MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-10-13 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] over ruled on OBL targeting.....
|
Quoting Ruben Safir (mrbrklyn-at-panix.com):
> > Which specific 'they' are you speaking of?
>
> the State department overuled the FBI, especially Barbara Bodine the
> Yeminie Ambassador. This conflict went right to the top of the State
> Department, Pickering, the Attorney General, the higher levels of the
> FBI, and the inner white house.... right to the White House, Madame
> Albright, and the Clinton's.
Oh, you're talking about John O'Neill getting ignored, right? I'm having
to guess, here, based on your mention of Ambassador Bodine (who was
_not_ a Yemeni ambassador, but rather the USA ambassador to Yemen).
This has nothing particularly to do with the 1993 bombing in the garage
under WTC building 2. Special Agent O'Neill was detailed to Yemen to
investigate the attack on the USS Cole, as lead FBI on-scene
investigator, but with the New York FBI office in actual charge because
O'Neill had already made too many enemies within the FBI, and was
considered a loose cannon. He immediately clashed with Ambassador
Bodine, who found him to be reckless, harmful to diplomacy, and
basically a bull in a china closet. She particularly objected to him
arriving with over 150 investigators and other staff when she felt she
had an understanding with O'Neill that he'd need no more than 50 in
order to not create the waves that he reportedly did start making,
creating quite the ruckus in Yemen government circles. Her work, which
had included in the recent past delicate negotiations to get freed three
American who'd been kidnapped and held by bandits, required good
relations with Yemen, and it looked to her as if O'Neill was stomping
that work flat and that he'd just be screwing up her working environment
and then swanning off to the States again. E.g., O'Neill wanted his
150+; Bodine felt he was breaking an agreement to even arrive with them
at all. O'Neill said he needed direct access to Yemeni officials;
Bodine pushed back that she needed to supervise such encounters to make
sure he wasn't sabotaging her job. Lots of cables ensued, escalating
the donnybrook to FBI Director Louis Freeh and AG Janet Reno.
So, she doubtless set the rumor mill loose on O'Neill at this point, as
did O'Neill's many existing enemies at the FBI, such that, seeking to
re-enter Yemen after a trip home, he found that Ambassador Bodine had
denied her clearance. And his reputation was bad enough at the FBI by
this point that the Bureau didn't back him up.
You might speculate that if O'Neill _had_ been given a free hand in
Sana'a and to hell with diplomacy, that he might have succeeded in
breaking all of the nascent al-Qaeda semi-organisation. Personally, I
doubt this no matter how much chaos O'Neill was permitted to cause,
because of that group's careful decentralised cell structure, which I'm
pretty sure it had then, too.
It's a haunting possibility, because we learned that O'Neill, killed by
vengeful gods of irony while doing his post-FBI job as head of security
for World Trade Center, may have been undiplomatic as hell but happened
to have been completely right.
Now, if you has fscking _bothered_, you could in ten seconds of
Web-searching found the transcript of the Frontline episode 'The Man Who
Knew', right here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/etc/script.html
The transcript doesn't say where the 58 minute mark, etc., is, but I'm
rapid-skimming the approximate area you apparently have in mind. As
mentioned, the fighting over O'Neill's role in Yemen (and objections
from Ambassador Bodine) escalated to FBI Director Freeh over in the FBI
building, to AG Janet Reno over in the Department of Justice main
building at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, and to her higher-ups in Foggy
Bottom. But not at the White House -- if only because this O'Neill guy
was, as far as they could tell, just a troublemaking FBI agent in
disrepute. (Yes, the AG _is_ a Cabinet office. I'm betting what Reno
heard was Louis Freed telling her O'Neill was a problem case, and it
stopped there.)
O'Neill did have his friendship with NSC Counterintelligence chief
Richard Clarke, who tried to recommend him for the chief antiterroriism
job in the new Bush administration, but he was passed over for that, as
he had been for everything else for years. And that was when O'Neill
retired and took the WTC job. Where he died less than a month later.
And there was no Albright in that picture, and no First Lady whom once
again you're trying to pretend was a high government office with
ultimate powers by talking about 'the Clinton's' [sic].
So, you've just wasted a bunch of my time. Again. And it's 1am here in
Europe, and I really need to stop arguing with crazed and deluded
people.
See .signature, please. And learn something about your goddamned
government, for a change. I am not your free-of-charge civics teacher.
--
Cheers, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but
Rick Moen you are not entitled to your own facts."
rick-at-linuxmafia.com -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
McQ! (4x80)
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