John P. O'Neill

John Patrick O'Neill (February 6, 1952 – September 11, 2001) 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.

He subsequently learned of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and investigated the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen. Partly due to personal friction he had within the FBI and federal government, O'Neill left the Bureau in August 2001. He became the head of security at the World Trade Center, where he died at age 49 while helping others to evacuate the South Tower during the September 11 attacks. O'Neill's life has been featured in a number of documentaries and books.

Early life O'Neill was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on February 6, 1952. As a child, his favorite television show was The F.B.I., He graduated with a degree in administration of justice from American University in 1974 and later obtained a master's degree in forensics from George Washington University.

Career 1976–1995 The FBI hired O'Neill as an agent in 1976. Over the next 15 years, he worked on issues such as white-collar crime, organized crime, and foreign counterintelligence

1995–1999 In 1995, he returned to the FBI's Washington, D.C., headquarters and became chief of the counter-terrorism section. On his first day, he received a call from his friend Richard Clarke, who had just learned that Ramzi Yousef had been located in Pakistan. O'Neill worked continuously over the next few days to gather information and coordinate the successful capture and extradition of Yousef.

In 1999, O'Neill sent a close associate named Mark Rossini to work in the CIA's Bin Laden Issue Station in Virginia. O'Neill had a conflict with CIA station chief Michael Scheuer: O'Neill wanted Rossini to stay at the station and feed him information about what the CIA was doing, while Rich Blee, who had been appointed by CIA chief George Tenet to head of the Bin Laden Issue Station, wanted Rossini out working in the field. Later, when the Bin Laden Issue Station learned that bin Laden's associates Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar were headed to the US with visas, Rossini and his colleague Doug Miller attempted to alert O'Neill, but CIA agent Alfreda Bikowsky allegedly blocked the message. Mihdhar and Hazmi became two of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77 on 9/11.

2000 After being passed over for multiple promotions (to assistant director in charge of national security in 1999 and to head of the FBI's New York office in early 2000 Several people came to O'Neill's defense, suggesting that he was the subject of a "smear campaign". The Times reported that O'Neill was expected to retire in late August.

O'Neill started his new job at the World Trade Center on August 23, 2001. In late August, he talked to his friend Chris Isham about the job. Jokingly, Isham said, "At least they're not going to bomb it again", a reference to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. O'Neill replied, "They'll probably try to finish the job."

Death

O'Neill was killed on September 11, 2001, in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Wesley Wong, an FBI agent who had known O'Neill for more than twenty years, and was in the command center with O'Neill that had been set up following the North Tower crash, last saw O'Neill walking toward a tunnel leading to the South Tower, O'Neill's body was recovered from the debris of the South Tower on September 21. At the National September 11 Memorial, O'Neill is memorialized at the North Pool, on Panel N-63.

Media O'Neill's counter-terrorism work at the FBI as well as insights into his character and private life have been extensively detailed in books and documentaries about the lead-up to the September 11 attacks, including the following:

Books

Television The Man Who Knew (2002), a Frontline documentary about O'Neill The Path to 9/11 (2006), a two-part ABC television miniseries whose protagonist, O'Neill, is portrayed by Harvey Keitel The Looming Tower (2018), Hulu's 10-episode television miniseries adaptation of Wright's eponymous 2006 book, in which O'Neill is portrayed by Jeff Daniels