"The Man Who Knew" on PBS tonight

[Digit]

I saw alittle bit of this the other evening and it blew my mind

PBS will rebroadcast "The Man Who Knew" this evening.
PBS.org has more information.

[ThomWV]

1. The Man Who Knew .... What?

[Kathy in Cambridge]

2. It's about John O'Neill: warned of Al Qaeda, friend of Richard Clarke

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/

[Digit]

3. From the PBS site:

Examine the investigations of an FBI counterterrorism expert who warned of Al Qaeda's threat long before September 11, 2001.

It is fascinating.

[buycitgo]

4. it examined more of his love life, his taste in clothes, restaurants,

whiskey, cigars, and stuff like that than it examined things everyone here already knows

it was a puffed up kitty kelley piece

sorry, but I found it a waste of time, with few exceptions

only thing I learned was how egregious obstructive the ambassador of Yemen was. and guess what, the story didn't mention, IIRC, that she is a REPUBLICAN, one of the MANY terrible appointmenst Clinton made

this show was a huge disappointment

just MO, though

anyone who spends a modest amount of time at DU will find nothing much newsworthy in this, and I think, will be offended at all the trashy padding, to make up for wealth of information they could have revealed, had they so chosen

getting really MAD just thinking about it again

[Digit]

5. For those who had not known...

I had not heard of this before it aired, so for me, it was an introduction.
My thinking was that it might be a nice piece to watch with someone
who is still pro * and is not into debating or even looking for the truth.
I agree, PBS has been much too soft lately.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

9. Richard Clarke's book mentions Bodine in an unflattering light

I thought she was a remnant from the Bush I appointments?

[genius]

6. If it's a re-run, it give Bush a pass Bush doesn't deserve

O'Neill did not resign because of a briefcase. He resigned because Bush undermined efforts to stop a future terrorist attack.

[buycitgo]

7. exactly....thanks for reminding me of that part

glad I'm not watching.....what you just wrote is making me VERY angry at the opportunity squandered by this show

it does, however, as earlier poster said, give the uninformed at least a glimpse of the horrorshow that is/was our "intelligence" community, and the venal bureaucracy the comprises it

[DrBB]

8. Well the timing is fairly apt. But

...the damn program says very little--or at least, far from enough--about WHY he was pulled off the case. Particularly the Saudi connections.

and note the name of the Ambassador to Yeman--a name that shows up prominently in the Iraq occupation.

Interesting thing on the re-run though is Clarke's statements. Seems fully consistent with what he's been saying more recently. Not that I had any doubts.

[Eurobabe]

10. i have watched this twice, and you can watch online

it was fascinating, go to pbs.org, frontline.

anyone else think that o'neill was set up in tampa (BTW what did he have on his laptop or in the classified files but none other than a master plan for the NY district's terrorism action plan - hello Marvin!) this was in summer or fall 2000 (?) by the time 2001 rolls around the NY office is so cut out of the loop due to pickard (acting director) they made sure that no one in NY received the 'Al Qaeda Extremist Learned to Fly' brief.

Something about all of this really stinks. More ammo for the LIHOP and MIHOP crowd.

[Oilwellian]

11. I learned something from it..

I didn't realize Pickard had such a personal hand in seeing that O'Neill was "neutralized" within the bureau. You would think he'd want O'Neill's expertise on Al Qaeda at hand during the same time the threat level was imminent. Interesting.

[buycitgo]

12. good point there

suddenly Pickard's name means something, as a long time denizen of FBI go along bureaucracy

what's going to happen WRT to his and Asscroft's mutually exclusive memories?

were their words couched in such a way that neither of them can be nailed for perjury?

[RainDog]

14. saw it for a second time tonight

and, yes, now Pickard's name means something to me.

I thought it was fairly damning in the way it talked about Freeh and Pickard being part of the "corporate" FBI culture, and O'Neil's sig. O. definitely said that Pickard was the one who leaked information about O'Neil to get him out of the bureau.

I also thought the comment (I forgot who made it, I should go back to see) about O'Neil talking about significant changes in the situation in Afghanistan was interesting in a way...

what were those changes? Maybe I was just making a jump in my mind, but I immediately thought about the breakdown in the attempts to broker a deal b/t the Taliban and Unocal and the threats about a carpet of bombs...

I agree that the program didn't go into many of the questions which have been raised here, but I think the program was very good at giving some more context to events over a period of time.

So does anyone know what Clarke thinks about Pickard?

[Oilwellian]

15. What does Clarke think of Pickard?

Excellent question. Isn't it convenient that Pickard was the "acting director" at the same time intel was screaming imminent attacks? I'd also love to know why he was so intent on exposing Ashcroft's indifference to terrorism.

I can't wait to see the transcript of Pickard's testimony up on the 911 Commission's website . I could have sworn he said at one point the FBI knew very little about Al Qaeda.

[Catherine Vincent]

13. I actually remembered to watch Frontline tonight.

It was a good tribute in the memory of John O'Neil. If only he wasn't shut out, maybe... just maybe he, with the help of Richard Clarke and his team, could have prevented 9/11 somehow in spite of the Bush admn. LIHOP mindset.