Sunday, September 10, 2006
News Central asks: 'Could one man have prevented terror attacks on US?'
COME Monday, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks on the US, Studio 23's News Central asks a question that many people have wondered about since it began: Could 9/11 have been prevented?
But it does the question one better, by asking, "Could one man have kept 9/11 from happening?"
In the PBS Frontline documentary film "The Man Who Knew," which will be serialized in five parts on News Central all throughout the week, we meet Paul O'Neill, a decades-long FBI agent who, in 1995, was the head of FBI's Counterterrorism Section. He is the FBI's main liaison with the CIA and the National Security Commission, where he becomes friends with their counterterrorism expert, Richard Clarke. He and Clarke are instrumental in the capture of 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Over the years, he becomes one of America's premier experts on counterterrorism and Islamic militants. But when, in 1997 and 1998, O'Neill goes on public record to say that Islamic terrorists - specifically, the terrorists that have made their home in Afghanistan - have the capacity and support infrastructure to launch a large-scale terror offensive in the US, the intelligence branch seemed to recoil from O'Neill.
In August 2001, after a series of reprimands and after seeing himself be passed over for several promotions, O'Neill retires from the FBI and joins the private sector. Ironically, he gets hired as head of security at the World Trade Center, where he died at 9/11.
If the US intelligence community had listened to Paul O'Neill, would his expertise have kept 9/11 from ever happening? Know the real score in "The Man Who Knew," airing all this week on Studio 23's News Central with anchors Mari Kaimo and Ria Tanjuatco-Trillo. (Press release)
(September 10, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor. Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board. Click here. |
