Posted on 07/25/2002 10:55:57 AM PDT by 1bigdictator
Thought this name rang a bell...
John O'Neill, director of security at the World Trade Center, became an expert in terrorism over three decades in the FBI. He retired as the head of the agency's national security division in New York two weeks before the attack. With the FBI, he supervised the on-site investigations of the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last year, as well as the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Friends and family believe O'Neill was in his 34th-floor office when the first hijacked plane crashed into the tower. Within minutes, O'Neill was outside on the sidewalk, calling a close friend and his son, J.P. O'Neill, from his cell phone to assure them he was safe. He then called FBI headquarters before re-entering one of the towers to assist in the evacuation. "He didn't have to be there," New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said.
O'Neill sounded the alarm on terrorism for many years. An 1996 article, published in the Van Impe Intelligence Briefing, quoted him as saying, "A lot of these groups [international terrorist organizations] now have the capability and the support infrastructure in the United States to attack us here if they choose to do so."
O'Neill also correctly predicted the increasing destructiveness of future terrorist attacks. In his 1997 watershed speech, presented to the National Strategy Forum, O'Neill said:
"The only thing that knocked O.J. Simpson off of television, his trial, was the Oklahoma City bombing case. The larger the attack, the more newsworthy they can make it. ... We are concerned about the lethality of the attacks. We're very, very concerned that we seem to have a rash of both problems in the international side and the domestic side at the same time. And we are also concerned now that we have had obviously a lot of conventional types of attacks, but now we're starting to see unconventional types of attacks like the attack that took place in Tokyo with an unconventional type of weapon."
I will conclude this tribute to John P. O'Neill with his own powerful and prophetic words. During that same 1997 speech, he also stated:
"I think interesting times lie ahead. Certainly, we as citizens will be challenged. I know the FBI will continue to be challenged in the years to come. Unfortunately, I cannot predict that no Americans will be injured or killed as a result of a terrorist attack. And in fact, it will happen as long as violence is seen as the way to move along political or social agendas. We will have terrorism as a problem to contend with. Hopefully, working together, we will continue to reduce the amount of terrorism to its lowest amount possible."
It is a tragic irony that our top terrorism authority died in the world's deadliest terrorism attack.
For some time he had been telling his bosses and whoever would listen that Yemen, where the attack on the USS Cole took place, held the key to unraveling Bin-Laden’s network.Bodine's BioThe Yemenis, he felt, like the Saudis, had been withholding crucial evidence about Al Qaeda. In one trip to Saudi Arabia intended to allow him to interrogate suspects, he discovered on his arrival in the country that the suspects had been executed.
He had not expected much more from the Yemenis when he arrived in Aden, the Yemeni capital, in 2000.
What he had not anticipated was that the US State Department, through its representative in the country, Barbara Bodine, would seek to stymie his investigation.
Bodine would later describe her first meeting with John O’Neill in an Aden hotel in terms which were less than glowing. In fact, she trivialized the episode by saying that when she saw him walk into her hotel room she thought, “You’d better get rid of that suit” in this climate.
The fact was that Bodine was there to smooth out the political relationship with the Yemen government. O’Neill was there to find the terrorists who bombed the USS Cole and the masterminds behind it. Of all the intelligence he had, there was one crucial piece: satellite phone intercepts had identified a leading Al Qaeda operative in Aden who had been regularly in touch with Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
While Bodine wanted to play footsie with the Yemenis, John O’Neill wanted results and he had arrived there prepared to kick in doors to get them.
His other genuine concern had been for the safety of his large team of agents and others he had planned to arrived in the country. He told Barbara Bodine that they needed to have the necessary firepower to protect themselves – not their customary .38, 9mms or .45 semi-auto pistols. That had not sat well with Bodine who insisted that O’Neill and his agents should maintain a low profile. He had known better what he was up against. He and his men would be a target and a vulnerable one if not properly armed.
After heated arguments, Bodine with the approval of her bosses in the State Department in Washington reluctantly agreed that 25 FBI agents could carry automatic weapons. Her dislike of John O’Neill’s brusque, no-nonsense style – the only one likely to be effective – led to her firing off complaints to Washington that O’Neill’s tactics could damage US-Yemen relations. In effect, she quickly won the battle but lost the war. Her constant sniping at O’Neill reached the media in the US. I wrote to John O’Neill an off-beat piece about Bodine and later talked to him about her.
What she had failed to understand – and it would become apparent later – the Yemeni who had been in contact with Bin-Laden turned out to be an uncle of the one of the 9/11 hijackers. The coverage of the O’Neill-Bodine dispute led to the State Department lobbying the White House and the FBI Director, Louis Freeh, to remove John O’Neill from Yemen. Freeh had been reluctant to do so but had to give way to the pressure on Capitol Hill.
It would prove to be a crucial error by Bodine and her allies in Washington. The one man with an intimate knowledge of Al-Qaeda had been removed from the case.
She was a Clinton appointee. Upon further research on her...I found this...
In conversations with General Tommy Franks, the Commander of Central Command, and U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine, [Carl] Levin was informed that the Yemeni officials have been "fully, actively and completely cooperating"and have provided information that has been "vital, critical and fundamental" to U.S. officials involved in the investigation. Based on this information, Levin urged Young and Callahan to consult with General Franks and Ambassador Bodine before taking any further steps on the proposed legislation [which would make aid to Yemen contingent on assurances that Yemen is fully supporting the investigation. ].Funny thing too...I just read the story Yemeni admits smuggling $500,000-plus to Mideast a few minutes ago.
Are we sure her middle name was not Jethro?
One of those facts that is still unresolved is what parts the relocated Iraqi Troops to the area had in the event. Those soldiers were brought in by GHWBush and approved by Clinton. WHY? That hasn't been answered. It is only NOW being floated by the government that Iraqis probably played a part in the bombing.
The same issue is obvious in the WTC event: Saudis were in it to the max. Some of the participants were on International Terrorist Lists that were supplied to our intel functions, including the FBI and CIA. WHY were they allowed to travel freely in this Country, even to the point of being TRAINED here?
There is no legitimate excuse for faulting only ONE administration, the Democrats, in our current situation. And as painful as it appears to be to the True Believers, BOTH parties have agendas that are not beneficial to Our Nation.
I like your use of plural with regard to Agendas. For indeed both parties have certain agenda items of their own despite the fact that -- particularly on issues as critical to this nation's safety and economic wellbeing as the appeasement of Chinese communists -- the message they're sending is essentially the same.
Likewise, the facts are incontrovertible that -- on issues such as abortion which have polarized the nation and excused both failures of conscience (or "Personal Conviction") and amoral compromises -- things are not always what they seem.
The GOP's pointing to the Dems' litmus test on abortion as the unifying factor which makes the ragtag Rainbow Coalition so formidable as a "political reality" seems rather disingenuous at best given the fact that legal abortion is the "vital" linchpin of GOP-confected population control strategies at home and abroad.
The patently obvious continuity of the National Security Council only confirms the cooperation between parties ... the Dems perpetually "teeing the ball" with their clown car foreign policy so that the Adults can come in and Clean-Up, one way or another.
(Missed this one somehow -- thanks IronSoldier: Bush Re-organizes National Security Council)
Was the BATF in fact responsible, knowingly or unknowingly, for the explosion that destroyed the Murrah building? Consider the following article which appeared in the June 5, 1995 issue of Newsweek:
"For the past year, the BATF and the Army Corps of Engineers have been blowing up car bombs at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. The project, codenamed Dipole Might, is designed to create a computer model to unravel terrorist car-and truck-bomb attacks. By coincidence, a BATF agent assigned to Dipole Might, happened to be in Oklahoma City on April 19th, working at the Federal Courthouse, which stands across the street from the Murrah Building. He saw the devastation and called the BATF office in Dallas. The Murrah Building had just been hit by 'ANFO' (ammonium material) bomb of at least several thousand pounds, he reported. Within minutes, explosives agents trained under Dipole Might were dispatched to the scene. They identified the type and size of the bomb almost immediately."
Just how this agent (Harry Everhart) was able to immediately ascertain the building had been blown up by an ANFO bomb, when no forensic analysis had yet been conducted, is unclear. When Phil O'Halloran, a freelance journalist, attempted to ask the BATF Public Relations Bureau why a Dipole Might expert just happened to be in the courthouse at that moment, and how he could immediately have known the exact nature of the bomb, O'Halloran, rather than be given a rational explanation, was accused of attacking the agency and was promised a fax of agency views on right-wing conspiracists (which never arrived)....
It also seems that the "coincidence" of the BATF's Dipole Might tests were uncannily similar to the May 24, 1990 bombing of Earth First! activist Judi Bari. The FBI claimed that Bari and her companion Daryl Cherney, who were on their way to a peaceful protest rally, had inadvertently blown themselves up with their own pipe-bomb.
After Bari sued the FBI for false arrest and civil rights violations, she found out through court discovery that the FBI ran a "bomb school" at Eureka College of the Redwoods in April of 1990 for both FBI and local police. The classes included blowing up cars with pipe bombs, ostensibly to demonstrate tactics used by terrorists (the same reason cited in the BATF case). The instructor for this "school of terrorism" was none other than Frank Doyle Jr., the FBI bomb squad expert who showed up at the scene of Bari's car bombing one month later.
According to Freedom of Information Act records, the Treasury Department's (BATF is under the Treasury Department) Project Dipole Might was actually initiated under the authorization of Clinton's National Security Council. One of the stated purposes of the Dipole Might project was to produce computer models of bombings to "be displayed in a courtroom to aid in the prosecution of defendants." Naturally, the Justice Department plans on using the video tapes shot at White Sands during the trial of McVeigh and Nichols to "prove" that an ANFO bomb blew up the building. As Lawrence Myers, writing in Media Bypass magazine wrote:
Why the National Security Council would fund such an ATF project, despite the absolute rarity of the crime, has not been explained. Nor has it been explained as to what specific threat assessment information the government had when it decided to engage in such a project, just a few months before a Ryder Truck laden with ammonium-nitrate fertilizer exploded in front of the Murrah Building.
As Myers points out, the last-known case of a truck bomb exploding in the U.S. was in 1970, when an ANFO bomb exploded in front of the ROTC building at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. Why then, would the National Security Council suddenly feel the need for detailed information regarding ANFO truck-bomb attacks?
Was the BATF expecting such a bombing? Were they in fact responsible for blast or the secondary damage to the building? Or was the building wired for demolition as part of a larger plot?
"I'm firmly convinced that the BATF is guilty of an awful lot of things," said Bud, our ex-Green Beret friend. "I mean, if you look at what the BATF and the FBI did to Randy Weaver (and at Waco), it's just awful. They've gone hog wild and have [become] a power unto themselves."
Asked if he thought a rogue group or special unit within the military/intelligence community could or would commit such an act?
"It wouldn't really stun me," said Bud.
Published in the Feb. 3, 1997 Issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright (c) 1997 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com)
And this is exactly Dubya shouldn't get his new Government toys.
People forget the past now that Clinton is gone, but that's just how easy it would be to turn these new "weapons" in the "war on terror" against us as opposed to using them to target suspicious arabs & "terrorists"
All a future administration has to do is "de-emphasize" one group and put the emphasis on another, and viola! Your life is a hell.
We have become so short sighted..
I swear it was a direct cut and paste..
Oh, I don't think so. Whadya gonna do? There's just no integrating replies to the old threads with the new rig, I guess.
(But all that's moot, I see .. =)
More tantalizing hints at "conspiracys" and hidden "agendas"
If you want to consider them "tantalizing", go ahead. I believe there's enough evidence available to bring anyone who still has a semblance of independent, logical thought capability to seriously question what you might consider "unconnected, random, innocent" events and how they came to occur.
Yes. In fact were it not for their bungling 9/11 never would have happened. Organization, Prioritization and information sharing are all that would have been required.
But no, now since they dropped the ball the answer must be yet another huge government expansion and guard troops standing in the air conditioned lobby at the airport.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.