World Trade Center, 1993 Terrorist Attack (don't say it too loudly

The World Trade Center (WTC) bombing of 1993 has long since been overshadowed by the attack that brought the twin towers down on September 11, 2001. Yet, at the time it occurred, the attack loomed as large on the American landscape as the towers themselves once did on the Manhattan skyline. The attack killed six people and injured more than a thousand, the first casualties from foreign terrorists on U.S. soil. American authorities identified at least eight perpetrators, but questions remain as to the ultimate cause of the attack.

The attack and its aftermath. At 12:18 p.m. on Friday, February 26, 1993, an explosion rocked the second level of the parking basement beneath Trade Tower One. The explosive material, as investigators would later determine, was somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 pounds (544–680 kg) of urea nitrate, a homemade fertilizer-based explosive.

The blast ripped open a crater 150 feet (46 m) in diameter and five floors deep, rupturing sewer and water mains and cutting off electricity. Over the hours that followed, more than 50,000 people were evacuated from the Trade Center complex. A stunned nation soon grasped a fact larger than the incident itself: foreign-sponsored terrorism—which had long plagued Western Europe and parts of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—had come to the United States.

Investigation and cleanup begins. The first analysis team to arrive came from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who soon brought in two examiners from the FBI Laboratory Explosives Unit. Over the week that followed, a team of more than 300 law-enforcement officers from various agencies throughout the country would sift through some 2,500 cubic yards (1,911 cubic meters) of debris weighing more than 6,800 tons (6,909 tonnes).

At the same time that this forensic investigation began, government authorities rushed to protect against physical, chemical, and biological hazards associated with the blast. The explosion had exposed raw sewage, asbestos, mineral wool, acid, and fumes from automobiles. Meanwhile, small electrical fires burned, and pieces of concrete and sharp metal hung threateningly from distended beams.

On Saturday, authorities installed seismographic equipment, cleared the area, and conducted a test run of an empty subway train. The results showed that with a few adjustments, the area could be rendered safe for the operation of the Port Authority Transportation system (PATH) on Monday, thus preventing a virtual shutdown of lower Manhattan. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration began taking steps to clean up biological and chemical debris.

Tracking the killers. Meanwhile, the forensic investigation expanded, with two chemists each from the FBI, ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms), and New York Police Department collecting and studying residue from the blast area. In the course of this work, investigators found a key piece of evidence: a 300-pound (136-kg) fragment of a vehicle that, based on the damage it had sustained, must have been at the very epicenter of the blast. Sewage contamination had rendered it unusable for residue analysis, but it bore something much better: a vehicle identification number (VIN).

This was not to be the first fortunate break for investigators. Authorities traced the vehicle to a Ryder truck rental facility in Jersey City, New Jersey, from which it had been reported stolen. On Monday, while FBI special agents were at the Jersey City facility to speak with personnel there, the Ryder clerk received a call from a man identified as Mohamed Salemeh. The latter demanded the return of his $400 deposit for the van in question, and the Ryder clerk arranged for him to return and collect the deposit on March 4, 1993. When Salemeh arrived, he was arrested.

A search of Salemeh's belongings led investigators to Nidal Ayad, a chemist working for the Allied Signal Corporation in New Jersey. Toll records and receipts helped lead to a safe house in Jersey City, New Jersey, where authorities found traces of nitroglycerine and urea nitrate. They also uncovered evidence that Salemeh and Ayad had obtained three tanks of compressed hydrogen gas, and in the course of searching a storage room rented by Salemeh, investigators found large caches of urea, sulfuric acid, and other chemicals used in making a bomb. On March 3, the New York Times received a letter claiming responsibility for the bombing, and subsequent investigation of DNA samples matched Ayad with the saliva on the envelope flap.

Conviction—and continuing questions. The trail of investigation would eventually lead to Ramzi Yousef, who authorities believe was in the van that delivered the explosives to the WTC. With him was Eyad Ismoil. Also implicated in the bombing, along with Salemeh and Ayad, were Ahmad Ajaj, Mahmoud Abouhalima, and Abdul Rahman Yasin. On March 4, 1994, a jury found Salemeh, Ajaj, Abouhalima, and Ayad guilty on 38 counts, including murder and conspiracy, and the judge handed down multiple life sentences.

Yousef fled the country, and engaged in other terror plots before he was captured and brought to the United States from Pakistan in February 1995. He was sentenced to life plus 240 years. As of 2003, Yasin had not been captured, and was believed to be in Iraq. In October 1995, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric who taught at mosques in Brooklyn and New Jersey, was sentenced to life imprisonment for masterminding the attack. But some observers wonder whether the roots of the 1993 WTC attack run much deeper.

The fact that Yousef is the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top figure in al-Qaeda, suggests a strong connection between the 1993 conspirators and the group who ultimately brought down the towers eight years later. After the September 2001, attack, it was the opinion of many investigators and analysts inside President George W. Bush's administration, that the perpetrators of that attack had a state sponsor—Iraq. A number of details, including the fact that Yousef was traveling on an Iraqi passport, as well as the date of the 1993 attack—the second anniversary of the U.S. liberation of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War—furthered suspicions of Iraqi involvement in the 1993 incident. Mohammed was later involved in masterminding the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, and was arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003.

SOURCE: http://www.shoutwire.com/comments/27507/Who_s_really_to_blame_for_9_11

LiberalScum, on 9/3/2006 10:57:16 AM
Total Posts: 315, Joined: 3/11/2006
Under Clinton, we suffered 6 major attacks that were orchestrated by Bin Laden.

After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six and injured 1,000; President Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

Bill Clinton warned America in his radio address that we should not overreact to the 1993 WTC bombing. "I would discourage the American people from overreacting to this," Clinton said.

Bill Clinton treated it as a petty criminal offense even though Bush 41 told him terrorists had declared war on America.

CIA director Woolsey now reveals that he never had a private personal meeting with Clinton during the first two years of his tenure as head of the CIA - exactly the key period in investigating the 1993 attack.

Bill Clinton did not visit the WTC towers.

Bill Clinton did not even make a public appearance on national television.

Bill Clinton tried to stop a reward fund for the capture of terrorists involved in the attack.

From the time President Clinton took office until May of 1995, a Presidential Decision Directive, PDD 39, sat in the National Security Council, in the In Box of one of the officials with no action taken. The significance of PDD 39 is that it was the document defining what the missions and roles were of combating terrorism.

Despite what happened at the World Trade Center in 1993, the Clinton administration did not finally act on [PDD 39] until after the attack in Oklahoma City.

The only reason for that is because in the two weeks prior to Oklahoma City, the front page of both Newsweek and Time Magazine carried the question: 'Is President Clinton Relevant?'

After the 1993 ambush in Somalia, which killed 19 and injured 84; President Clinton just tucked tail and ran away.

On May 4, 1993, Clinton having taken office in January, U.S. Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Johnston handed over control of the relief mission to the UN. "It's all yours," he told the new UN commander, a Turkish general, as he departed with most of his U.S. troops in tow.

Bill Clinton sent U.S. Army Rangers on a highly risky mission to take out Aidid. Aidid militia were not Somali but members of bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, who were deployed in his Mogadishu bases.

Bill Clinton denied the Pentagon a request for armor support.

After botching the whole mission, Clinton pulled out and Bin Laden took notice of that.

Bill Clinton even gave the target of the mission, Aidid, a marine guard after the botched mission to capture him.

After the 1995 bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed five U.S. military personnel; Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

After the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 and injured 200 U.S. military personnel; Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

Bill Clinton cared so little that his own assistant secretary of state, Dick Holbrooke, had trouble getting him to pay attention to warnings about the impending attack on the Khobar Towers.

After the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, Clinton had Dick Morris take a poll. "We tested 'peacemaker' or 'toughness,'" York quotes Morris as recalling. The public preferred toughness. "So Clinton talked tough." But the FBI director, Louis Freeh, became so exasperated by Clinton's failure to raise the matter with Saudi officials that he actually asked former President George Bush to do so instead.

After the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed 224 and injured 5,000; Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

Clinton used American tax dollars to pay for the trucks used in the embassy bombings. (See Below)

The U.S. State Department thwarted an investigation into two suspects in the Aug. 7. 1998, bombing of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, which had killed more than 250 people, including 12 Americans, according to reports from MSNBC news filed on July 29.

Clinton was more concerned with obstructing justice than doing anything about such a grave terrorist attack.

After the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 and injured 39 U.S. sailors; Clinton promised that those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

Shortly after the bombing of the Cole, Clinton had an opportunity to take Bin Laden out and refused to. (See Below)

A Pentagon intelligence expert on terrorism in the Persian Gulf has told Congress that he warned of possible terrorist attacks on U.S. forces.

Maybe if Clinton had kept his promise and got Bin Laden, 3,000 people in New York, Washington, D.C., and the Heros of Flight 93 that are now dead would be alive today and we wouldn't have lost 290 people along with more than 6,323 people that had been injured on his watch.

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