On holidays, O’Neill went home to New Jersey to visit his parents and to see his children. Only John P. O’Neill, Jr., who is a computer expert for the credit card company MBNA, in Wilmington, Delaware, agreed to speak to me about his father. His remarks were guarded. He described a close relationship-“We talked a few times a week”-but there are parts of his father’s past that he refuses to discuss. “My father liked to keep his private life private,” he said.
Both James and DiBattista remember how O’Neill would beg for forgiveness and then promise better times. James told me, “He’d say, ‘I just want to be loved, just love me,’ but you couldn’t really trust him, so he never got the love he asked for.”
The stress of O’Neill’s tangled personal life began to affect his professional behavior. One night, he left his Palm Pilot in Yankee Stadium; it was filled with his police contacts all around the world. On another occasion, he left his cell phone in a cab. In the summer of 1999, he and James were driving to the Jersey shore when his Buick broke down near the Meadowlands. As it happened, his bureau car was parked nearby, at a secret office location, and O’Neill switched cars. One of the most frequently violated rules in the bureau is the use of an official vehicle for personal reasons, and O’Neill’s infraction might have been overlooked had he not let James enter the building to use the bathroom. “I had no idea what it was,” she told me. Still, when the FBI learned about the violation, apparently from an agent who had been caught using the site as an auto repair shop, O’Neill was reprimanded and docked fifteen days’ pay. He regarded the bureau’s action as part of a pattern. “The last two years of his life, he got very paranoid,” James told me. “He was convinced there were people out to get him.”
In March 2001, Richard Clarke asked the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, for a job change; he wanted to concentrate on computer security. “I was told, ‘You’ve got to recommend somebody similar to be your replacement,’” Clarke recalled. “I said, Well, there’s only one person who would fit that bill.’” For months, Clarke tried to persuade O’Neill to become a candidate as his successor.
O’Neill had always harbored two aspirations-to become a deputy director of the bureau in Washington or to take over the New York office. Freeh was retiring in June, so there were likely to be some vacancies at the top, but the investigation into the briefcase incident would likely block any promotion in the bureau. O’Neill viewed Clarke’s job as, in many ways, a perfect fit for him. But he was financially pressed, and Clarke’s job paid no more than he was making at the FBI. Throughout the summer, O’Neill refused to commit himself to Clarke’s offer. He talked about it with a number of friends but became alarmed when he thought that headquarters might hear of it. “He called me in a worked-up state,” Clarke recalled. “He said that people in the CIA and elsewhere know you are considering recommending me for your job. You have to tell them it’s not true.” Clarke dutifully called a friend in the agency, even though O’Neill still wanted to be a candidate for the position.
In July, O’Neill heard of a job opening in the private sector that would pay more than twice his government salary-that of chief of security for the World Trade Center. Although the Justice Department dropped its inquiry into the briefcase incident, the bureau was conducting an internal investigation of its own. O’Neill was aware that the Times was preparing a story about the affair, and he learned that the reporters also knew about the incident in New Jersey involving James and had classified information that probably came from the bureau’s investigative files. The leak seemed to be timed to destroy O’Neill’s chance of being confirmed for the NSC job. He decided to retire.
O’Neill suspected that the source of the information was either Tom Pickard or Dale Watson. The antagonism between him and Pickard was well-known. “I’ve got a pretty good Irish temper and so did John,” Pickard, who retired last November, told me. But he insisted that their differences were professional, not personal. The leak was “somebody being pretty vicious to John,” but Pickard maintained that he did not do it. “I’d take a polygraph to it,” he said. Watson told me, “If you’re asking me who leaks FBI information, I have no idea. I know I don’t, and I know that Tom Pickard doesn’t, and I know that the director doesn’t.” For all the talk about polygraphs, the bureau ruled out an investigation into the source of the leak, despite an official request by Barry Mawn, in New York.
Meanwhile, intelligence had been streaming in concerning a likely Al Qaeda attack. “It all came together in the third week in June,” Clarke said. “The CIA’s view was that a major terrorist attack was coming in the next several weeks.” On July 5, Clarke summoned all the domestic security agencies-the Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the FBI-and told them to increase their security in light of an impending attack.
On August 19, the Times ran an article about the briefcase incident and O’Neill’s forthcoming retirement, which was to take place three days later. There was a little gathering for coffee as he packed up his office.
When O’Neill told ABC’s Isham of his decision to work at the Trade Center, Isham had said jokingly, “At least they’re not going to bomb it again.” O’Neill had replied, “They’ll probably try to finish the job.” On the day he started at the Trade Center-August 23-the CIA sent a cable to the FBI saying that two suspected Al Qaeda terrorists were already in the country. The bureau tried to track them down, but the addresses they had given when they entered the country proved to be false, and the men were never located.
When he was growing up in Atlantic City, O’Neill was an altar boy at St. Nicholas of Tolentine Church. On September 28, a week after his body was found in the rubble of the World Trade Center, a thousand mourners gathered at St. Nicholas to say farewell. Many of them were agents and policemen and members of foreign intelligence services who had followed O’Neill into the war against terrorism long before it became a rallying cry for the nation. The hierarchy of the FBI attended, including the now retired director Louis Freeh. Richard Clarke, who says that he had not shed a tear since September 11, suddenly broke down when the bagpipes played and the casket passed by.
O’Neill’s last weeks had been happy ones. The moment he left the FBI, his spirits had lifted. He talked about getting a new Mercedes to replace his old Buick. He told Anna that they could now afford to get married. On the last Saturday night of his life, he attended a wedding with Valerie, and they danced nearly every number. He told a friend within Valerie’s hearing, “I’m gonna get her a ring.”
On September 10, O’Neill called Robert Tucker, a friend and security company executive, and arranged to get together that evening to talk about security issues at the Trade Center. Tucker met O’Neill in the lobby of the north tower, and the two men rode the elevator up to O’Neill’s new office, on the thirty-fourth floor. “He was incredibly proud of what he was doing,” Tucker told me. Then they went to a bar at the top of the tower for a drink. Afterward, they headed uptown to Elaine’s, where they were joined by their friend Jerry Hauer. Around midnight, the three men dropped in on the China Club, a nightspot in midtown. “John made the statement that he thought something big was going to happen,” Hauer recalled.
Valerie James waited up for O’Neill. He didn’t come in until 2:30 A.M. “The next morning, I was frosty,” she recalled. “He came into my bathroom and put his arms around me. He said, ‘Please forgive me.’” He offered to drive her to work, and dropped her off at 8:13 A.M. in the flower district, where she had an appointment, and headed to the Trade Center.