John Patrick O'Neill Quotes
They will not stop until they have brought these towers down.
O’Neil was one of the great ironies of the War on Terror. For years before 9-11 he had determined that al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden where major threats to America. However, the then Director of the FBI Louis Freeh had repeatedly told the White House and the national Security Council that they were not a major threat. O’Neil kept insisting that more attention be paid to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and was a very aggressive personality so much that his supervisors drove him out of the FBI. He then took the job of the Director of Security of the World Trade Center where he continued to warn about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. He was killed in the 9-11 attack when his predictions came true. The O’Neil case is yet another example of the people who were the most right in our intelligence apparatus were isolated or pushed out if they tried to command the attention of the nation’s policy makers.
John Patrick O'Neill, 1952-2001, FBI Agent in Charge of the investigation of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, Director of Security, World Trade Center, Reflecting in al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and the first attempt to bomb the World Trade Center, Quoted on, C-SPAN After Words interview with Lawrence Wright, September 10, 2006
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Bush claimed he did not remember the conversation. His incoming National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, was also briefed about bin Laden by the Clinton anti-terrorism director, Richard Clarke. The Bush Administration ignored the warnings until bin Laden struck on 9-11
He controlled a Shiite political party with its own armed militia.
36 days later, September 11, he did strike. See {617467} for some of the specific contents. The memo was kept secret by the Bush administration until public pressure as a result of the 9-11 Commission hearings forced the declassification and release. At that point it became clear that there was no reason that the memo could not have been released much earlier except that it was embarrassing. See {637530} and {637533} for two other Bin Laden Warnings that Bush and his team ignored.
For years of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Palestinians would never negotiate with Israel over anything. Finally that barrier was broken and, the PLO became a negotiating party with Israel. However, the terrorist organization Hamas, had challenged the PLO for political control of the Palestinians and then took over the Gaza strip—part of the Palestinian territory. They then shot thousands of rockets into Israel, a clear act of war under international law. The Israelis then attacked the Hamas infrastructure and any building of facility where they had command or communications, meetings, trainings or stored weapons or ammunitions. The Gazans suffered many more casualties than the Israelis—about 20 to 1 ratio. Many other countries tried to broker a ceasefire which the Israelis agreed to but Hamas would not. The Israeli ambassador was asked on American television if Israel would be willing to negotiate on the larger issues of the conflict as they had negotiated with the PLO. This was his reply. The major problem was that the Hamas Charter had two clauses that made negotiations impossible. Hamas was committed to the destruction of Israel and would not agree that the Israel had a right to exist. Second, the Hamas charter called for the killing of Jews anywhere in the world—men, women and children. The Israelis asked what they would negotiate about given those two charter items and the Hamas terror history in killing as many Israelis as they could.
The threat was if Pakistan did not cooperate with the United States after the September 11 attack. Pakistan was full of Islamic fundamentalists with strong ties to the Taliban and other terroristsw. Pakistan did cooperate as a government but the Musharraf government itself was under attack by the Islamic Fundamentalists who tried to assassinate Musharraf a number of times. Armitage has denied that he said such a thing, but he does admit a conversation where he told them that “they were with us or against us.”
He had continuously been accused of not going after the infamous terrorist who people were suspecting was hiding in Pakistan. The President had heard these reports but maintained that he did not know where bin Laden was. On this occasion he challenged his challenger.
He was criticizing the George W. Bush administration for attacking Iraq, a country which had not attacked the United States or Americans abroad while America did not attack those terrorists and countries which had killed Americans. For example, Hezbollah which blew up the Marine Barracks in Lebanon and the naval ship Cole.
The Security Counsel was meeting it the Situation room at the White House
Terrorism is not new to Islam. It was proscribed by the Prophet when fighting the “enemies of Allah.” There are those who believe that he was not advocating terrorism as we know that term today. Instead they believe that he meant that they should scare and intimidate the enemies of God, and the sura does not explicitly promote or sanction the murder of innocent civilians. They would interpret this quotation to mean “Attack the military enemies of God so severely that they well fear you and be intimidated.” Others see the quotation as an explicit endorsement of terrorism. What better than beheading or exploding random members of a society that is opposing Islam and Allah in order to “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah.”
John Patrick O'Neill was an American counter-terrorism expert who worked as a special agent and eventually a Special Agent in Charge in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1995, O'Neill began to intensely study the roots of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after he assisted in the capture of Ramzi Yousef, who was the leader of that plot.
