mirmir) Sat Dec 1 '01 (21:08) 91 lines
(terry) this may have been the french book about which i saw news
reports:
"
"Mr. O'Neill complained that the F.B.I. was not free to act in
international terror investigations because the State Department kept
interfering...."
Oil Diplomacy Muddled U.S. Pursuit of bin Laden, New Book Contends
By ETHAN BRONNER
New York Times
November 12, 2001
A 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 V�rit� 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 Den�el.
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 Dasqui�, 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.
http://alexconstantine.50megs.com/
about 3/4/ down the page, but the reports i saw before, were not on
this site.
however, the reports i saw mentioned that the french SIS or some
european intelligence had been warned not to interfere by either cia or
fbi, whom they tried to warn this summer that al qaeda/bin laden was
planning a terrorist attack on the states.