The man who knew. Last night Frontline broadcast a 90-minute documentary about John O'Neill, the FBI counterterrorism expert who had already connected most of the dots leading to the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks last year. For six years he obsessed about bin Laden's network, tracing the line that led from the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, through the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, through the plans to stage a terrorist millenium explosion at LAX on the eve of 2000, through the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, to the summer of 2001 when the intelligence world again became aware that something big and awful was in the works.

But the US government would not let O'Neill do his job. O'Neill was known throughout the FBI as the go-to guy on bin Laden, but he was not made aware of the Arizona flight school FBI memos or the custody of the alleged "20th hijacker" Zacharias Moussaoui. Barbara K. Bodine, US ambassador to Yemen, denied his visa to return to investigate the Cole bombing. Tom Pickard, at one point interim director for the FBI, did everything in his power to silence and frustrate O'Neill. The compartmentalized bureaucrats simply could not tolerate a maverick investigator whose only motivation was protecting the country from terrorism. He was forced out of the FBI in the late summer of 2001.

In the ultimate tragic irony, O'Neill was killed in the World Trade Center a week after taking a new job as head of security -- of the World Trade Center.

Frontline does a good job of covering all the angles, including such details as the relevance of two of the hijackers who flew into the Pentagon on Flight 77. Their names were on O'Neill's short list of potential threats.

Watch for the rerun, or look at the show site.

UPDATE: Followup posts on Barbara Bodine are here (3/11/03) and here (3/25/03).

{ 8:54 AM }

.

"It makes the most dangerous maneuvers seem routine" is the headline for an ad selling the GMC Yukon XL Denali 8-seat, 320 horsepower SUV in the print edition of the October 7 New Yorker.

The headline refers to the $50,000 behemoth's tight turning radius and "serious" traction.

But it also accurately characterizes the absurd machinery of the Bush administration and its willingness to expend our national resources and reputation to secure the fuel that powers this preposterous vehicle.

The ad copy concludes, fittingly, with: "It doesn't just get you out of tight spots. It gets you into them." No kidding.

{ 8:06 AM }

.

Manhattan, September 11, 2001, as seen from outer space.

{ 7:50 AM }

.

The Barbra Streisand Truth Alert embiggens the heart.* Barbra, Barbra, Barbra... what are we going to do with you? At least she comes clean here, but if she wants to be the unofficial self-proclaimed Voice of the Left in the future, we're going to demand better fact-checking. Meanwhile, all is forgiven.

*Apologies to The Simpsons.

{ 11:55 AM }

.

Lay, Skilling and Bush insulate themselves before a long winter. Former Enron CFO Fastow's indictment today comes as further insulation against the real power behind the Enron fraud -- former CEOs Lay and Skilling and their political beneficiary Bush Junior.

Just as the absurd indictment of the firm of Arthur Andersen was a distraction from the real perps (and the political egg on many faces), so too will Fastow's indictment provide a convenient smokescreen for the guilty parties. After all, if your neighbor builds an illegal house in your backyard, does it make more sense to go after the architect (Fastow), the accountant (Andersen), or the bad neighbor (the naughty CEOs)?

Read about it in The Washington Post here.

Incidentally, there was a typo in the above article that I'm sure will be corrected soon, but it made me laugh so I have to paste it here:

"Fastow and his ho-conspirators systematically and thoroughly corrupted the business of one of the largest corporations in the world," [Deputy Attorney General] Thompson said.

Ho-conspirators [sic] indeed!

We may have to add Fastow's name to Enronistan.

{ 11:28 AM }

.

The lies and politically convenient errors make headlines above the fold, and the inevitable follow-up stories and retractions skulk in the back of the news days later.

The 35 pounds of weapons-grade uranium found in Turkey -- and speculated to be destined for Iraq -- turn out to be not 35 pounds, but 5 ounces, and not uranium, but a harmless mixture of zinc, iron, zirconium and manganese, according to The Guardian.

{ 8:53 AM }

.

Welcome to MIT OpenCourseWare, the free education we talked about here.

Now you can get the philosophy education that everyone tried to talk to you out of. Go ahead, brush up on your quantum mechanics -- it's free! MIT is amazing!

{ 5:27 PM }

.

Art you're not supposed to see. Apparently the only acceptable public reaction to the events of 9/11/01 is one of patriotic xenophobic petrophilic fervor. Otherwise, these artworks would still be visible to the public.

Sadly, they have been banished from view. Whether you appreciate such artworks or not, isn't free expression a large part of the reason for the USA's existence in the first place?

{ 9:48 AM }

.

It's still the economy, stupid. All the pitiful free-market ideologues continue to try to pin the blame for recent market madness on Bill Clinton, as if his policies had anything at all to do with the current "lack of visibility" that is keeping a heavy lid on the markets.

The markets hate uncertainty. Wealth increased during the Clinton administration because he was reliable and predictable, even if occasionally amoral in his personal life. But never was his integrity as a conflict-of-interest profiteer questionable. In contrast, the markets plunged during Bush II not because of 9/11, or only partially so, but because of the clouds of conflict of interest (i.e., Enron, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, etc.) and the highly risky national bets he is placing on behalf of Daddy's and Rumsfeld's grudge match with Saddam.

The New York Daily News reports that even Bush's own political advisers wish for Clinton back in the White House, if only for the positive effect he might have on their personal portfolios.

{ 2:42 PM }

.