John P. O'Neill
| John P. O'Neill | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
John Patrick O'Neill February 6, 1952 Atlantic City, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | September 11, 2001 (aged 49) New York, New York, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | FBI special agent, World Trade Center security head |
John Patrick O'Neill (February 6, 1952 – September 11, 2001) was an American counter-terrorism expert, who worked as a special agent and eventually a Special Agent in Charge in the Federal Bureau of Investigation until late 2001. In 1995, O'Neill began to intensely study the roots of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing after he assisted in the capture of Ramzi Yousef, who was the leader of that plot.
He subsequently learned of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and investigated the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen. Partly due to personal friction he had within the FBI and federal government, O'Neill was pushed out of the Bureau in 2001. He became the head of security at the World Trade Center, where he died at age 49 in the September 11, 2001 attacks. In 2002, O'Neill was the subject of a Frontline documentary The Man Who Knew, and cast as the protagonist in the television miniseries The Path to 9/11 and the 2003 book, "The Man Who Warned America by Murray Weiss."
O'Neill was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey on February 6, 1952 and had a desire to become an FBI special agent from an early age. As a child, his favorite television show was The F.B.I., a crime drama based around true cases that the bureau had handled. After graduating from Holy Spirit High School, he went on to college, first attending American University in Washington, D.C. in 1971. While there, O'Neill also started working at the FBI's Washington headquarters, first as a fingerprint clerk and later as a tour guide. He gained a degree in administration of justice from American University in 1974 and later obtained a master's degree in forensics from George Washington University.
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