The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [116]
He had wanted to work for the bureau since boyhood, when he watched Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., star as the buttoned-down Inspector Lewis Erskine in the TV series The F.B.I. He got a job as a fingerprint clerk with the bureau as soon as he graduated from high school in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and he put himself through American University and a master’s program in forensics at George Washington University by serving as a tour guide at FBI headquarters. In 1976 he became a full-time agent in the bureau’s office in Baltimore, and in 1991 he was named assistant special agent in charge of the Chicago office. Nicknames—Satan, the Prince of Darkness—followed him around from his days in Chicago, which spoke about his remorseless intensity, his sleeplessness, and the fear that he often inspired in those who worked with him. Time meant little to him; he kept the shades down in his office and seemed to live in eternal night.
In SIOC, O’Neill walked around with a phone at each ear, coordinating the rendition team on one line and arranging for an Air Force transport on the other. Because Pakistan would not permit an American military aircraft to land on its soil, O’Neill ordered the Air Force to paint its jet in civilian colors—immediately! He also demanded that, if Yousef was captured, the flight home would be refueled in midair, fearing that Yousef might claim asylum if the aircraft had to land in another country. O’Neill was operating well outside his authority, but he was reckless and domineering by nature. (The Pentagon later sent him a bill for $12 million for the midair refueling and the paint job. The bill went unpaid.)
As the news spread of Yousef’s sighting, Attorney General Janet Reno and the director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, came into SIOC. Many critical operations had been conducted in this room, but none so urgent and complex. The policy of renditions had only recently been instituted through an executive order that extended the reach of the FBI outside the borders of the United States, turning it into an international police agency; in practice, however, the bureau was still learning—not only how to operate in foreign environments but also how to beat a path through the U.S. government agencies abroad, each of which needed to be bullied or appeased. Such diplomacy normally required lengthy negotiations. But there was no time for talk. If Yousef escaped, few doubted that he would attempt to carry out his scheme of blowing up American airliners or even crashing a plane into CIA headquarters, as he had once planned.
O’Neill got the rendition team in the air, but he still needed to put a snatch team in place. There was only one FBI agent in Pakistan who could be pressed into service. O’Neill located several agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department Bureau of Diplomatic Security who were also in the country. They enlisted a couple of Pakistani soldiers and rushed to the motel to grab Yousef before he got on the bus.
At 9:30 a.m. Pakistani time on February 7, the agents entered the Su-Casa Guest House in Islamabad and knocked on the door of room 16. A sleepy Yousef was immediately thrown to the floor and handcuffed. Moments later, the news reached the jubilant agents at FBI headquarters.
During the three days he was in SIOC, John O’Neill turned forty-three years old. He finally took his luggage to his new apartment. It was Tuesday, his first official day on the job.
IN WASHINGTON, O’Neill became part of a close-knit group of terrorism experts that formed around Dick Clarke.