Of course, it hadn’t been established by the end of last week that foreign terrorists were responsible for the explosion. It wasn’t even 100 percent certain that the big bang came from a bomb, instead of, say, a gas leak or a transformer fire. But investigators could find nothing wrong with the gas or electricity, and it was hard to imagine what else could have caused such an enormous blast. “It looks like a bomb, it smells like a bomb-it’s probably a bomb,” said Cuomo. If it was indeed a bomb, the device must have been expertly built and placed for maximum effect, judging from all the damage it caused. “This wasn’t a bunch of yahoos,” said a counterterrorism expert in Washington. “To do all that takes some training and most likely some organization behind you.”
That possibility set off the biggest investigation of its kind in American history. Quickly realizing the massiveness of their task, FBI officials set up an emergency command center in Washington; Director William Sessions spent most of his day there. On Friday afternoon the FBI began rushing agents to New York to beef up its field office and work with the local police. They also sent in a Rapid Start Team of computer specialists and information technicians to process and collate hundreds of thousands of items: bits of evidence, leads, rumors, witness reports.
The FBI quickly alerted the New York police to spread a dragnet and sent bulletins to field offices across the country instructing them to search for clues. A hot line was set up with the CIA, whose computers were already beginning to spit out intelligence on suspected terrorists around the world. Hoping to close escape hatches overseas, the FBI sent alerts to foreign law-enforcement agencies and asked Interpol to comb its own computer files. FBI legal attaches in U.S. embassies were told to begin collecting information on terrorism overseas.
“We will bring our best and smartest minds to bear on it,” vowed a federal official. FBI forensic experts would begin by sifting through the rubble looking for “tags,” signs that indicate the origin of the bomb. The FBI’s forensic capability is said to be the strongest in the world. In time, investigators should be able to “reconstruct” the bomb from the flecks of dust, shards of metal and tendrils of wire the device left behind. “The World Trade Center investigation will be difficult, but it’s not impossible,” said an FBI man.
The investigators will have to match wits with the perpetrator on difficult terrain. “The forensic challenge is tremendous,” says one federal official. “We have to worry about structural engineering-we don’t want the World Trade Center to fall on top of us. We have to worry about archeology-how to move massive tons of material without losing microscopic evidence. And we have to be Sherlock Holmes.” There are more clues than one might expect. “Surprisingly, even in a large explosion like this, whatever caused the blast leaves a lot of itself behind,” says Jack Killorin, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which helps to investigate mysterious explosions. The first thing the probers will look for once extraneous debris is removed, is the bomb’s “signature,” the distinctive touches that betray its origin: the style of the maker, or the type of bomb favored by a particular group. Component parts might be traced to their manufacturers, or to the countries from which they came.
In the White House, a “war room” was set up to help Bill Clinton track the investigation. Immediately after the explosion, the president called Cuomo and New York City Mayor David Dinkins, who was travelling in Japan, “to assure them that the full measure of federal law enforcement will be brought to bear on this investigation,” Clinton said in his radio address on Saturday. “Americans should know,” he added, “we’ll do everything in our power to keep them safe in their streets, their offices and their homes.” That Clinton had to make such a promise showed how jittery the White House was about the implications of the tradecenter explosion.
So far, the blast seemed to carry the trademark of a professional terrorist. But whose terrorist? At 1:35 Friday afternoon, more than an hour after the explosion, the first caller claiming responsibility for it was logged in by New York City’s 911 number. At 2:15 there came a warning that a bomb had been placed in the Empire State Building, which was the tallest building in the world before the trade center went up 20 years ago (both have since been surpassed by Chicago’s Sears Tower). The Empire State Building was evacuated, but no bomb was found. In all, 19 callers claimed they had bombed the trade center, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly reported on Saturday. The calls came from “all sorts of groups and individuals,” he said, and some calls seemed “disjointed.” Kelly refused to identify any of the callers. He denied a widely published report that one call came in 15 minutes before the explosion. “The possibility exists that it was a terrorist bombing,” Kelly said, but if he had any idea who did it, he wasn’t saying.
The lack of hard evidence and officially identified suspects meant that no possibility could be ruled in or out. Was Saddam Hussein behind the blast? It occurred on the second anniversary of Iraq’s expulsion from Kuwait City, and the Bank of Kuwait just happened to have a vault in the basement of the World Trade Center. Was it a plot to kill Cuomo, or Bill Clinton? Cuomo’s downstate office is in the trade center and he parks his car near the site of the explosion-where he can see Secret Service cars that are used for presidential visits, including the one Clinton planned to make to New Jersey this Monday. But there was no apparent reason to credit either of these scenarios.
Another possibility was taken more seriously: that the bomb, if that’s what it was, had something to do with the fighting in the ruins of Yugoslavia. The Clinton administration was about to begin airdropping supplies to beleagured Bosnian Moslems (page 30). Published reports said investigators suspected the Serbs, the Bosnians’ chief persecutors, of involvement in the trade-center bombing. A caller claiming responsibility for the explosion reportedly identified himself as a member of “the Serbian Liberation Front,” an organization not previously heard of. Muhamed Sacirby, Bosnia’s ambassador to the United Nations, said that the Serbs might have wanted to “discourage Americans” from intervening in the war. Serbian-Americans denied that their people were involved. “Any fool can pick up a telephone and claim anything,” said George Bogdanich, spokesman for a coalition of Serbian-American groups.
But circumstantial evidence suggested that Serbian extremists had grudges against Washington. Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Serb Radical Party in Belgrade, has made a number of threatening statements about the United States, mostly in connection with enforcement of the economic blockade of Serbia and the no-fly zone over Bosnia. When the Bush administration listed Seselj as a possible war criminal for his alleged role in “ethnic cleansing,” Seselj openly threatened Washington with retaliation. The Serbs have ready access to explosives held by the Yugoslav Army, which they control. But it’s an open question whether even the most fanatica Serbs would expect to gain anything by committing an atrocity in Manhattan. The current U.N.-sponsored peace talks could legitimize many of their conquests in Bosnia; an attack on the United States could lead to devastating retaliation.
The Serbs aren’t the only Yugoslav ethnic group with a grievance. In an interview with NEWSWEEK in late January, Sefer Halilovic, commander of the hard-pressed Bosnian Army, threatened to conduct a campaign of “terror in democratic Europe” to punish the West if it fails to help Bosnia. But the Bosnian Muslim,, would suffer a disastrous setback if they were caught waging terrorism in the United States, especially in view of Clinton’s announced determination to help them.
America’s increasing involvement in the Bosnian crisis may have made it a target for Balkan terrorism long before the tradecenter bombing. In late January a gunman killed two people and wounded three outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Last week a prosecutor said the alleged shooter, Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani who has fled to his homeland, wanted to protest the mistreatment of his fellow Muslims in Bosnia. Meanwhile, in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, another former Yugoslav republic, a small bomb was found in the street outside the U.S. Embassy. An embassy spokeswoman said the bomb had four magnets attached to it and apparently fell from the underside of a car.
U.S. counterterrorism officials said they had no evidence so far of radical Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian terrorist cells forming to threaten America. And there was no shortage of other, older enemies with terrorist capabilities. Libya is still smarting from the U.S. bombing raids in 1986. Iran could always strike at the “Great Satan,” using either of two Arab fundamentalist groups it sponsors, Hamas and Hizbullah. Iran also has sent at least 100 “volunteers” to fight alongside the Muslims in Bosnia. “There is a confirmed link, but I don’t see what it has to do with the bombing of the World Trade Center,” says Col. Mike Dewar, a terrorism specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
So far, however, U.S. officials tend to rule out many old foes. Saddam Hussein’s terrorist network has been decimated by the CIA and its allies, they say. Muslim fundamentalists are regarded as nothing more than background noise. Iran and Libya are lying low, trying to improve their relations with the West. Abu Nidal, the best-known of the Palestinian terrorists, is being kept on a short leash by his patrons in Libya and Syria. In a time of retrenchment for worldwide terrorism, it is possible that the real trade-center bomber–if there was one–may never come forward. “I don’t see anybody who has a direct interest in claiming responsibility for this,” says Noel Koch, the Defense Department’s top counterterrorism official during the Reagan administration. “Everybody has an interest in claiming that somebody else did it.”
Whoever did do it picked the location for the bomb expertly–or luckily. By placing the device in an underground garage, the attacker was able to magnify the effect of the blast and direct it up into the center of the second tower. If the vehicle containing the bomb had been parked on a crowded street, it might have killed many more people, but would have done far less structural damage, and both towers would not have filled up with smoke as they did. Instead, some demolition expert aimed at the guts of the building, as a suicide bomber did 10 years ago in Beirut when he drove his lethal truckload into the Marine barracks and killed 241 Americans.
It is always possible that the bomber will turn out to be homegrown-perhaps some American fighting an ethnic crusade or conceivably even someone with unusual skills and a private motive: a disgruntled employee, a jilted lover, a feckless businessman with more insurance coverage than assets. But the apparent sophistication of the bomb suggests a professional terrorist, the kind of operative who usually is sponsored, directly or indirectly, by a government.
That would require some kind of retaliation from Washington, whether by economic sanction or military action. “If the FBI can link this to a foreign government, rest assured the price will be paid,” says a State Department official. “If it’s state-sponsored, stand by.” But proving state sponsorship could be difficult. Unlike a hijacking or an airport shoot-up, there are no gunmen who can be identified; bombers try to be long gone when their handiwork explodes. Sorting it all out can take tremendous amounts of time. In the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 259 people over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, the FBI eventually concluded-after a three-year investigation-that two Libyan agents were responsible. The men have never been brought to justice, and questions still linger as to whether Syria or Iran might also have been involved.
Answers to questions like that can be dangerous, especially for an administration that is still new to the management of foreign affairs. It’s one thing to bomb Libya, a marginal pariah state that was attacked by U.S. warplanes seven years ago in retaliation for terrorist activity. It’s something entirely different to attack a heavily armed regional powerhouse like Iran or Syria-which explains why previous administrations sometimes looked the other way when those nations were accused of supporting terrorism. There’s a good chance that the mystery of the tradecenter explosion will eventually be solved. The solution may provide a fresh and daunting test of Clinton’s statecraft.
The bomb struck the heart of a massive business and tourist complex, almost a city in its own right. Some features that complicated rescue efforts:
The twin towers, core of a 16-acre complex, are the world’s second tallest buildings. About 130,000 people, including 50,000 workers, come in on a typical weekday.
The towers, though more than 20 years old, are exempt from city fire-code rules, such as emergency lights in stairwells.
The sheer size of the towers hampers effective security measures, and there are no cameras to monitor the underground parking garage.
The complex is undergoing major renovations, including Improvements to the outdated elevator system. The program will upgrade the capacity of the electrical systems-but not their safety features.
TV transmitter for most of NYC out for hours
28 people rescued by helicopters from roofs
200 children trapped on Observation Deck
Explosion felt even on highest floors of both buildings
Many people are trapped in offices; some break windoes for air. Others exit through smoke-filled stairwells
Electricity in towers knocked out for 7 hours
Smoke rises as high as 96th floor (UPI BETTMANN)
Blast generates intense heat and fire. Smoke spreads rapidly throughout basement and towers.
Explosion at 12:18 p.m. Friday produces a 60-by-100-foot crater, rocking complex.
Explosion knocks out the primary and backup electrical systems .
Blast destroys half of a fleet of 100 Secret Service cars.
Ceiling in the PATH train station collapses, trapping dozens of people under rubble.
Five found dead near turnstiles, two more unaccounted for.
Crater is three floors deep.
Traces of nitrate found; officials speculate that C-4, a powerful military explosive, was used. (ROHR–NEWSWEEK)
Last week authorities wouldn’t say whether the blast was the work of terrorists. But the United States has many enemies practiced in the art of murder writ large. Among them:
An old sponsor of terrorism, he still harbors the chief suspects in the Lockerbie disaster.
The CIA reined in his terrorists during the gulf war; Saddam would love to payback the United States.
One of two Libyan intelligence agents charged in bombing of Pan Am 103.
His Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command is a ruthless Syrian client.
Leader of the extremist Serb Radical Party, Seselj has threatened to retaliate against U.S. aid in Bosnia.
Author of massacres at airports in Rome, Vienna and Karachi, he has a support cell in New York.
