John O'Neil is a true hero. This book is the basis for the ABC drama on 9/11.

books:


	• The Man Who Warned America : The Life and Death of John O'Neill, the FBI's Embattled Counterterror Warrior Murray Weiss, 2004 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 50 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Ironic and captivating

This is an interesting book on an unusual subject. People like John O'Neill are not usually the subjects of biographies. He wasn't anywhere near prominent enough, and that usually means that someone like O'Neill winds up being a footnote in a book about someone else. Instead, O'Neill was the FBI agent in charge of International security in New York City, and spent much of the 90s as the guy in the FBI who was the most interested in and focused on capturing Osama bin Laden. Ironically, he retired in mid-2001, and took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center. He went back into the South Tower on 9/11 and was killed when it collapsed.

O'Neill, according to the author, was a complex, driven man, a visionary who was one of the first US officials to decide that Osama bin Ladin was worth watching and perhaps capturing. While his FBI career was, in terms of his job performance, impeccable, he had two major weaknesses. First, he was occasionally forgetful, and violated various FBI rules and protocols. In the mid-90s, when Louis Freeh was running the FBI, any violations were punishable, and almost certainly would have a detrimental affect on a person's career. O'Neill was once caught letting a girlfriend onto an FBI secure facility, and giving her a ride in his car. On another occasion, he lost a briefcase full of classified material that shouldn't have been out of the office. Both of these incidents impacted his career and chances for promotion. Second, he had a penchant for chasing multiple women at the same time, concealing each liason from all of his other girlfriends. When he died, each of the women was surprised to find out that there were other women in his life.

Much of the book is devoted to O'Neill's pursuit of bin Ladin, especially the investigation of the bombings at the African Embassies in 1998 and the Cole bombing in 2000. While O'Neill wasn't involved directly in the Embassy bombing investigations, he was in charge of the Cole bombing investigation. However, for whatever reason he ran afoul of the local US ambassador, a woman named Barbara Bodine, who started out asserting her control of the investigation and insisting that the Yemenis were offended by O'Neill, and that only she could smoothe things over. This was before O'Neill had met any of the Yemenis yet, but she insisted it was the case. By the time the investigation concluded, Bodine was so sure that withdrawing the FBI investigators was provocative that she ordered Marine guards to keep the FBI agents in the embassy, and had to be told by her superiors at the State Department to let the agents go. After she'd been transferred back to the States and 9/11 happened, the Yemenis became more helpful, and eventually began cooperating extensively with the US. Ambassador Bodine stuck to her guns, however, and even badmouthed O'Neill in an interview after his death.

You have to wonder about this part of the book. Author Weiss was a friend of O'Neill's, and he clearly sides with him against Bodine. It's difficult to see how she could justify what she did (even if O'Neill was despicable, letting her opinion of him subvert this sort of FBI investigation is inexcusable). I expect that somehow she saw through his private life in some fashion. Weiss says that she had been introduced to O'Neill in New York before she became ambassador to Yemen. Perhaps she saw him at a restaurant with a woman other than the one who was escorting him the night they were introduced to each other.

Regardless, this is an interesting book, even if the author, a journalist, occasionally makes a mistake around the periphery of his story. The one I noticed was the author saying that USS The Sullivans was named for some brothers killed on a "carrier" during World War II. The Sullivan brothers were killed on USS Juneau, an Atlanta-class Light Cruiser. Other reviewers have noted mistakes on the edges of the story, but they don't (in my mind, anyway) detract from the main message of his story.

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True Grit...

John O'Neill grew up in Atlantic City, NJ watching the FBI on TV on Sunday nights. All he ever wanted to do was be an FBI agent and serve his country. The son of working class folks who ran a taxi cab business he dedicated himself to be the finest and fulfilled his childhood dreams. Jonh went to my high-school and lived 5 minutes from where I grew up, I never knew him but after reading this fine Murray Weiss biography I feel I know him as a brother. This book will infuriate you as John O'Neill tries to warn everyone in the government of an impending doom with Bin Laden, who he studied and profiled, much to his chagrin no one listened. How ironic that after so much frustration with the FBI bureacracy and a Clinton Administration consumed by the presidents personal travails that John O'Neill resigns to take over security operations at the World Trade Center one week before 9/11. He perished in the collapse of the towers after he was safely out. He ran back in to try to save people. This book will move you, John O'Neill's story will stay with you. Did he have his own style and personal troubles, sure, but his life is what you will remember, his dedication to his job and the fact that maybe if a few more higher ups had listened to him this tragedy could have been averted. With men like this, you'll believe our country is in good hands as far as the war with terrorism is concerned. It's upper management we should be worried about.

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John O'Neil is a true hero. This book is the basis for the ABC drama on 9/11.

John O'Neill was the most dedicated member of the FBI who committed his life to fighting crime and, ultimately, terrorism. His efforts were discouraged by bureaucracy, ignorance, and the Clinton administration. Read firsthand in this book how he was so close to saving much anguish, sorrow and death in the United States but was stopped in his tracks by others too inept to acknowledge the vision he had for stopping the unfortunate acts of terrorism in New York and Yemen. The cruelest irony is that he died in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in charge of security after he retired from the FBI due to frustration.

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The Man Who Knew Too Much

John O'Neill was a problem. A bull in the china shop. He was a womanizer and he was an exceptionally poor fit at the FBI, but if we had listened to him 3000 people, including him, would not have died at the World Trade Center, the pentagon and on three airline carriers. There seems to be less and less room in America for the mavericks. This book is no white wash. It paints the man in full warts and all. But at the end of it we realize that it was this wildman who was right and all the politicians, hypocrites, sanctamonious twits and stuffed shirt beaureaucrats who drove him from the FBI,or didn't pay attention to him were wrong. The execrable Barbara Bodine who single handedly ruined his mission to Yemen comes in for special criticism. She probably still doesn't think she did anything wrong. We are becoming a silly nation. We've become obsessed with beauratic rules, political correctness on the left, phony piety on the right, and we can't get anything done anymore. Don't read this book merely as a tragedy but look it as a wake up call

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

As a teenager in Atlantic City in the 1960s, John O'Neill dreamed of becoming an FBI agent. Over the next four decades, his charisma, talent, and dedication catapulted him to the top echelons of the FBI in its fight against terrorism and drew him into a world of glamour, intrigue, and power.

Driven by an all-consuming desire to protect Americans, O'Neill rose through the FBI's ranks and played important roles in every major terrorism investigation of the 1990s, including the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and the USS Cole in Yemen; the twin embassy attacks in Africa; and the capture of Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. O'Neill's larger-than-life personality, hard-charging style, and insistent warnings against complacency won him both fervent admirers and bitter enemies among government officials and his crime-fighting colleagues.

In 1995, O'Neill became the first agent to recognize Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network as the single greatest terrorist threat to America. He campaigned relentlessly for increased cooperation between the CIA, the FBI, and U.S. and foreign governments, and made decisions that would change the face of counterterrorism. O'Neill won the respect of many powerful figures around the world and earned a legendary reputation as a bon vivant, an innovative leader, and a bridge builder of important alliances. But O'Neill's confident, charming public persona belied several professional disappointments and the growing strain of secretly maintaining a complex web of romantic relationships. When the FBI and the U.S. government continued to disregard his calls to connect the terror trail to bin Laden and his associates, O'Neill became even more disillusioned and ultimately resigned his post at the FBI. Just days later, John O'Neill perished helping others to safety on September 11, 2001, while on his new job as director of security at the World Trade Center. Ironically, as Louis Napoli of the joint terrorist task force said, "[O'Neill] chased bin Laden all over the world and bin Laden caught up with him." In The Man Who Warned America, Murray Weiss weaves groundbreaking insider insight and hundreds of hardhitting interviews into a masterful tale of John O'Neill's quest to save America.

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