and we better not take them for granted because they are here to hurt us. narrator: but people at fbi headquarters thought john o neill was too much of a maverick, and they stopped listening to him. you could be flagged as a problem, and your career could pretty much be over. narrator: o neill left the fbi and took a new job as head of security at the world trade center. of all the places to go to work, and of all the ways that you could lose your life. narrator: tonight, frontline investigates the internal power struggle at the heart of the fbi s failure on september 11. frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan. committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest
and we better not take them for granted because they are here to hurt us. narrator: but people at fbi headquarters thought john o neill was too much of a maverick, and they stopped listening to him. you could be flagged as a problem, and your career could pretty much be over. narrator: o neill left the fbi and took a new job as head of security at the world trade center. of all the places to go to work, and of all the ways that you could lose your life. narrator: tonight, frontline investigates the internal power struggle at the heart of the fbi s failure on september 11. frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major funding is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation. committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. and by reva and david logan. committed to investigative journalism as the guardian of the public interest
friend. and she said well, i read something in the newspaper, this was shortly after 9-11 and he died and that he was a counterterrorism expert and he had hunted osama bin laden and i read that he died in the world trade center and i thought that had the beginnings of a possible book, certainly sounded like one. she had published a book about bernie kerick, the new york city police commissioner and as we know is now in iraq trying to build the police force there and she talked to bernie kerick about john o neill and bernie knew john o neill and he said he was quite an extraordinary man and important man and half convinced her that a book was possibly was possible about john o neill. she spoke to a few other law enforcement people and convinced there was the potentially good book and asked them who she might reach out to write a book about john o neill and they steered her to me so around thanksgiving of 2001, john o neill was now 2 e 1/2 months dead. i, as a friend, had att
we re due for something big. narrator: his name was john o neill, and long before the world knew about osama bin laden, fbi agent o neill was obsessed with him. he was among the first people to see the bin laden threat. narrator: he warned of al qaeda. he said that we re at war with these people. narrator: he warned of the threat to the united states. and we better not take them for granted because they are here to hurt us. narrator: but people at fbi headquarters thought john o neill was too much of a maverick, and they stopped listening to him. you could be flagged as a problem, and your career could pretty much be over. narrator: o neill left the fbi and took a new job as head of security at the world trade center. of all the places to go to work, and of all the ways that you could lose your life. narrator: tonight, frontline investigates the internal power struggle at the heart of the fbi s failure on september 11. frontline is made possible b
had said to me, we re due, and we re due for something big. narrator: his name was john o neill, and long before the world knew about osama bin laden, fbi agent o neill was obsessed with him. he was among the first people to see the bin laden threat. narrator: he warned of al qaeda. he said that we re at war with these people. narrator: he warned of the threat to the united states. and we better not take them for granted because they are here to hurt us. narrator: but people at fbi headquarters thought john o neill was too much of a maverick, and they stopped listening to him. you could be flagged as a problem, and your career could pretty much be over. narrator: o neill left the fbi and took a new job as head of security at the world trade center. of all the places to go to work, and of all the ways that you could lose your life. narrator: tonight, frontline investigates the internal power struggle at the heart of the fbi s failure on september 11