The only man who knew it could happen

Frame 2: The Man who Knew,

Network 2, Sunday 8.30pmWHEN Irish American John O'Neill told his bosses at the FBI that Al Qaeda was planning a big attack on American soil, nobody believed him.

But on September 11, 2001, he was, tragically, proven right.

When New York's Twin Towers fell, John O'Neill was among the thousands killed. He was the one man who may have known more about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda than any other person in America.

The former head of the FBI's flagship anti-terrorism unit in New York City, O'Neill had invest-igated the bombings of US embassies in Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen. For six years, he had led the fight to track down and prosecute Al Qaeda operatives throughout the world.

O'Neill's flamboyant style rubbed his stiff-collared bosses up the wrong way and, just two weeks before September 11, agent O'Neill left the Bureau, taking his knowledge of America's greatest enemy with him.

His new job was to take him face to face with the organisation he had spent so many years trying to thwart - he became head of security at the World Trade Center in New York.

He died a hero, running back into the burning towers to aid in the rescue effort.

This week's FRAME 2 documentary, entitled The Man Who Knew, tells John O'Neill's remarkable story.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with many of O'Neill's closest friends and associates, it begins with the 1995 capture of one of the world's most wanted terrorists - Ramzi Yousef, the ringleader of the group that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.

Former US Attorney Mary Jo White credits O'Neill with quickly grasping the danger Yousef and other terrorists represented to America. She said: "Yousef is one of the most dangerous people on the planet - also very smart.

"Getting and incapacitating him was a significant public safety issue. John O'Neill recognised that and was not going to take 'no' for an answer."

O'Neill learned everything he could about global terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism.

In 1997, O'Neill was promoted to special agent in charge of the national security division in the bureau's New York office.

The job would also be the perfect base from which to continue his pursuit of bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

But while O'Neill had succeeded in winning allies among CIA and international intelligence agencies, not everyone within the FBI liked him.

By the summer of 2001, O'Neill had been so marginalised by FBI officials that key clues of the looming Sept. 11 plot apparently were never passed on to him.

He retired from the bureau at age 49. Just eight days after he started his new job as director of security at the World Trade Center, the terrorists he had long pursued struck the towers.

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