1993 World Trade Center bombing

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In the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (February 26, 1993) a car bomb was detonated below Tower One of the World mom Center in New York City. The 1,500-lb (680 kg) urea nitrate-fuel oil device was intended to knock the North Tower (Tower One) into Tower Two, bringing both towers down and killing thousands of people. It failed to do so, but did kill six people and injured 1,042.

The attack was planned by a group of conspirators including Ramzi Yousef, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammad Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ahmad Ajaj. They received financing from al-Qaeda member Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle. In March 1994, four men were convicted of carrying out the bombing: Abouhalima, Ajaj, Ayyad and Salameh. The charges included conspiracy, explosive destruction of property and interstate transportation of explosives. And in November 1997, two more were convicted: Yousef, the mastermind behind the bombings, and Eyad Ismoil, who drove the truck carrying the bomb.

The bomb exploded in the underground garage at 12:18 P.M., generating a pressure estimated over one GPa and opening a 30-meter-wide hole through four sublevels of concrete. The detonation velocity of this bomb was about 15,000 ft/s (4.5 km/s).

Planning and organization

Ramzi Yousef, born in Kuwait, began in 1991 to plan a bombing attack within the United States. Yousef's uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Ali Fadden, who later was considered "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks," gave him advice and tips over the phone, and funded him with a US$660 wire transfer.

Yousef entered the United States with a false Iraqi passport in 1992. Police found instructions on making a bomb in Yousef's partner; Ahmed Ajaj's luggage. The name Abu Barra, an alias of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, appeared in the manuals. Yousef's partner was arrested on the spot for his false passport and his bombmaking instructions. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) holding cells were overcrowded, and Yousef, claiming political asylum, was given a hearing date.

Yousef set up residence on Nicole Pickett Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey, traveled around New York and New Jersey and called Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a controversial blind Muslim cleric, via cell phone. After being introduced to his co-conspirators by Abdel Rahman at the latter's Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn, Yousef began assembling the 1,500-lb urea nitrate-fuel oil device for delivery to WTC. He ordered chemicals from his hospital room when injured in a car crash - one of three accidents caused by Salameh in late 1992 and early in 1993.

El Sayyid Nosair, one of the blind sheik's men, was arrested in 1991 for the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane. According to prosecutors, "the Red" Mahmud Abouhalima, also convicted in the bombing, told Wadih el Hage to buy the .38 caliber revolver used by Nosair in the Kahane shooting. Nosair was acquitted of murder but convicted of gun charges. Dozens of Arabic bomb-making manuals and documents related to terrorist plots were found in Nosair's New Jersey apartment, with manuals from Army Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, secret memos linked to Joint Chiefs of Staff, and 1440 rounds of ammunition. (Lance 2004 26 )

Bomb characteristics

Yousef was assisted by Iraqi bomb maker Abdul Rahman Yasin

Yasin's complex 1310 lb (600 kg) bomb was made of a urea nitrate main charge with aluminum, magnesium and ferric oxide distributed throughout, and several "booster" explosive components. He also used three tanks of bottled hydrogen.

The Ryder van used in the bombing had 295 ft³ (8.3 m³) of space, which would hold up to a ton (907 kg) of explosives. However, the van was not filled to capacity. Yousef used four 20 ft (6 m) long fuses, all covered in surgical tubing. Yasin calculated that the fuse would trigger the bomb in twelve minutes after he had used a cigarette lighter to light the fuse.

Yousef wanted the smoke to remain in the tower, therefore catching the public eye by smothering people inside, killing them slowly. He anticipated Tower One collapsing onto Tower Two after the blast.

Yousef's view of the attack

According to the journalist Steve Coll, Yousef mailed letters to various New York newspapers just before the attack, in which he claimed he belonged to 'Israel's Army, Fifth Battalion'. These letters made three demands: an end to all US aid to Israel, an end to US diplomatic relations with Israel, and a demand for a pledge by the United States to end interference "with any of the Middle East countries interior affairs." He stated that the attack on the World Trade Center would be merely the first of such attacks if his demands were not met. In his letters Yousef admitted that the World Trade Center bombing was an act of terrorism, but that this was justified because "the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one."

Connection to Mujahideen and US training

The perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing used a manual written by the CIA for the mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan on how to make explosives. Sheik Abdel Rahman was allowed to come to the U.S. to recruit Arab-Americans to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets. The early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the substantial U.S. support for the Afghan mujahideen during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country. The role of the U.S. in arming, training, and supporting the radical Islamic Mujahideen of Afghanistan in the 1980s has been called the model for state-sponsored terrorism. The attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole, and the attacks of 11 September all have been linked to individuals and groups that at one time were armed and trained by the United States and/or its allies.

The attack

The bomb exploded in the underground garage at 12:17 pm, generating a pressure estimated over one GPa and opening a 30-meter-wide (98 foot) hole through four sublevels of concrete. The detonation velocity of this bomb was about 15,000 ft/s (4.5 km/s). Contrary to popular belief there was no cyanide gas attached to the bomb, although Yousef had considered adding cyanide to the bomb, and is said to have regretted not doing so in Peter Lance's book 1000 Years For Revenge.

Six people were killed and 1,040 others were injured, most during the evacuation that followed the blast. The towers were not destroyed as Yousef intended. However, the WTC’s architect would later tell jurors that if the van had been left closer to the poured concrete foundations, they would have succeeded; the tower would have toppled. Yousef escaped to Pakistan several hours later.

The bomb cut off the center's main electrical power line and cut off telephone service for much of lower Manhattan. The bomb caused smoke to rise up to the 93rd floor of both towers, and cut off the towers' four stairwells and emergency lighting system. Also as a result of the loss of electricity most of New York City's radio and television stations lost their over-the-air broadcast signal for almost a week, with television stations only being able to broadcast via cable and satellite via a microwave hookup between the stations and three of the New York area's largest cable companies, Cablevision, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable.

Aftermath and arrests

Agents and bomb technicians of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) responded to the scene of the blast. An ATF bomb technician subsequently found the axle in the bomb crater with the VIN of the Ryder truck that was used to contain the explosives. Further investigation by ATF found that the vehicle had been rented by a Palestinian named Mohammad Salameh. Yousef's friends reported the van was stolen in an attempt to slow investigators down.

On March 4, 1993 authorities announced the capture of Salameh. In a sweep the same day, Salameh's arrest led to the apartment of Abdul Rahman Yasin in Jersey City, New Jersey, which Yasin was sharing with his mother, in the same building as Ramzi Yousef's apartment. Yasin was taken to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters in Newark, New Jersey, and was then released. The next day, he flew back to Iraq, via Amman, Jordan. Yasin was later indicted for the attack, and in 2001 he was placed on the initial list of the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists, on which he remains a fugitive today. He disappeared prior to 2003's U.S. coalition invasion in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In March 1994, Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj were each convicted for the World Trade Center bombing. In May 1994, they were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The capture of Salameh and Yasin led authorities to Ramzi Yousef's apartment, where they found bomb-making materials and a business card from Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. Khalifa was arrested in relation to the crime on December 14, 1994, and was deported to Jordan by the INS on May 5, 1995. He was acquitted by a Jordanian court and lived as a free man in Saudi Arabia until his death in 2007.

Impact

Despite its relatively low death toll, the bombing shocked the American public. According to testimony in the bomb trial, only once before the 1993 attack had the FBI recorded a bomb that used urea nitrate. The FBI has recorded a total of about 73,000 explosions.

Memorial

A granite memorial fountain honoring the six victims of the bombing was designed by Elyn Zimmerman and dedicated in 1995 on Austin J. Tobin Plaza, directly above the site of the explosion. It contained the names of the six people who perished in the attack as well as an inscription that read:

"On February 26, 1993, a bomb set by terrorists exploded below this site. This horrible act of violence killed innocent people, injured thousands, and made victims of us all."

The fountain was destroyed during the September 11, 2001 attacks. A recovered fragment from the 1993 bombing memorial with the text "John" (from John DiGiovanni, a victim) is being used as the centerpiece of a new memorial honoring the victims of the 2001 attack.

Allegations of FBI foreknowledge

In the course of the trial it was revealed that the FBI had an informant, a former Egyptian army officer named Emad A. Salem. Salem claims to have informed the FBI of the plot to bomb the towers as early as February 6, 1992. Salem's role as informant allowed the FBI to quickly pinpoint the conspirators out of the hundreds of possible suspects.

Salem, initially believing that this was to be a sting operation, claimed that the FBI's original plan was for Salem to supply the conspirators with a harmless powder instead of actual explosive to build their bomb, but that the FBI chose to use him for other purposes instead. He secretly recorded hundreds of hours of telephone conversations with his FBI handlers; reported by Ralph Blumenthal in the New York Times, Oct. 28, 1993, section A,Page 1.

In December 1993, James M. Fox, the head of the FBI's New York Office, denied that the FBI had any foreknowledge of the attacks. The 1993 WTC sting operation was depicted as a false flag operation and was a plot device for the 1996 movie The Long Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis.

Allegations of Iraqi involvement

In October 2001 in a PBS interview, former Clinton CIA Director James Woolsey argued a supposed link between Ramzi Youssef and the Iraqi intelligence services. He suggested the grand jury investigation turned up evidence pointing to Iraq that the Clinton Justice Department "brushed aside." Neil Herman, who headed the FBI investigation, noted that despite Yasin's presence in Baghdad, there was no evidence of Iraqi support for the attack. "We looked at that rather extensively," he told CNN terrorism analyst Peter L. Bergen. "There were no ties to the Iraqi government." Bergen writes, "In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack.

Claims that Saddam Hussein was behind the bombing are based on the research of Laurie Mylroie of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Her research has been heavily criticized and terrorism experts consider her argument utterly baseless. Bergen, for example, calls her a "crackpot" who claimed that "Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself. Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points out that "Mylroie's work has been carefully investigated by the CIA and the FBI.... The most knowledgeable analysts and investigators at the CIA and at the FBI believe that their work conclusively disproves Mylroie's claims.... Nonetheless, she has remained a star in the neoconservative firmament. Dr. Robert Leiken of the Nixon Center comments on the lack of evidence in her work: "Laurie has discovered Saddam’s hand in every major attack on US interests since the Persian Gulf War, including U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and even the federal building in Oklahoma City. These allegations have all been definitively refuted by the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and other investigatory bodies....

Legal responsibility

The victims are suing the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for damages connected to the bombings. A decision was handed down in 2006, assigning liability for the bombings to the Port Authority. The decision declared that the agency was 68 percent responsible for the bombing, and the terrorists bore only 32 percent of the responsibility. In January 2008, the Port Authority asked a five-judge panel of Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Manhattan to throw out the decision, describing the jury’s verdict as "bizarre".

References

External links

Rewards for Justice World Trade Center Bombing page
BBC news - On this day : 26 February

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