On Thu, Nov 15, 2001 at 02:43:47PM -0500, Seth Ackerman wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> In it, Tariq cites
> > an interview that Paul O'Neill - the ex-FBI agent who investigated al
> > Qaeda and who became chief of WTC security only to die on 9/11 - gave
> > to a French journalist that has just appeared in book form. In it,
> > O'Neill says that every time they followed a trail it always ended in
> > Saudi Arabia, but his superiors overruled him when it came to doing
> > something about it. Anyone know what he's referring to?
> .
> His name was John O'Neill.
>
> November 12, 2001
>
> THE HUNT
>
> Oil Diplomacy Muddled U.S. Pursuit of bin Laden, New Book Contends
>
> By ETHAN BRONNER
>
> former F.B.I. antiterror official who was killed at the World Trade Center
> on Sept. 11 complained bitterly last summer that the United States was
> unwilling to confront Saudi Arabia over Osama bin Laden and that oil ruled
> American foreign policy, according to a new book published in France.
>
> The former official, John P. O'Neill, was the director of antiterrorism for
> the F.B.I.'s New York office when he resigned in August to become chief of
> security for the twin towers.
>
> "All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's
> organization can be found in Saudi Arabia," Mr. O'Neill is quoted as saying
> in the new book, "Ben Laden: La Vérité Interdite" ("Bin Laden: The Forbidden
> Truth"), which argues that Saudi support for Mr. bin Laden has been
> extensive.
>
> One of the book's co-authors, Jean- Charles Brisard, a security expert who
> has spent several years examining Mr. bin Laden's financial empire, says in
> the book that he met with Mr. O'Neill in June and July. Mr. O'Neill is
> quoted as lamenting "the inability of American officials to get anything at
> all from King Fahd," the ailing Saudi ruler.
>
> He explains the failure in one word: oil.
>
> In telephone interviews and e-mail exchanges, Mr. Brisard elaborated on the
> book, released this week by the French publishing house Denöel.
>
> He said he first met Mr. O'Neill in June in Paris, where the two had dinner
> with a group of French antiterror officials. Mr. Brisard had written a
> report for the French intelligence services on the finances of Mr. bin
> Laden's Al Qaeda organization and he gave Mr. O'Neill a copy.
>
> In late July, he said, they met alone in New York for drinks and dinner, and
> Mr. O'Neill complained that the F.B.I. was not free to act in international
> terror investigations because the State Department kept interfering.
>
> Mr. O'Neill, who had worked on investigations of the first World Trade
> Center bombing, in 1993, and on the attacks on two American embassies in
> Africa in 1998, also suggested that he would soon move to the private
> sector, Mr. Brisard said.
>
> Mr. Brisard said his conversations with Mr. O'Neill were not interviews. He
> is publicizing Mr. O'Neill's opinions as "a tribute" to a man he admired.
>
> Mr. O'Neill's frustrations with the State Department were not secret. He had
> been leading the F.B.I.'s investigation into the bombing of the destroyer
> Cole in Yemen in October 2000, but he had been barred in July from returning
> to Yemen by the United States ambassador there.
>
> The ambassador, Barbara Bodine, complained that Mr. O'Neill and his
> associates showed no sensitivity to Yemeni culture or concerns and were
> harming relations between the two countries.
>
> After Mr. O'Neill's death in September, Yemeni officials called the F.B.I.
> and offered to cooperate with their investigations, Barry W. Mawn, the
> assistant director of the F.B.I., announced at Mr. O'Neill's funeral Mass.
>
> The book by Mr. Brisard, written with Guillaume Dasquié, a journalist, also
> makes public for the first time the first international warrant for the
> arrest of Mr. bin Laden. It is a 1998 Interpol document from Libya. The
> so-called red notice, file number 1998/20032, accuses Mr. bin Laden and
> three Libyans of killing two Germans in Libya in 1994.
>
> The book identifies the victims as Silvan Becker and his wife and says they
> were German antiterror agents. It says Libya's leader, Col. Muammar
> el-Qaddafi, sought their killers because they were members of a group linked
> to Mr. bin Laden that also wanted to kill Colonel Qaddafi. That group, the
> Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, was listed by President Bush after the Sept.
> 11 attacks as one whose assets should be frozen worldwide.
>
> According to the new French book, Mr. bin Laden was in Libya when the two
> Germans were killed in 1994. The book also asserts that Colonel Qaddafi's
> fears had some foundation. It says the British secret service, MI5, tried to
> assassinate Colonel Qaddafi in 1996 using members of that same Libyan
> Islamic Fighting Group.
>
> The book says it was because of that collaboration that the Interpol
> document with its Libyan origin has not been made public. Mr. Brisard said
> he had received the document from a former senior Interpol official who told
> him that British and American officials had kept it from public view.
>
>
>
>
-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu