In Memoriam on 9/11

John P. O’Neill

Reflections on the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11.

Regular readers know I spent twenty-five years as an FBI Agent, which seemed like a lot of time when I left, but seems less so today. I was a young(er) field supervisor on 9/11 and one of the things I witnessed following that day was so many young people leave lucrative and rewarding careers in tech, finance, and the law join the FBI because of 9/11. Today, they are eligible to retire.

My own 9/11 story is unremarkable. I didn't rush into burning buildings like 343 FDNY firefighters who never made it home that night. I didn’t have a relative choose a thousand-foot free fall out of a World Trade Center window in lieu of burning to death. I didn’t ride horseback into Mazar-i-Sharif to look for Osama bin Laden like our brave special forces soldiers did.

There was some sacrifice, but minor in comparison. I’d been previously assigned to the FBI’s counterterrorism division, (“pre-9/11” as we began to say about everything in the Bureau that happed before “that day,”) and two days later I was “asked” to come back. As in the next day. I drove nine hours from a mid-west field office because planes were not flying.

With the exception of a few weeks or weekends here and there, I didn’t really go home for two years, including being sent overseas. Time I’ll never get back with a young family, but a minor sacrifice compared to what others were “asked” to do.

But my enduring memory of 9/11 was the death of friend and mentor, John P. O’Neill. It’s not a new story, having been told in books, feature magazine stories, and multiple streaming and other documentaries. Most, but not all of those stories are true.

O’Neill and I arrived at the (pre-9/11) counterterrorism section, (before it became a division) on the exact same day in 1995. He was the chief and I was a freshly minted headquarters supervisor. It was his birthday, and the whole section chipped in to get him a card, a cake, and a gag gift I no longer remember. Most of the other supervisors were young and recent reports to HQ as well. Within a month, most of us hated his guts.

O’Neill reported to FBIHQ by himself even though he was technically married and estranged from his wife. He lived in a close-in apartment and worked eighteen hour days, usually until close to midnight. Sometimes “work” consisted of drinks and dinners with others in the intelligence community or visiting foreign officials. He often expected the rest of use to work (or liaise) with him even though most of us had young families and commuted to the suburbs in carpools.

The carpools didn’t wait for the guys in counterterrorism.

His nickname quickly became the POD. Short for the ‘prince of darkness.’ Both because of the late hours he kept and his Black Irish features including a widow’s peak. We learned from agents in Chicago where O’Neill had just left as one of several assistant special agents in charge that he could be a hard ass to work for, which was just confirmation for what we were experiencing. We also learned that before reporting as chief of counterterrorism, he actually knew little about terrorism. He’d been in charge of violent crime and gang squads in Chicago.

That was where the respect came in. O’Neill was whip smart. He retained everything he read or was told. He asked a lot of questions. You went to his office prepared when one of the guy’s said, “POD wants to see you.”

And not all of those long nights were spent partying with British intelligence service reps. Many were spent pouring over cables from around the world about threats and bad actors. The myth that O’Neill was one of the earliest intelligence professionals to perceive the threat from a tall Saudi named Osama bin Laden is mostly true.

Another quality we came to endear in O’Neill was loyalty. Like an Irish mob boss from Jersey, which he sort of was, he expected it, and returned it in spades. Being a supervisory special agent at FBIHQ is among the worst jobs in the Bureau, (the carpool vignette is a clue,) and from the day we got there, most started planning their escape back to the field.

He often greeted us with, “Where do you want to go?” Implying he could get you to the field office of your choice when you’d done your time. Which, in many cases he could. At a Christmas party I once watched him put his arm around all of our wives individually, and promise them he’d get us out of the grind of headquarters one day soon.

Another leadership skill he had was in being the buffer between us junior supervisors, and getting the job done. Sometimes the noise came from more senior executives on the 7th floor of the Hoover building, and at other times from across the intelligence community. One particular speed bump was Richard Clarke, a career bureaucrat and counterterrorism coordinator at the National Security Council (NSC). He famously apologized to 9/11 families during testimony before the 9/11 Commission, and has insinuated on occasions that had the Bush Administration not ignored him, things might have been different on that day.

The NSC is not operational, it is the President’s small team of advisors that helps implement policy. Clarke thought a lot of himself and often stuck his beak in where it didn’t belong. O’Neill had a good relationship with Clarke which was good for us. Many of us thought Clarke had met his match in John O’Neill as someone who was equally as bright but with a street savvy the frumpy Clarke, who often dressed in brown polyester suits, could never match.

Assistant Director in Charge or ADIC of the FBI’s New York Office is arguably the pinnacle of a select few field agent’s career, and the one job John O’Neill aspired to. His promotion to one of several special agents in charge, or SACs, in New York, in O’Neill’s case - counterterrorism, was viewed by many as a stepping stone to him becoming ADIC one day.

Not everyone above him agreed. He clashed with the then ADIC, and he got jammed up with security officials at headquarters for leaving a briefcase of classified documents in a hotel conference room. Whatever the conference was about, it was a bore to O’Neill, and he took the documents there to get some real work done.

In short, John O’Neill, who probably knew more about Al-Qaeda than anybody in the FBI had broken a lot of glass the last six years, and was never going to be ADIC, New York. In late August of 2001, he retired after 31 years, having put himself through American University as an FBI tour guide before becoming a special agent, and he started his new job as director of security at the World Trade Center.

Sometime in the two weeks between the time he started a the WTC, and 9/11, I spoke to O’Neill and asked him for a favor. I wanted him to verify in writing an assessment document I needed for future promotion. “Send it directly to my fax number,” was his quick reply.

On the morning of 9/11, I was driving to a resident agency, a small FBI office attached to a bigger field division. The special agent in charge called my cell phone and told me to come back right away and set up a command post to cover leads that were already pouring in. Soon, I was getting and making calls to former counterterrorism headquarters supervisors across the country who were also now back in the field.

“What about O’Neill?” we all asked one another.

Ten days later, the earthly remains of John P. O’Neill were recovered in the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Rest in Eternal Peace, John.