Thirteen years ago today, the New York Times revealed how easy it would have been for the Feds to have stopped Ramzi Yousef’s bombing of the World Trade Center before it started:
Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast
Thursday October 28, 1993
By Ralph Blumenthal
Page A1
Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.
The informer was to have helped plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A. Salem, should be use, the informer said.
The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York City’s tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000 injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manattan Federal Court in that attack.
Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian army officer, was used by the Government to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists now charged in two bombing cases: the World Trade Center attack and a foiled plot to destroy the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for months before the trade center blast, he was feuding with the F.B.I.”
Supervisor ‘Messed It Up’
After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period, Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent about an unnamed F.B.I.. supervisor who, he said, “came and messed it up.”
“He requested to meet me in the hotel,” Mr. Salem says of the supervisor. “He requested to make me testify and if he didn’t push for that, we’ll be going building the bomb with a phony powder and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But since you, we didn’t do that.”
More.
For the full story, see 1,000 Years for Revenge by Peter Lance.
Update: See also James Bovard.
Comments welcome at Stress.