterrorism efforts directly threatened the dominance of the group who held sway over the bureau - the criminal division. O'Neill also fought to improve the FBI's resources and capabilities to fight the new terrorism, arguing for a plan that represented a seismic shift in the way the FBI had always operated. One example: He would have given authority to a new more analytic agent who would have enhanced technology to fight terrorism. As the 9/11 Commission hearings disclosed, "66 percent of the bureau analysts were not qualified to perform analytic duties."

   
 
 
Some selections from the 9/11 Commission's Staff Statement No. 9 (April 13, 2004) relating to the FBI's problems in fighting terrorism:

Counter Intelligence Not a Priority--"The FBI took a traditional law enforcement approach to counterterrorism. Its agents were trained to build cases. Its management was deliberately decentralized to empower the individual field offices and agents on the street." ... "The Bureau rewarded agents based on statistics reflecting arrests, indictments, and prosecutions. As a result, fields such as counterterrorism and counterintelligence, where investigations generally result in fewer prosecutions, were viewed as backwaters." ... "Agents developed information in support of their own cases, not as part of a broader more strategic effort. Given the poor state of the FBI's information systems, field agents usually did not know what investigations agents in their own office, let alone in other field offices, were working on. Nor did analysts have easy access to this information. As a result, it was almost impossible to develop an understanding of the threat from a particular international terrorist group."

Reno Told Freeh to Shift Resources to Counterterrorism--"Reno told us that the Bureau never seemed to have sufficient resources given the broad scope of its responsibilities. She said in light of the appropriations FBI received, it needed to prioritize and put counterterrorism first. She also said that Director Freeh seemed unwilling to shift resources to terrorism from other areas such as violent crime. Freeh said that it was difficult to tell field executives that they needed to do additional counterterrorism work without additional resources."

FBI Statistically Driven--"Collection of useful intelligence from human sources was limited. By the mid-1990s senior FBI managers became concerned that the Bureau's statistically-driven performance system had resulted in a roster of mediocre sources. The FBI did not have a formal mechanism for validating source reporting, nor did it have a system for adequately tracking and sharing such reporting, either internally or externally."

Problem of Rotation Through Headquarters--"Additionally, the career path for agents necessitated rotations between headquarters and the field in a variety of work areas, making it difficult for agents to develop expertise in any particular area, especially counterterrorism and counterintelligence."

No Ability to Know What It Knew--"Prior to 9/11, the FBI did not have an adequate ability to know what it knew. In other words, the FBI did not have an effective mechanism for capturing or sharing its institutional knowledge. FBI agents did create records of interviews and other investigative efforts, but there were no reports officers to condense the information into meaningful intelligence that could be retrieved and disseminated."

Reno Warned FBI to Strengthen Intelligence--"Reno told us that she was very concerned about the Bureau's information sharing and intelligence capabilities. In 2000, Reno sent several memoranda to Director Freeh expressing these concerns. One memo stated that 'it is imperative that the FBI immediately develop the capacity to fully assimilate and utilize intelligence information currently collected and contained in FBI files and use that knowledge to work proactively to identify and protect against emerging national security threats.' Reno's requirements involved improved information sharing, improved counterterrorism training, a threat assessment, and a strategy to counter that threat. It is not clear what actions the FBI took in response to these directives from the Attorney General."

   
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/could/911commission.html