Thursday, May 18, 2017
1993 Bombing of the World Trade Center
A lot of people know about 9/11 but what about it's founding father? In 1992, when al Qaeda had not become as prominent, Ramzi Yousef traveled to the US illegally claiming political asylum. Ajaj, a co-conspirator traveled with him as an obvious terrorist and detracted attention away from Yousef. Once he arrived he got into contact with blind Sheik Omar Rahman, who was at the Al-Farooq Mosque where a lot of these terrorist attacks came from. He planned to drive a truck bomb under the North Tower and the explosion would cause Tower 1 to fall into Tower 2. The bomb exploded around 12:17 and blew a hole 98 feet wide. It killed 6 people and injured 1,042. Additionally, 17 kindergarteners were stuck between the 35th and 36th floor in an elevator for five hours. The bomb cut off the main power line in the World Trade Center and smoke inhalation injuries were the most common affliction. The FBI uncovered all of the details shortly after the event but not before Yousef had fled to Pakistan. Should the FBI have taken more precautions after this event that could have stopped 9//11? Or was it out of their control?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Although there were many things that the FBI could have done to prepare for 9/11 based on the outcome of the 1993 WTC bombing (such as increasing collaboration between security agencies and focusing on fully uncovering extreme Islamic plots within the US), I don't think that the organization anticipated that this attack was going to influence any future plots involving America based on the low-profile nature of the bombing. Although this attack did hurt significant amounts of people create significant turmoil for the individuals and families impacted by it, it wasn't necessarily an intricate, well-thought-out plot with major implications for future terrorism within the nation like 9/11 was. From the viewpoint of the FBI, this bombing was just a violent, unprovoked attack carried out by a few extremist Muslims who didn't like the US, which was supported by the fact that it only involved a few individuals and a simple car bomb. Thus, even though one of the men involved in the attack claimed that he would eventually seek retribution for the bombing's failure to bring down the twin towers and carry out a bigger terrorist plot, there wasn't significant evidence at the time to support this claim; all it seemed like to the FBI was that he and the others involved the plot were psychopaths who were making unsubstantiated threats out of anger towards the US. So, in my opinion, even though there were obviously things the FBI could have learned from the 1993 WTC attacks in order to prepare for/prevent the outcome of Al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, the evidence provided to them at the time suggesting that future attacks would be carried out wasn't really substantial enough to elicit a major response (especially since the FBI was probably used to getting significant threats from extremists and mentally-ill individuals in the past regarding the destruction of the US).
ReplyDeleteI agree with you entirely. It seems obvious now that the US intelligence agencies should have connected the dots and focused more manpower on combatting terrorism, but at the time it was not clear that this would evolve into a more serious threat in the future.
Delete