Reply #6: O'neil wouldn't be the best choice...

[mikelewis]

...the irony of his death would lead to more conspiracy nuts.

CONSIDER THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE LATE former FBI agent John O'Neil. Stationed in Yemen, he was looking into possible links between Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization and the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole when he was pulled off the investigation for being "too aggressive," as the American ambassador to the Arab country put it at the time.

The real concern, conspiracy theorists allege, is that O'Neil knew too much about Al Qaeda's ties to oil-rich Saudi Arabia, arguably America's most important ally in the volatile Middle East. To protect its client and the flow of its oil, the U.S. government prevented a top investigator from nailing Bin Laden months before the Sept. 11 attacks.

O'Neill soon retired and, in a bizarre twist of fate, became head of security at the World Trade Center (a few weeks prior to 9/11).

On Sept. 10, 2001, O'Neil, who had been in the New York office of the FBI for seven years before his Yemen post, had dinner with an expert on terrorism devices who would quote him later as saying that "at least nothing happened on my watch." The next morning O'Neil died in the towers..."