In the '1993 World Trade Center bombing' (
February 26,
1993) a
car bomb was detonated by
Islamic terrorists in the underground
parking garage below Tower One of the
World Trade 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 250,000 people.
[1] It failed to so, but did kill six and injured 1,042 people.
The attack was planned by a group of conspirators including
Ramzi Yousef,
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman,
El Sayyid Nosair,
Mahmud Abouhalima,
Mohammad Salameh,
Nidal Ayyad,
Ahmad Ajaj, and
Abdul Rahman Yasin. They received financing from
al-Qaeda member
Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle.
The bomb exploded in the underground garage at 12:17 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). The
cyanide gas generated is assumed to have burned in the explosion.
In October 1995, the militant
Islamist and blind
cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, was sentenced to life imprisonment for masterminding the bombing. In 1998,
Ramzi Yousef was convicted of "
seditious conspiracy" to bomb the towers. In all, ten militant Islamist conspirators were convicted for their part in the bombing, each receiving prison sentences of at least 240 years.
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.
[2]
Yousef entered the
United States with a false
Iraqi passport in
1992. Police found instructions on making a bomb in Yousef's partner'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 Sheikh
Omar Abdel-Rahman, a controversial
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 Sheikh's men who would later be convicted for the bombing, 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 [1] . Yasin's complex 1310 lb (600 kg) bomb was made of
urea pellets,
nitroglycerin,
sulfuric acid,
aluminum azide,
magnesium azide, and bottled
hydrogen. He added
sodium cyanide to the mix as the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators of the towers.
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 the 'Liberation Army, Fifth Battalion'.
[3] 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 [''sic''] 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 Mujahadeen and US training
The perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing used a manual written by the CIA for the Mujihadeen fighters in Afghanistan on how to make explosives.
Sheik Abul Rahman, one of the conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was allowed to come to the U.S. to recruit Arab-Americans to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets.
[4] The early foundations of
al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country.
[5] The role of the U.S. in arming, training, and supporting the radical Islamic Mujihadeen of Afghanistan in the 1980s has been called the model for state-sponsored terrorism.
[6] 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.
[6]
The attack
The bomb exploded in the underground garage at 12:17 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). The
cyanide gas generated is assumed to have burned in the explosion.
Six people were killed and at least 1,040 others were injured. 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, the plan would have succeeded and the tower would have toppled.
[8] 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 March
1994, Salameh, Nidal Ayyad,
Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj were each convicted and sentenced to
life imprisonment for the World Trade Center bombing.
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.
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.
Impact and prosecutions
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.
[9] [10] The FBI has recorded a total of about 73,000 explosions.
In October
1996, the militant Islamist and blind cleric
Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who preached at
mosques in
Brooklyn and Jersey City, was sentenced to life imprisonment for masterminding the bombing. Rahman, whose
Islamic Group organization is believed to have had links to
Osama Bin Laden's
al-Qaeda network, was later convicted with a number of others of
conspiracy charges to bomb several
New York City landmarks (see
New York City landmark bomb plot). In 1998,
Ramzi Yousef, said by some to have been the real mastermind, was convicted of "seditious conspiracy" to bomb the towers. When Ramzi Yousef was brought back to America, he was flown over the still intact twin towers. One of the other men tried alongside Yousef for the bombing was
Eyad Ismail. In all, ten militant Islamist conspirators – including Ramzi Yousef – were convicted for their part in the bombing and were given prison sentences of a maximum of 240 years each.
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" 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.
[11] 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.
[12]
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.
References
1. Wright, Lawrence, ''Looming Tower'', Knopf, (2006) p.178
2. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/ksm.htm
3. Steve Coll, ''Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001'', The Penguin Press HC, 2004. ISBN 1-59420-007-6.
4. Demokratizatsiya, Spring 2003, re-published at Find Articles, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3996/is_200304/ai_n9199132/pg_6; "Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism," by ABC News correspondent John K. Cooley
5. Tom Paine, October 27, 2006, http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/27/we_arm_the_world.php
6. Demokratizatsiya, Spring 2003, re-published at Find Articles, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3996/is_200304/ai_n9199132
7. Demokratizatsiya, Spring 2003, re-published at Find Articles, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3996/is_200304/ai_n9199132
8. An Icon Destroyed(MSNBC)
9. "Urea nitrate rarely used as explosive."
10. Alternate link: If you get a 403 server error, try this link and then click on the link for "Page 16335".
11. Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast
12. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00617FE3A5C0C7B8EDDA90994DB494D81
Further reading
★
Rewards for Justice World Trade Center Bombing page
★
BBC news - On this day : 26 February
★
Tapes in Bombing Plot Show Informer and F.B.I. at Odds
★
1000 Years for Revenge, Lance, Peter, , , , , Covers the plotting and motives of those who caused the first WTC bombing.
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