The Presidency Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

The Presidency - Essay ExampleHe was barely twenty years old when he started out with FBI in this modest fashion. He climbed up the career ladder steadily thereafter. His appointment as the Assistant Special Agent in fault (ASAC) in Chicago is a nonable milestone. But it is the World Trade Center (WTC) bombing at Oklahoma in 1993 that would climb up to be a turning point in his career. A year later he was made supervisor of VAPCON in 1994. From this point onwards fundament was deeply troth in counter-terror operations for the rest of his life. In hindsight a lot of warnings given by ONeill have proven to be right. His fractious relationship with the FBI bosses and his get abrasive personality had created distrust or disregard for the information that he was passing on. Though a lone voice among his colleagues, he kept ingeminate the threat of terrorist attacks till the very end of his tenure with the FBI. In the last few years of his service, he served as the Chief of Counterte rrorism Section within the FBI. disdain this critical position he held within the study intelligence apparatus his words were not given due respect. Every time an important necessitate would emerge, behind would fight with Washington to make sure that we constantly took the lead on these investigations. So we would build this intelligence base, and so we would have investigators that had the institutional acquaintance and that was the way it was. (Clint Guenther, Former FBI Agent NYC Counterterrorism) Investigating the 911 terror attacks in retrospect, there is nothing inevitable about its occurrence. There were enough indications for the FBI to take preventative action. John ONeill saw himself as the champion of this cause one of saving America from a grave security threat. But, unfortunately, those around him, especially the top leadership in the FBI did not concur with ONeills views. More than an odd lapse it is a systematic failure on part of the key national agency. Bur eaucratic bungling and red tape have made ONeills desperate attempts to communicate a challenge. Personal ego hassles between ONeill and his peers and superiors was another mitigating factor. ONeills abrasive personality rubbed off his colleagues the wrong way. As a result, the intelligence reports given out by ONeill did not get the urgent attention that they merited. One needs to ask how personal favoritism and prejudice can undermine the high profile operations of the FBI. John ONeill was quite vocal and persistent about the presence of Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States. John had communicated how the terror network had actual capabilities for attacking many strategic locations not just in the United States but anywhere in the world. It was ONeill who identified Al Qaeda as the foremost threat to America -much ahead of his peers did. As his colleague Richard Clarke recounts, I would go around the country to FBI offices and ask, Is there an Al Qaeda presence in Chicago, in San Francisco, in Boston? And typically the reaction I would get is, Whats Al Qaeda?...But not with John. John knew what Al Qaeda was he was among the premier(prenominal) people to see the bin Laden threat. He believed there was a bin Laden network in the United States even if he couldnt prove it. So he was constantly trying to prove it (Richard Clarke, NSS Coordinator for Counterterrorism, 1992-2001) John O