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 EXCERPT: OHN O'Neill, the new FBI section chief for counter-terrorism, spent the night of March 8, 1995, studying a rambling communiqué from a little-known Saudi expatriate named Osama bin Laden. At the time, U.S. terrorism experts believed the biggest threats were Hezbollah and Hamas, not something called al Qaeda. A few days after he read bin Laden's angry denunciation of the Saudi royal family for allowing U.S. military bases in their country, O'Neill arrived at a meeting with FBI Deputy Director Robert "Bear" Bryant armed with a developing belief that bin Laden was in fact the world's most pressing threat. Bryant was impressed. "The first time I ever heard of bin Laden was from John O'Neill," he recalled. ONeill also began discussing bin Laden with Richard Clarke, the national coordinator for counter-terrorism. O'Neill compared bin Laden to a young Adolf Hitler, making ominous threats that no one took seriously. "It's like 'Mein Kampf,' he said. "Men you read what this guy says he's going to do, he's serious." In the next three years, O'Neill investigated al Qaeda's bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, was named special agent in charge of the national security division of the FBI's New York office and delivered a speech warning that terrorists could strike on U.S. soil at any time. He was awake at 4 a.m. on Aug. 7, 1998, when the encrypted telephone rang at his Peter Cooper Village home. Two U.S. embassies, in Kenya and Tanzania, had been bombed. He was the first to call the FBI office at 26 Federal Plaza, recalled Detective Pat Pogan. "We have to get moving on this," O'Neill said. "I know who did this. It's bin Laden." O'Neill wanted to fly to Africa to lead the investigation. The bombings had killed 247 people. His New York office had the expertise about bin Laden and he was upset when he was told to wait. But he was outraged later that month when President Clinton, three days after his televised admission about Monica Lewinsky, went on TV again to announce, "Today we have struck back." U.S. Tomahawk missiles were fired at a bin Laden camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan that intelligence sources identified as a chemical weapons facility. O'Neill immediately believed that Clinton launched the attack to deflect attention from the Lewinsky scandal and his impending impeachment. He and a few people side a tight circle of national. security officials also knew that Clinton was using old intelligence in selecting the targets. In fact, it was as much as a year out of date, not nearly fresh enough to justify the launch of a surgically precise air assault. O'Neill wasn't the only major FBI figure who was upset. Amazingly, the White House had failed to notify FBI Director Louis Freeh -- who had just arrived in Kenya. Freeh and Clinton already had a frosty relationship. Hundreds of Freeh's agents were investigate the bombings in two heavily Muslim countries that were loaded with bin Laden sympathizers. "Freeh was pissed" said Lewis Schiliro, then head of the New York FBI office, who was with Freeh. "We had agents on the streets, exposed and wearing FBI jackets, and the White House was firing in missiles. What better targets for reprisals than the FBI?' The missile strikes had no appreciable military impact. But the bombing probe that followed defined the structure of al Qaeda and identified its leaders and key soldiers. Mary Jo White, former U.S. attorney, credits O'Neill. "I cannot overstate it," she said. "John O'Neill in the investigation of the African embassy bombings created a template for all international terrorism investigations." 0'NEILL and Freeh had great respect for each other, but in some ways they could not have been more different... MURRAY WEISS, The Man Who Warned America |
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The Man Who Warned America is the mesmerizing story of John P. O'Neill, a flashy, larger-than-life FBI Special Agent who was one of the first people in counterterrorism to understand the threat posed to the United States by Islamic fundamentalists -- particularly al Qaeda. For years he monitored Osama bin Laden's activities, and was convinced that the terrorist mastermind would one day strike on U.S. soil. When he did strike on September 11, 2001, John O'Neill was among those killed in the World Trade Center, his unheeded warnings now tragically proven correct. Remarked a fellow terror expert, "He chased bin Laden all over the world and bin Laden caught up with him." Author Murray Weiss here presents a respectful and vivid portrait of the brilliant, insightful, dogged, and creative O'Neill. He traces his adventurous and highly successful career as a Special Agent, during which he tracked down suspects including wily pornographers. But most importantly, Weiss recounts in impressive detail how this indefatigable and resourceful patriot tried in vain for years to alert the nation's chief guardians to the threat of militant Islam. Weiss recounts how, as long ago as 1994, O'Neill told Bill Clinton's top counterterrorism advisers that Osama bin Laden was not just a "financier," as the CIA then referred to him, but was building a worldwide terrorist network and planning to target the United States. When terrorist Ramzi Yousef boasted, "Next time, we'll take the towers down," O'Neill was virtually alone in insisting that the terrorists could and would do just that. As such, this book is much more than just the story of one man who loved his country and tried to save her from tragedy and disaster; it is a story of administrative ineptitude, indifference, and misplaced priorities that should serve as a warning to present and future government officials so that 9/11 is never repeated. A sampling of what John O'Neill knew about numerous key terrorism-related areas:
Plus, you'll also learn:
"A phenomenal piece of reporting and writing that grabs you and won't let go until the last page. Like no other book, it takes you inside the dirty secrets of America's internal wars in the fight against terrorism before 9/11. Based on unprecedented access to intelligence and law enforcement officials, The Man Who Warned America will surely be recognized as one of the very best books ever written on why 9/11 happened." -- Steven Emerson, author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us "Much like Winston Churchill, John O'Neill tried to warn his fellow countrymen of an approaching storm of catastrophic proportions. A crime-busting superhero and a flamboyant bon vivant, he 'connected the dots' before most even knew there were dots. Murray Weiss uses his exceptional working knowledge of the history of terrorism and shows, through O'Neill's challenged and conflicted life, a man who tried to win the war that cannot be lost." -- Clint Van Zandt, former FBI chief hostage negotiator, criminal profiler, and NBC-TV analyst
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What did he know. . . and when did he know it ? by Mia T
Clinton's FBI Learned In 1995 Of Plot To Use Terror Jetliner Borderless Network of Terror MANILA -- Abdul Hakim Murad washed his hands, and broke a basic rule of bombmaking. When the water mixed with chemical residue in the kitchen sink of unit 603 in the Dona Josefa Apartments here in 1995, it set off an eruption that would reveal the inner workings of a clandestine terrorist cell allied with Osama bin Laden. It also revealed a plan that gave a chilling preview of the attack in New York and Washington on Sept. 11. Arrested and tortured by Philippine intelligence agents, Murad told the story of "Bojinka" -- "loud bang" -- the code name bin Laden operatives had given to an audacious plan to bomb 11 U.S. airliners simultaneously and fly an airplane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va... Struck reported from Manila, Schneider from Amman and Cairo, Vick from Aden and Baker from Tashkent. Staff writer Bill Branigin contributed to this report. © 2001 The Washington Post Company Clinton Warned on Bin Laden Hijack-Kamikaze Plot Newsmax | 05.16.02 If you don't recall seeing the blaring post-9-11 headline "Clinton Warned on Bin Laden Hijack-Kamikaze Plot," it's not because your memory is failing. In fact, the big media mostly ignored the story - in marked contrast to today's wall-to-wall coverage of news that President Bush received a pre-9-11 CIA briefing on a possible bin Laden hijack plot. And while the warning transmitted to Bush gave no inkling that bin Laden planned to transform U.S. airliners into flying bombs and slam them into American office buildings, in fact, Clinton administration intelligence officials were in the possession of detailed information on an al Qaeda conspiracy to hijack several U.S. airliners - including a plan to crash one of the planes into the Pentagon or CIA. It was called "Operation Bojinka," a 1995 plot hatched by an al Qaeda cell in the Philippines with an eye towards blowing up 12 American airliners. Some would be booby trapped with bombs like Pan Am 103, others hijacked like the four U.S. jets commandeered on 9-11 and crashed into buildings. Though the mainstream press never demonstrated much enthusiasm for the story, Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine detailed what the Clinton administration knew - and when it knew it - for NewsMax.com last October. Citing a Sept. 13 Agence France-Presse report, Irvine noted that Philippine Police Chief Superintendent Avelino Razon had uncovered the plot to "plant bombs in U.S. airliners and hijack others to crash them into buildings like the CIA headquarters." "Razon said (the plot) was found on the computer of Ramzi Yousef, the organizer of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center," Irvine reported. "He had fled to Pakistan, but his laptop was found in the apartment he shared with his accomplice, Abdul Hakim Murad. Razon said both were agents of Osama bin Laden." A later Agence France-Press report noted: "Among targets mentioned (in Yousef's computer files) was the World Trade Center in New York..... CIA offices in Virginia and the Sears Tower in Chicago." Picking up where Irvine left off, the Washington Post quoted a Filipino investigator, who said that as he watched the attack on the World Trade Center on television he exclaimed in horror, "It's Bojinka. We told the Americans everything about Bojinka. Why didn't they pay attention?" Chief Police Superintendent Avelino Razon told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the Philippine intelligence report was passed on to the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Joint Task Force on Terrorism. "It was not given credibility. Otherwise, it could have prevented the destruction of the World Trade Center," he explained. The Clinton FBI was in full possession of all the frightening facts on Bojinka, but did nothing. Instead, as Reed Irvine revealed, the bureau assured Congress that everything was under control. "In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on Terrorism in February 1998, 'Bojinka' - which means 'big bang' - was described by Dale L. Watson, chief of the International Terrorism Operations Section of the FBI, only as a plot to blow up 'numerous U.S. air carriers.' "He said that the FBI had identified 'a significant and growing organizational presence' of foreign terrorists in the United States. He swore the bureau had them under control." The Clinton FBI counterintelligence chief told the Senate that as a result of the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 the FBI had developed an 'enhanced capability' to track terrorist activities. Is it likely that U.S. intelligence possessed this much information on al Qaeda plans to slam planes into U.S. buildings - and didn't tell President Clinton? Actually it is, if you believe the account of his former CIA Director James Woolsey, who said Clinton never bothered to meet with him during his stint as the nation's intelligence chief. What about other administration officials, like Attorney General Janet Reno, who certainly should have known about Bojinka? There Clinton may also have an alibi. During all of 1998 - the same year FBI counterintelligence briefed Congress on the al Qaeda hijack plot - Clinton met with his Cabinet exactly twice: Once in January to lie to them about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, and again in August to come clean about the affair. Want to know more about why U.S intelligence missed the 9-11 clues during the Clinton years. Get your copy of NewsMax.com's "Off the Record" interview with FBI whistleblower Gary Aldrich. Clinton's failure to grasp the opportunity to unravel increasingly organized extremists, coupled with Berger's assessments of their potential to directly threaten the U.S., represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history The clintons' failures unleashed global terror. QED |