Daniel J. Hill

Daniel J. Hill (born 1938 in Oak Park, Illinois) joined the United States Army at the age of 15 by lying about his age. He eventually became a Special Forces paratrooper and served in Germany where he participated in missions during the Hungarian Revolution and the struggle for control of Lebanon in 1958.

Following his tour in Germany, he was selected for Ranger school at Fort Benning where he was asked to return as an instructor. In 1960 he was assigned to infiltrate the Katanga insurrection in the Congo where he met his lifelong friend, Rick Rescorla.

Hill served as a lieutenant during his first tour in Vietnam and a captain during his second. After his first tour he was awarded the Silver Star for heroism at Trung Luong, five Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, the Army Commendation medal and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm Leaf.

After retiring from the US Army, he converted to Islam and spent time fighting with the Mujahideen against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

In the meantime, Rescorla had become Director of Security for Dean Witter Securities (later merged with Morgan Stanley), which occupied a number of floors in the World Trade Center. Rescorla had become increasingly concerned about the potential for a terrorist attack against the center and in 1990 hired Hill to provide an assessment of the building's vulnerabilities. Hill singled out the basement parking garage as the obvious point for a car bomb attack, telling Rescorla that if he were a terrorist he would fill a truck with ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel and detonate it in the underground parking garage. Rescorla reported these findings to the New York Port Authority and the New York Police Department but received no official response.

In 1993 the World Trade Center bombing took place in almost exactly the manner Hill had predicted.

Following the bombing, Rescorla and Hill wrote a report which warned that the next logical step would be a suicide terrorist flying a plane into the building.

In 1998 Hill attempted to interest the FBI in a plan to assassinate Osama bin Laden. He proposed working with his Afghani contacts to ambush bin Laden as he drove between Kandahar and Kabul but the plan was rejected. In 2001, his contacts told him that a major attack against the US was imminent and he attempted to revive the plan but was again turned down by the FBI.

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References

*"Heart of a Soldier" by James B. Stewart