Posted on 02/22/2003 1:48:41 PM PST by areafiftyone
Sitting in the 107th floor restaurant atop the World Trade Center, Matt Morsa watched his soup bowl launch into a herky-jerky dance.
The cause was incomprehensible: 1,400 feet below, as Morsa waited for his appetizer, terrorists had tried to bring down the twin towers. It was Feb. 26, 1993, and a rented van loaded with 1,500 pounds of explosives was detonated in a basement parking garage.
Six people died, and more than 1,000 were injured on a wintry afternoon. Thousands more, like Morsa, walked down endless staircases filled with choking black smoke, emerging to gulp the frigid air off New York Harbor.
"I remember everything about it," said Morsa, who was visiting New York from California for a business seminar, as he reflected on the 10th anniversary of the bombing.
For many, though, that bombing has become the forgotten attack -- overwhelmed by the carnage of Sept. 11, the image of the towers falling like twin houses of cards, the loss of nearly 2,800 lives.
Even a memorial to the half-dozen victims of the 1993 attack was pulverized when the 110-story buildings were brought down by terrorists in their second strike at the skyscrapers.
"The first one has been eclipsed," said Mark Marchese, a former Port Authority spokesman who felt the 1993 bomb rattle his 68th floor office. "What happened Sept. 11 was beyond anybody's imagination."
Trader Michael Glynn, who survived both World Trade Center attacks, called the 1993 bombing "a day in the park" compared to the second wave.
One thing was certain: Back in 1993, the idea of a terrorist attack on lower Manhattan seemed impossible -- even to those, like Morsa and Glynn, lumbering down the stairs to safety.
A rented Ryder van was packed with explosives by a Jersey City, N.J.-based Islamic terror cell. It was parked beneath the Vista Hotel, which was connected to both towers.
One of the van's riders strolled across Broadway to watch the explosion from a window in the classical music section of J&R Music World. The plot's mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, now serving life in prison, watched from the New Jersey shoreline.
At 12:18 p.m., the bomb went off -- and its creators were disappointed. It blew a 150-foot wide crater in the Vista's basement, shaking the towers from their core to the top floor. The buildings were rocked, but not ruined.
A cloud of smoke wafted through Windows on the World, interrupting Morsa's meal. A generator must have blown, he thought. Marchese wondered if lightning had hit the building.
Firefighters charged up the stairs, helping 50,000 people to safety. Helicopters, braving winds and snow flurries, plucked 28 people from the towers' roofs. Electricity was lost, black smoke filled the buildings, and visibility inside was zero.
Workers at a Japanese bank pressed their cheeks against the cold office windows for relief. Others knocked the windows out, providing a blast of fresh air.
Once in the safety of lower Manhattan's streets, one businessman sat weeping on a curb. Nearby, a woman knelt in prayer. Others hacked up black phlegm, or wiped the thick soot from their eyes.
Morsa, after cleaning up in the bathroom of a nearby hotel, called his fiancee in California.
Six people died in the parking garage; five bodies were recovered immediately. The search for the final victim, Wilfred Mercado, lasted 18 days, until Port Authority police Officer Paul Laszczynski located his remains.
Eight years later, on Sept. 11, Laszczynski was back at the World Trade Center. His last radio call came from the 20th floor, where Laszczynski was helping people flee the doomed Tower One.
The body of the 15-year police veteran was recovered on Feb. 10, 2002. He was one of 37 PA cops killed in the attack.
Over the last decade, Morsa's life had changed drastically. Now 39, he had moved from California to Oregon. He was married, and the father of two children. He held a new job.
Morsa saved some reminders of 1993: a tie, torn and frayed, that he had used as a makeshift mask to save him from smoke inhalation. And his hotel key from the Vista.
"I loaned my shoes to a gal in high heels," said Morsa. "I never did get those back."
On Sept. 11, 2001, he was sleeping when a friend called and told him to turn on the television. It was barely 6 a.m. on the West Coast, and he watched in disbelief as the second plane hit the World Trade Center.
Morsa recalled how, eight years earlier, the firefighters had bolted up the towers' staircases. "Running past us," he remembered, "they looked like movie stars."
He watched a group of 15 firefighters walking slowly toward the twin towers. And when the second tower collapsed, he knew -- he just knew -- they all were dead.
"I cried for two or three days, on and off," Morsa said. "I didn't realize how much it still affects me."
The week after 9/11, I spent my evenings reading everything I could find on the Internet on the truck-bombing of the WTC in 1993.
As you know, on February 26, 1993, terrorists ignited a massive explosion which rocked the World Trade Center, killing six innocent people, injuring more than 1,000 others, terrifying school children who were trapped for hours in a smoke-filled elevator, and causing millions of dollars in damage. Terrorists parked a bomb-laden truck in the garage beneath the two 110-story towers. After igniting the fuse, they fled in another vehicle. Unbelievably, there is a description on the Internet going into detail how the bomb blast and heat caused levels of the towers to collapse.
I was satisfied after reading the testimony and details of the Court findings during the trials, that Iraq was behind the attempt to bring down the WTC in that 1993 attack. The record points to Iraq. READ THIS FOR YOURSELF. So, I ask myself, doesn’t it follow that what the Iraqi government attempted, but failed to do in 1993 – that is, bring down the WTC – they tried again in 2001, using a different method. I believe without a doubt that both Osama Bin Lauden AND Saddam Huessin were the movers behind 9/11.
Why our officials are relunctant to bring this out is beyond me. But if you are interested, do the homework and decide for yourself.
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