Summer 2001: FBI Agent O’Neill Tells New York Police Commissioner Kerik Something ‘Enormous’ Will Happen

John O’Neill, special agent in charge of the FBI’s national security division in New York, tells New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik that something “enormous” is going to happen, but it is likely to occur abroad rather than in the United States. The two men talk at a meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Washington, DC, which is about terrorism. They have a long discussion during which O’Neill says there is “an enormous amount of chatter,” Kerik will later recall. “There is something that’s going to happen,” he says, and “it’s going to be big, it’s going to be enormous.” According to Kerik, O’Neill believes this event—presumably a terrorist attack—will occur somewhere other than in the US. “His assumption at the time and what he told me personally” is that “whatever was going to happen was going to happen outside of this country,” Kerik will say. [9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004] O’Neill and Kerik are members of the terrorism committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. [City of New York, 9/20/2001; US Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary, 12/11/2001; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/11/2006] O’Neill is also “the FBI’s top expert on al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden,” according to New York magazine. [New York Magazine, 12/17/2001] The two men have “a very good relationship,” Kerik will comment. [9/11 Commission, 4/6/2004]