For what it's worth: Now that we're bashing each other's heads in over whether or not 9/11 could have been prevented, this week's PBS Frontline, "The Man Who Knew," could prove to be essential viewing. If there's a repeat locally I highly recommend it; if not, the website offers the program for download. The show was previewed in a short segment on Wednesday night's Nightline. The documentary centers around the story of FBI agent John O'Neill; his tale sounds a lot like one of Clancy's Jack Ryan capers, except O'Neill didn't get away from the bad guys in the end. Even if you don't see the video, the Frontline webpage is fascinating in that it gives an interactive Six Degrees of Separation flowchart, "Connecting the Dots," which shows the direct links between Bin Laden, the '93 WTC bombers, the Bojinka plotters (captured in 1995, one of them confessed plans to crash a jet into a US federal building and train compatriots in US flight schools, even back then), the embassy bombers, Cole planners, and 9/11 conspirators. The flowchart gives an idea of the difficulty in making such connections, yet many of them were first made by O'Neill. A sample: The timeline also offers a valuable perspective. -- Briefly, O'Neill was the FBI's foremost expert on Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and was mostly responsible for unraveling the Byzantine connections between Bin Laden, Al Qaeda members and other Muslim radicals. The tragedy, soon to be made into a television miniseries I'm sure, is that O'Neill, although brilliant and obsessively hard-working, rubbed his superiors the wrong way. He had "sharp elbows." Frontline argues that, if O'Neill had not been henpecked by the FBI's Washington bureaucracy and a particularly short-sighted US Ambassador, he would have had (as one interviewee put it) a "fighting chance" to break up the Al Qaeda and 9/11 threats. He was on the precipice of discovery, but was forced out of the FBI in August of 2001 for the most maddening of petty, vindictive reasons: a misplaced briefcase. Wanting to continue his life's work outside of the FBI, O'Neill took over as head of security for the WTC buildings, because he wanted to help protect their residents from future attacks. On September 10, one friend reports joking about his new position over a beer: Don't worry; they won't hit the same place twice. O'Neill supposedly corrected him, "No, they're going to want to finish the job," and then stated that he thought "something big," an Al Qaeda attack, was going to happen "soon." The next day, he died in the WTC attacks. --- Now we're arguing as a nation about the meaning of “historic” and “warning,” what constitutes an “actionable” threat, and the obtuseness of hindsight. Arguably, O'Neill was prevented from cracking the 9/11 conspiracy by the same types of political wrangling and calcified procedures that have been on full display in the last few weeks. Three years later, we have less O'Neills, and evidently the same number of bureaucrats still so resistant to change.
If reforms in our intelligence services do not occur as a result of the 9/11 Commission and O'Neill's example, I don't think any good will come from this.
I'm not talking on the position of terrorist threats, but evolving threats in general that a slow governmental body has to cope with. We've heard of the bueracracy and office politics in the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon before. These people have found their equilibrium. This isn't the first or last instance. Even if we put some dramatic changes in place it would take several years, not months to implement. What kind of reforms are you looking for in an established hierarchy? Reforms would grant additional powers, but they would also eliminate others. Just like people, any agency, office, or buereau would fight tooth and nail against any influence to rob them of their power or survival. We can change the system, but a majority of the people who are working the system will continue to be there. That mentality would take more than revised guidelines and rules from Congress to fix.
apparently x-files knew too http://www.propagandamatrix.com/lonegunmanpilot.wmv from a march 2001 episode
I saw it aghast! I had forgotten all about O'Neill. There were all kinds of rumors floating around New York about him after 911. It's a great hour of TV. It was PBS, so I'm sure they'll show it again. Should be required viewing.
I watched this last night, and I agree...this episode of Frontline should be required viewing for all Americans. It is absolutely fascinating how close we really were to illuminating 9/11 before it happened, and how we let it get away.
I live in New York now, but didn't move here until long after September 11. I'd read/heard about O'Neill only in passing before last night. I'm extremely curious to know what kind of rumors you're talking about. I'm loathe to admit I largely agree. From what I can gather, the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security really didn't do much in the way of shaking things up; some (of course, they're the ones trying to protect their jobs in the status quo) argue that it did more harm than good. I also have to reconcile my desire for reform and my stance against some/many of the provisions of the Patriot Act. To grant new intelligence powers, it seems like we have to take away our own freedoms. This is not a happy compromise, and I'm not sure I'm willing to make it. Of course, there was a time before the FBI and the CIA. I don't think that merely creating a new bureaucracy will do any good, but there must be some way to, at least in the interim, create a change of departmental focus. I really don't know.
The best one I remember was that when they found O’Neill’s body he had about 15 messages on his cell phone. Rumor was that one of the messages was from Louis Freeh. Now that has never been substantiated and no one knows what was on the message. Another one was that O’Neill tried to get through to the FBI office in New York to try and get them to contact someone to alert the military to scramble but he could never get through. I worked at Morgan Stanley at the time (we lost 23 employees) and I had a passing acquaintance with the vice president of security (he used to bum cigarettes off of me) he would never come out and say anything that he really knew, but I could tell he felt something was weird that day about the military response.
mc mark, Thanks for responding. Did any of these rumors get much local press coverage? I'm something of a news junkie. I tried to keep up with the NY Times during that period, but I could have easily missed it. I'm curious if I should start looking up back issues of the Village Voice or Newsday or something. Wow. I know Morgan Stanley was one of the World Trade Center's biggest tenants. If I'm stepping over the line, feel free to tell me so, but did you work with Morgan Stanley in its World Trade Center branch? Were you there that day? Yeah, because of the 9/11 commission hearings I've tried to do some research lately. It's amazing how much stuff was reported at the time that we then collectively forgot. I found a timeline of the day itself that's pretty remarkable, and deeply unsettling. It's a conspiracy-minded website (and thus should be approached with caution), but what separates it from most other nutjob websites is that it's amazingly well-researched, sourced from major news outlets with links, instead of Lone Gunmen types (a bad pun, I know). If you have a few hours to kill some day, it makes for a great read. I agree with your acquaintance. There does seem to be something fishy, epecially with the way the interceptor jets were scrambled. The website makes a compelling case that the last plane was shot down. I think I remember that theory getting some coverage from Jennings or Rather on the evening news at some point, but not much else. I don't buy most of the conclusions the website draws, especially on its other timelines (which rely moreso on non-major media), but it's unfolding minute-by-minute account of the day itself is the best resource on the subject I've found.
aghast I don't recall any specific coverage in any of the dailies; seems it was mostly office rumors. You're not stepping over the line at all. No, I was very lucky! I worked at corporate headquarters in mid-town and my wife and I were on vacation in Martha's Vineyard that week. Although my wife worked on Wall St. and Broad St. downtown (about 5 blocks from the WTC). For about a month after 911 I had the worst case of survivor depression ever. I just felt like I should have been home (although of course I couldn't have done anything). Friends and family of course were happy as hell that we weren't in town. And during this time is when I truly fell in love with this site and all the people on it. I came home and there was about a 4 page thread from people wondering where the hell I was. I hadn’t posted on the site the whole week after 911 (because I was on vacation) and people were freaking out about where I was. A couple of people on here actually tracked down some of my friends here in New York to see if I was okay. It was the most amazing thing. One old timer claimed that he had a detective friend here in New York and had him track me down. I'll check out your link, it sounds very interesting.
OK. They certainly seem in the realm of credibility, even if they did pass through the grapevine. The messages on O'Neill's cell phone would be consistent with his girlfriend's and the Justice Department official's accounts on Frontline of speaking with him on that phone after the towers were hit. That's a remarkable story. You're extremely fortunate, both in the luck of your job placement, and especially for your wife being away from downtown that morning. Very lucky. And your family is right; you were much better off to have been on vacation. I think everybody, on some level, felt a small measure of what you must have felt, the need to be there, wanting to do something; I know I did. America went to give blood, just to do somthing, anything, even though everyone knew it couldn't do any good. (Huh. Small island, small world: I realized this morning on my way to a bakery/deli on 50th that, depending on traffic lights, I walk by that M. Stanley on Broadway just about everyday for lunch; I hadn't really registered it before. I think that's probably the one you're talking about. Nevertheless...) Um, if I'd realized the extent of how it affected you or thought for ten seconds about the relationship you had to the World Trade Center, I might not have recommended that website. Bad, bad memories. I have no connection whatsoever to the people in the planes or the World Trade Center, but to this day I find the play-by-play there, especially the recounting of Flight 93, to be viscerally disturbing. Very cool. I'm kinda amazed that a Houston-based (I guess really Austin-based) sports site devoted to all of our collective hero worship engenders this sense of community. I started reading this website when I was in college (I no longer had the 20Vision / HSN / Fox Sports / WB / TV 51 of my youth to keep up with the Rockets); I've continued to do so in New York. Others here know much more about basketball than I do, and there really are only so many possible variations of complaining about iso- and otherwise selfish play, so I mostly enjoyed just reading the game recaps. Then the Hangout bifurcated, morphing into what is often a relatively astute political/philosophical/theological discussion. I try to keep up with different media persuasions, but I notice that some of the people on this website find articles/issues that I haven't seen elsewhere. Again, fascinating for a basketball site. (I've resisted getting sucked in before, but I guess I've read one too many belligerent posts mucking up the works.) Anyway, back to ESPN 1050. Tied up, and it's getting down to crunchtime.
