At 12:17p.m., on February 26, 1993, a truck bomb
containing twelve hundred pounds of urea nitrate
exploded in the privately run underground parking
garage below Tower One, the North Tower of the
World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring
over one thousand. The damage was extensive, cre-
ating a thirty-meter-wide hole that extended four
sublevels of concrete, rupturing sewer and water
mains and requiring the evacuation of thousands of
people. The blast cut off telephone service to a good
portion of Lower Manhattan and affected power
lines as well, leading to the majority of radio and tele-
vision stations losing their signal for about a week.
Special cleanup crews from the Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety
and Health Administration (OSHA) arrived to clean
up the sewage, acid, fumes, and asbestos.
The attack was planned by a group of militant
Islamist individuals and was believed to have been fi-
nanced by an al-Qaeda member, Khalid Sheikh Mo-
hammed, the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, a Kuwaiti who
was thought to be the mastermind behind the plot.
In fact, Yousef was a passenger in the bomb-laden
rental van, driven by Jordanian Eyad Ismail on the
day of the explosion. Omar Abdel Rahman, El
Sayyid A. Nosair, Mohammed A. Salameh, Nidal A.
Ayyad, Ahmad M. Ajaj, Abdul Rahman Yasin, and
Mahmoud Abouhalima were also involved with the
planning. The plot involved having Tower One fall
on the other tower, maximizing the damage, al-
though that is not what happened. Four days after
the bombing,The New York Timesreceived a letter
from a group calling itself the Liberation Army Fifth
Battalion that called for the United States to end dip-
lomatic relations with Israel and to stop interfering
with Middle Eastern affairs. The group also threat-
ened that the World Trade Center bombing would
not be the end of the attacks if the United States did
not comply. The Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) later determined that the letter came from
Ayyad, a West Bank Palestinian.The Investigation Members of a variety of agencies,
including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fire-
arms (ATF) and the FBI, responded to the scene of
the bombing. The FBI, the first of the agencies to ar-
rive, brought in examiners from its explosives unit.
During the seven days following the bombing, over
three hundred law-enforcement officers examined
over twenty-five hundred cubic yards of debris. An
ATF bomb technician found part of the van that con-
tained the explosives and that had the vehicle identi-
fication number on it. The vehicle was traced back to
a rental by Salameh, the first suspect arrested. Law-
enforcement officers began an investigation to de-
termine what happened, who was responsible, and
why Tower One did not fall. Samples from the crime
scene were chemically analyzed, and a detailed fo-
rensic accounting investigation traced papers that
ultimately ended in the apprehension of suspects
Ayyad, Abouhalima, and Ajaj.
Law-enforcement officers learned that planning
began in 1991 between Yousef and his uncle. The
two discussed plans over the phone, and Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed wired money to Yousef. Yasin
made the bomb containing urea pellets, sulfuric
acid, aluminum azide, nitroglycerin, magnesium
azide, and bottled hydrogen. When Salameh was ar-
rested one week after the bombing, Yasin was looked938 World Trade Center bombing The Nineties in America
Emergency vehicles fill the street near the World Trade Center in
New York on February 26, 1993, following the explosion in the
underground parking garage.(AP/Wide World Photos)