Threat to the United States. And we better not take them for granted because they are here to hurt us. Narrator but people at fbi headquarters thought john oneill was too much of a maverick, and they stopped listening to him. You could be flagged as a problem, and your career could pretty much be over. Narrator oneill left the fbi and took a new job as head of security at the World Trade Center. Of all the places to go to work and of all the ways that you could lose your life. Narrator tonight, frontline investigates the internal power struggle at the heart of the fbis failure on september 11. Frontlinis made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public broadcasting. Major support for frontliis provided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information is available at macfound. Org. Additional support is provided by the park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and Helen Glessner family trust, supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. The wyncote foundation. And by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. Tonights program contains graphic imagery. Viewer discretion is advised. Narrator there was, after the horror of september 11, the inevitable question did anyone in the government know . The move from chicago to headquarters in washington was a big promotion for special agent john oneill. He drove all night from chicago and went straight to the office on a sunday morning. Hed just arrived when the white house called. dial tone telephone dialing telephone rings it was a sunday morning. Fbi. But i was in my office and i was reading intelligence, and i saw a report that indicated that the man who had plotted the World Trade Center bombing in 93, the ringleader, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. He was about to move within pakistan, and there was a small window, a closing window, to catch him. And so thinking there might be somebody at the fbi on a sunday morning, i called. Narrator oneill had made his reputation investigating whitecollar crime, drug rings, and Abortion Clinic bombings. I said, whos this . And he responded, well, who the hell are you . Im john oneill. And i explained to him, im from the white house and i do terrorism, and i need some help. And i told him our story on the classified phone line, and he went into action. Narrator in 20 years, hed chased a lot of bad guys, but nobody like ramzi yousef. Yousef is one of the most dangerous people on the planet, very smart. Getting him and incapacitating him was a significant Public Safety issue, and john oneill recognized that, was not about to take no for an answer anywhere before he was taken into custody. telephone dialing telephone rings white house. Oneill put together an arrest team that managed to catch Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in pakistan, just before he moved into afghanistan, which wouldve been beyond our reach. It was a pretty intense couple of days, but it worked. Narrator for the next six years, oneill and his agents would follow the bloody and complex trail from ramzi yousef to Osama Bin Laden. The picture was still fuzzy i mean, it was by no means sharp that there was an emerging global islamic fundamentalist terrorist network that was becoming more and more engaged in the objective of attacking american targets. When yousef fled from the trade Center Bombing in 1993, among the places he went, really right before he was apprehended in pakistan, was to the philippines, where he was mixing the bombs to blow up, you know, 12 jumbo jets in a 48hour period and was not far away from at least attempting to carry out that plot, which would have resulted in thousands of deaths in two days. Narrator from the beginning, oneill obsessed about the details of the ramzi yousef case. He dug into that plan to blow up the planes, known as the bojinka plot. Investigators had found a connection with the World Trade Center bombing that led to yousefs coconspirator, ahmad ajaj, and a terrorist training manual with a title that would translate into al qaeda the base. They uncovered a list of phone numbers called by yousef and other World Trade Center conspirators from their safe houses. One of those numbers belonged to Osama Bin Laden, identified by an early cia report as an islamic extremist financier. I think if you ask most terrorism experts in the mid1990s, well, what about this man bin laden . , most people in the mid1990s would have said, ah, yes, the financier. The terrorist financier. What oneill said was, no, this man is not a financier. The money is money for a purpose. The purpose is building a worldwide terrorist Network Based out of afghanistan, the point of which is going after the United States and after governments friendly to the United States, particularly in the arab world. Narrator once convinced bin laden was a threat to america, oneill began a campaign within the fbi to sound the alarm. The first time i ever heard the name Osama Bin Laden was from john oneill, and john oneill was very much aware of who he was, who his group was, al qaeda. Narrator over time, robert bear bryant would become second in command at the fbi. He was a person that i had immense personal regard for, and we could argue like a couple of thieves in the night. Narrator oneill argued for a plan that would represent a Seismic Shift in the way the fbi had always operated. He would give authority to a new, more analytic agent who would have enhanced technology to fight the new terrorism. That directly threatened the dominance of the group who held sway over the culture the criminal division. From his point of view, it was very clear what had to be done. You would basically have a whole branch of the fbi that would be. Not be touched by the criminal side. Narrator the criminal side the j. Edgar hoover gmen who carried the guns and made cases and arrests. The man who would eventually lead the criminal division, tom pickard, aggressively competed with oneill for the attention of the director, louis freeh. As a former street agent himself, freeh identified with the criminal division, and tom pickard was a longtime friend. To reinvigorate the counterterrorism effort, oneill would try to muscle his way through the bureaucracy that surrounded louis freeh. But in that struggle, oneills personal style got in the way. They said he was too intense, pushed too hard, had what they called sharp elbows. We often talked and joked about the fact that we werent really in the club and we really didnt care. And that was something that john and i had shared on occasion, and there is a difference between those people who spend time in an organization and are happy to make it to the top and have never rolled over a stone or created a problem or solved a problem, you know, just to carefully run through and be there and be promoted. John was not like that. Narrator oneill just didnt do anything the fbi way, where at the end of a long shift, they went home to their families. He was the type of guy who put his arm around you and take you out to dinner and smoke cigars and drink whiskey with at the end of the day, and talk about all the issues in great depth. And he. Thats. He took his business beyond the work hours and well into the evenings, and hed like to do that. Narrator and in the button down fbi, oneill was considered too flashy. It was the presentation. It was as he would call it it was the package. They resented sort of the burberry suit and the white pocket square and the expensive tie and the bruno magli shoes. You know, this wasnt the bureau. I kind of thought he was kind of a dandy. You know, he was impeccably dressed like, his fingernails were polished and his hair swooped back. And a bunch of us kind of, you know, started to call him the prince of darkness. He worked both ends of the candle pretty hard. We had a morning briefing every morning at 7 30. Sometimes he would come in late, and id tell him i wanted him there. I dont care if he came in his slippers and pajamas, be there. And he was. laughter narrator oneills days were spent analyzing fragments of information. There was the story about two of Ramzi Yousefs bojinka coconspirators, Wali Khan Amin Shah and abdul hakim murad. In 1995, murad told a story of middle eastern pilots training at u. S. Flight schools and of a proposal to divebomb a jetliner into a federal building. It was a tantalizing bit of information. Agents were dispatched but then withdrawn. The investigation languished. I had a fairly low opinion of our headquarters throughout my whole career. It seemed like, you know, the headquarters was a very negative place where they would find a million reasons why you couldnt do something as opposed to why you could do something. Narrator James Kallstrom was the powerful boss of the fbis new yorkffice. Watching from a distance, he saw oneills attitude and expertise make enemies among the group that surrounded louis freeh. Yeah, im sure there was some jealousy in the bureaucracy. There always is. You can get by with some sharper elbows for a while, but you need to be right a lot. You know the old saying when you run with the wolves, dont trip, you know . Narrator at headquarters, a whispering Campaign Began about oneills personal life. There was one version married his High School Sweetheart and had a couple of kids. Then there was the truth. John had been separated from his family for some time, and i think john would have said to you his family suffered as a result of that, as a result of his devotion to his job. I think the fbi was his mistress. He loved it. He loved it more than he loved any woman in his life. He loved it. Narrator and he loved valerie james. Very first time i saw john, i did something i had never done before and will never do again. I sent him a drink. He just had the most. He was standing at the bar, and he had the most compelling eyes i had ever seen. Narrator she had her own children, and after a while, they started calling him dad. He hinted he might marry their mom. The trouble was he hadnt told her he was already married. I didnt know for two or three years. And someone that john worked with in the fbis wife told me, and it was bad. I was shocked, you know. My family was shocked. Um. I loved him. It had been two or three years by that point. What are you going to do, you know . Narrator there werent exactly fbi regulations against oneills behavior, but there were unwritten rules of the road, and the whisperers said oneills lifestyle made him unfit for his sensitive job. But for every enemy oneill made at headquarters, it seemed hed made an ally elsewhere. One of them, in the midst of her own struggle with louis freeh and the headquarters bureaucracy, he kept secret. The attorney general had seen john at meetings, knew he was an expert from his position at the fbi, and she would frequently say, well, what does john think . There were times i was sitting in her office and shed ask that, and id say i didnt know, and she said, well, call him. And literally, i would be dialing johns cell phone from the attorney general of the United States office. And you know, hed get on the phone, hi. How are you . And i said, look, im in ms. Renos office. And so, if she wanted to know, she knew she had the ability to reach out to him. This made him, in fairness, a little bit uncomfortable. He knew that this would not have been looked upon kindly by other people in the bureau. Narrator around washington, oneills allies and drinking buddies began to warn him that he should take his al qaeda crusade to a field office; he should leave headquarters. You got to be careful whose toes you step on, particularly in washington, because theres some pretty big shoes, and he. He created some headaches for himself at headquarters because he did manage to step on some toes. Narrator there was an opening in the new york city division. The boss up there, Jimmy Kallstrom, was also a tough guy, a thorn in washingtons side. He grabbed oneill saved him, really. At headquarters, they were happy to see him go. And on january 1, 1997, john oneill moved to new york. miles daviss blue in green playing it was a promotion assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism and national security. Hed be in charge of a team of about 350 agents. And best of all, it was in new york. New york was the Flagship Office of the fbi. Its where it happens, in new york. I mean, thats where you wanted to be if you were an fbi agent. So its only natural that john oneill, whos you know, his whole life was the fbi, from what i could see would want to be in new york. Narrator in the new york office, they were still piecing together the evidence in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Theyd also had new information that bin laden had been involved in the shooting down of two american black hawk helicopters in somalia. The confession of captured al qaeda member Jamal Ahmed Al fadl told of Osama Bin Ladens efforts to develop chemical weapons, buy weaponsgrade uranium, and to spread the Al Qaeda Network into europe. Oneill was becoming obsessed, haunted by the specter of bin laden. My dad had a lot of video of Osama Bin Laden. Whatever was out there was actually in his apartment. He studied him several times. Watched the videos, i know, several times. He would watch videotapes. He would read whatever material he could get his hands on. We had a fax in the house. People would fax him information all the time. John would sit in bed or sit on the couch or wherever and constantly underline everything. He was obsessed by him. I think theres no question about it. He always knew that there was so much more that he didnt know, and thats what spooked him. What spooked him and what really used to drive him crazy was what he didnt know and how much was out there that he didnt know. Two bombs minutes apart exploded without warning friday outside the u. S. Embassies in nairobi, kenya, and dar es salaam, tanzania. We had turned on the tv, watching cnn, and john oneill put it together in relatively short order and was convinced in his own mind that al qaeda was behind that. That clearly was the event that changed bin ladens profile dramatically because it was such a major event. Two embassies done simultaneously showed a great deal of sophistication in the organization. So this was a major event. Narrator but at headquarters, the brass were engaged in a procedural dispute. Were in the command center, and people are being pulled in. Im over there. Theres all sorts of Senior Bureau people there. Everybodys coming together. And the reason that this becomes a significant question almost immediately is because the fbis got to deploy people overseas. Theyre going to deploy people initially to kenya and tanzania. And whos going to be the onscene commander . Narrator oneill believed his experience and expertise made him the obvious choice to lead the investigation as the onscene commander. elevator dings but down in the sioc, there were those who wanted to cut new york and oneill out. telephone dialing telephone rings fbi. Narrator on the q. T. , townsend called oneill. And he was, to say angry, disappointed, hurt. There becomes this bureaucratic arm wrestle over whos going to be the office of origin. Narrator oneill desperately needed the help of u. S. Attorney mary jo white. U. S. Attorneys office. He and i were both very adamant that the new york field agents who were most knowledgeable about bin laden and the Al Qaeda Organization get over to africa as quickly as possible as the investigation was unfolding, because those first few days are often the most critical to whether you capture somebody or not, or figure out whos involved. Narrator and as it happened, Deputy Director bear bryant was out of cell phone range, on vacation. So the head of the criminal division, one of those men in louis freehs inner circle, tom pickard, was temporarily in charge. He decided the new york team would not take the lead in the investigation, washington would, and john oneill would not get command. This is the world series and hes gotten benched, and thats exactly how he feels about it. And he is very hurt, very upset about it, and. And bitter. Narrator oneill hit the phones. He ended up venting to bear bryant. I said, youre going to have a stroke. He was so intense. Interviewer this is the first guy you heard the word al qaeda and bin laden from. Shouldnt he be there . Well, he wasnt. Interviewer but that wasnt your decision. I got a feeling that wasnt your decision. Well, he wasnt there. Interviewer it wasnt your decision, was it . He wasnt there. Narrator stuck in new york, oneill had to be content to learn as much as possible long distance. Agents in east africa had found another training manual nearly identical to the one found in the World Trade Center bombing. One cooperating witness revealed that bin laden was planning to send operatives to the u. S. For pilot training. A computer found in a raid showed hundreds of targets around the world already surveilled and approved. Oneills agents identified a man named Mohamed Rashed daoud alowahali. He led them to a safe house in yemen that acted as a kind of terrorist telephone exchange, relaying messages to and from bin laden in afghanistan. Certainly after the Embassy Bombing in africa in 98, it was very obvious that what john was saying was right, that this was more than a nuisance, that this was a real threat. But i dont think everyone came to the understanding that it was an existential threat. The question was, yeah, this group is more than a nuisance, but are they worth go