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Hide sidebars (Alt+S) 12 Browse Column (68) 13 Previous (29) 14 Next (38) John O'Neill: An Unbelievable Life Mark Ames By Mark Ames ( INS: INS: editor at exile ru :INS :INS ) 15 Browse Author (113) 16 Previous (38) 17 Next (74) The 9/11 anniversary was almost impossible to live through. It made me thank God, or Russia, again, that I'm not living in America. If you were moved by any of those articles or retrospectives, or if you thought that Americans really reflected on things, you're just wrong. What was most remarkable and terrifying about the American media retrospectives was not just that they dished out all the sentimental patriotic crap we all expected. What's really disturbing is considering everything that they DIDN'T write about, and still won't. But everyone is getting stupid and crazy right at the point when, in previous crises in American history, Americans used to get smarter and meaner. It's all personified in the American president Bush - dumb, corrupt, unintentionally reckless, and totally convinced of his moral righteousness. For example, we know that the Bush Administration lied, just flat-out lied to the public, when they told us over and over that they had no idea and no warning that a terrorist attack of this type would happen. They knew that these very attacks were planned, ready and coming. They lied, and they knew that they lied when they told us. And when the lie fell apart this spring, when the FBI agents came forward and the intelligence reports were leaked about how they did expect this sort of attack, they lied again and jammed the airwaves with warnings of impending nuclear terror attacks. And the most amazing thing of all was how this was met with a collective shrug. We're not talking about a simple corruption story - we're talking about the biggest attack ever on America, about war and our potential destruction. Fear is the only reason I can think of that the American press didn't push that story, the story of how the Bush people, our supposed friends, lied to us in the days and weeks after the attacks, and then scared the shit out of the country to cover up the lies when they were exposed. In this special post-9/11 press review, rather than going through the depressing exercise of picking apart all that was grotesque and deluded in the press coverage of the anniversary, I'm instead offering a 9/11 anniversary story that has received far too little coverage than it deserves. I assumed that this would be a big story in the 9/11 retrospectives, because it's certainly one of the most bizarre stories about 9/11. Of all of the bizarre circumstances and personages tied to the September 11th attack, no single character throws the official American version more into doubt than former FBI counter-terrorism chief John O'Neill. His fate is so strange that it seems to have been scripted by a B-movie director or a first-time spy novelist. Perhaps the only thing stranger than O'Neill's fate is the mainstream American media's near-total reluctance to pursue the story of their former counter-terrorism chief. The story really begins in 1993, when O'Neill, a lifetime FBI agent, was brought out from the Chicago field office to New York City as one of the FBI's six lead investigators of the World Trade Center bombing, which left six dead and over 1,000 injured. His success in the investigation into the first WTC bombing - he coordinated the Pakistan arrest of Ramzi Yousef- - propelled him two years later to head the FBI's counter-terrorism section in Washington. In 1997, O'Neill continued his ascent, moving to the FBI's National Security Division office in New York where he became the special agent in charge of counter-terrorism. O'Neill was already familiar with bin Laden from his investigations into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 American servicemen died. He became the government's leading expert as well as its lead investigative weapon in the fight against al Qaeda. On the eve of the millennium, the government, acting on information gathered by the FBI, issued warnings that al Qaeda was planning large terrorist acts. At least two plots, one at Los Angeles International Airport and another in Jordan targeting Americans, were foiled. The attack narrowly failed when the rubber dinghy sank due to the weight of the explosives before it could reach the ships. Ten months later - despite all the warning a terrorist could give - another al Qaeda suicide bomber succeeded in getting his rubber dinghy up to the side of another American warship, the USS Cole, in Yemen's harbor, killing 17 US sailors. O'Neill led the investigation into the bombing of the Cole, which again was blamed on Osama bin Laden. As O'Neill and his team probed deeper into the Cole bombing, his investigation was abruptly thwarted by, of all people, the United States ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine. This account of how a local ambassador was able to thwart the single most important investigation to America's national security just because she didn't like the lead investigator's manners is impossible to swallow. What's more incredible is that the FBI allegedly wasn't allowed to return to Yemen to continue their investigation until Bodine left her ambassadorship in August 2001. She had served as the State Department's Political-Military officer for the Arabian Peninsula, as Deputy Principal Officer in the embassy in Baghdad and then moved to Deputy Chief of Mission in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion and occupation in 1990. In 1997 Bodine, after serving as the State Department's associate director in counter-terrorism, was appointed ambassador to Yemen, birthplace of bin Laden. Clearly Bodine wasn't your typical rich-donor ambassador. Yet just as clearly, she couldn't have stopped O'Neill's, and the FBI's, investigation, all on her own. The move must have been blessed by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and/or others at her level. The coincidences in Bodine's timing should alone raise eyebrows: the FBI's lead al Qaeda expert barred from investigating the terrorists' attack from November 2000 until August 2001 - that is, until the next attack. If it's not strange, it is at the very least infuriating as hell that the investigation was thwarted due to bad manners. It's possible that information from the Cole investigation could have led to information about the 9/11 plans. In fact, up until August 2001, probably no one in the press even knew that the FBI had been banned by Bodine from investigating the USS Cole. In August, as you'll see, the campaign to blame it all on John O'Neill's character began in earnest. On August 19th of last year, the New York Times ran a story clearly leaked by the FBI accusing O'Neill of having lost a highly sensitive briefcase during an FBI conference. Two days later, a similar article appeared in the Washington Post. The events in the article are so totally absurd that the article needs to be quoted here in its original: By Cheryl W. Thompson Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 21, 2001; Page A06 The head of the FBI's counterterrorism division in New York is under investigation for leaving his briefcase filled with classified information that was later stolen and found in another hotel, FBI sources said yesterday. O'Neill, a 31-year veteran of the agency with a reputation as a top-notch investigator, was attending an FBI conference last year in Tampa when he was paged. Surrounded by FBI employees, O'Neill left the soft-covered case near his chair and went to return the page, sources said. When he returned, the group had broken for lunch and the briefcase was gone. The briefcase contained perhaps the single most important document that a terrorist planning to attack New York would want, according to the August 19th New York Times account: Officials identified one document in the briefcase as a draft of what is known in the bureau as the Annual Field Office Report for national security operations in New York. The closely guarded report contained a description of every counterespionage and counterterrorism program in New York and deta...
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