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For six years, John O'Neill was the FBI's leading expert on Al Qaeda. He warned of its reach. He warned of its threat to the U.S. But to the people at FBI headquarters, O'Neill was too much of a maverick, and they stopped listening to Him. He left the FBI in the summer of 2001 and took a new job as head of security of the World Trade Center.

ON THE MORNING of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans — and the world — froze, saddened and angry. Five years later, we stop to remember those we lost and those who have sacrificed in our defense since, and to reflect on what we must learn. History will define us not by the events of that day but by who we choose to become as a result. Regrettably, ABC has chosen not to document but to dramatize this most critical of times. Its miniseries, "The Path to 9/11," opts for fiction when fact is needed and chooses mythmaking when the candor of...

Chris Isham in a FRONTLINE interview. CHRIS: The problem is there were other guys in that government who were trying to do everything to prevent that investigation from going forward. And unfortunately, the U.S. government wasn't giving John the kind of backup that he needed to move the thing forward. FLN: In the person of the ambassador? CHRIS: The ambassador was our senior representative on the ground. FLN: What happened between the two of them? CHRIS: I think that what happened was that they had different objectives. John was trying to solve a case. He was trying to do an...

If information is power, then for more than 40 years now Elaine’s has been one of those New York anomalies where power flows as freely as bourbon, traded among tables of law-enforcement officials, government operatives, corporate executives, show-business types and reporters who, one way or another, disseminate the information to the rest of the city —and sometimes beyond. Before he died in the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, former F.B.I. agent John O’Neill was a part of that Elaine’s nexus. Like many of the restaurant’s denizens, he struck a high profile with his slicked-back hair and double-breasted suits....

US sacks its woman in BaghdadWashington replaces its team for the anarchy-hit capital after failures Ewen MacAskill in Baghdad Monday May 12, 2003 The Guardian The US yesterday sacked one of its most senior envoys to Iraq after only three weeks, in an admission that the task of running the country is proving tougher than expected. With Baghdad still in a state of chaos, there was a whiff of panic about Washington's removal of the top layer of its team responsible for reconstruction. There was also a hint that it is being forced to rethink its post-war strategy. Barbara Bodine,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top American officials in charge of running post-war Iraq are being relieved of their jobs in what U.S. officials said was part of a broad shake-up of U.S. operations in Iraq, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. Retired U.S. Gen. Jay Garner, who has overseen the rebuilding of Iraq for the Bush administration over the last three weeks, will be departing with some of his top aides, possibly within a week or two, the Post reported. Barbara Bodine, the American coordinator for central Iraq and the effective post-war mayor of Baghdad, will leave for Washington on...

OMED: Reports began to seep out late in April. There was a new and strange Portland-Iraqi connection. Not the business of the famous (and well watched) local mosque, but something truly bizarre. We ran across it on the famous internet forum, Free Republic, some text of which follows. Iraq Workers Are Promised 1000 Pct. Raise Posted on 04/23/2003 9:12 AM PDT by areafiftyone BAGHDAD, Iraq -Baghdad's self-proclaimed rulers said Wednesday they will use Iraqigovernment funds to pay all state employees their salaries this month - with a 1,000-percentraise - and took credit for advances in getting power, water and hospitals...

Suspects in USS Cole Attack Escape Prison Friday April 11, 2003 12:20 PM SAN`A, Yemen (AP) - Yemeni authorities were hunting for 10 of the main suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole after they escaped from prison Friday, officials said. The fugitives, including chief suspect Jamal al-Badawi, had been jailed in the port city of Aden since shortly after the destroyer was bombed, killing 17 American sailors. Officials at Aden's governor's office would not say how the men escaped early Friday. But they quoted intelligence sources as saying security forces were out in force in a major...

BAGHDAD, Iraq -Baghdad's self-proclaimed rulers said Wednesday they will use Iraqi government funds to pay all state employees their salaries this month - with a 1,000-percent raise - and took credit for advances in getting power, water and hospitals back up and running. They also claimed that the U.S. Army recognizes their authority, meets with them daily and even drove them from Kuwait to Baghdad on American military vehicles. The United States said it doesn't know who they are.Amid the power vacuum left by three decades of one-man dictatorship, it remained unclear who was running Iraq, or if anyone was...

American governor for Baghdad says she does not recognise 'mayor' By Andrew Buncombe in Baghdad 22 April 2003 She has held some of the hardest jobs of any American diplomat, yet Barbara Bodine may be about to take on her toughest challenge yet. Ms Bodine is to become the US co-ordinator for central Iraq, assuming a position that will make her responsible for Baghdad. She arrived in the Iraqi capital yesterday with retired Lieutenant-General Jay Garner, the man who is heading the civilian administration for the entire country. She immediately placed herself at the centre of controversy, saying America did...

U.S. says does not recognise Baghdad "governor" BAGHDAD, April 21 (Reuters) - The United States does not recognise a former exile who says he is governor of Baghdad and Washington thinks his deputy cannot represent Iraq at an OPEC meeting this week, a senior U.S. official said on Monday. Barbara Bodine, coordinator for central Iraq in the U.S. civil administration supervising the country's reconstruction, said Washington did not recognise Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi. "We don't really know much about him except that he's declared himself mayor," said Bodine, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. "We don't recognise him. There hasn't been...

<p>Veteran foreign-service officer Barbara Bodine's appointment as a key player in Iraq's transitional government has angered Defense Department officials and federal law-enforcement authorities who believe that as U.S. ambassador to Yemen, she blocked an FBI investigation into the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.</p>

One of three regional rulers in the post-Saddam Iraq is an unlikely candidate raising some alarms in the intelligence community. Barbara Bodine Her name is Barbara Bodine, a career foreign-service diplomat and former ambassador to Yemen. She will reportedly run civilian affairs in Baghdad and central Iraq along with two other regional administrators. Why the controversy? In 2000, while serving as Yemen's ambassador, she was widely criticized for hampering the FBI's investigation of the al-Qaida bombing of the USS Cole in Aden. She blocked FBI counterterrorism official John O'Neill from returning to Yemen and conducting an aggressive investigation. O'Neill retired...

<p>Veteran foreign-service officer Barbara Bodine's appointment as a key player in Iraq's transitional government has angered Defense Department officials and federal law-enforcement authorities who believe that as U.S. ambassador to Yemen, she blocked an FBI investigation into the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.</p>

Godmother of BaghdadBy Lowell PonteFrontPageMagazine.com | April 8, 2003 THE NEXT KING TO RULE BAGHDAD WILL BE a Queen, much to the consternation of some misogynist, macho Muslim males.  But she will also be attacked in Washington, D.C., by the same Leftist Democrats who fought to keep Saddam Hussein in power.A joke of late is that President George W. Bush plans to divide Iraq into three parts – Premium, regular and unleaded.  Coalition forces indeed have announced creation of a northern, southern, and central zone of the de facto administrative government of Iraq, the Pentagon’s “Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian...

The US is ready to install the first leg of an interim government for the new Iraq as early as Tuesday, even while fighting still rages in Baghdad, officials said yesterday. America's readiness to establish the first stages of a civil administration to run post-war Iraq comes at lightning speed and constitutes a rebuff to European ambitions to stall on the process until some kind of role for the United Nations is agreed. It was reported yesterday that the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has also ruled out any key role for the UN. The decision to proceed with an...

DUBAI (Reuters) - The United States plans to install the first stages of a civil administration to run post-War Iraq (news - web sites) in the southern port of Umm Qasr within days, a U.S. official said on Saturday. Members of the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) are scheduled to start operating in the port as early as Tuesday, the official said. "What we are going to start trying to do, even before the fighting is over in Iraq, is to move to the areas in Iraq that are relatively peaceful, places like...

<p>Reports are circulating that President Bush intends to divide a post-Saddam Iraq into three sectors: north, south and central. Two retired U.S. generals would separately administer the north and south while the central sector, including Baghdad, would be overseen by a woman: Barbara Bodine, a former ambassador to Yemen.</p>

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A former US ambassador to Yemen would likely be named as the interim civil administrator of the Baghdad region under a US plan for a post-war reconstruction of Iraq, US officials said. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the plan calls for dividing Iraq into three sectors with each being run by a separate interim civil administrator during the transition to some form of democratic government. US military commanders will be responsible for securing their areas in the immediate aftermath of a war, but then the job of rebuilding and governing would be...