12/31/2023 0 Comments Wtc lab report assistant![]() ![]() It would be almost a year before I heard the term “al Qaeda” and a several months after that before I realized the term was the name of a group of former mujahideen who fought in Afghanistan and had turned their sights against the United States.Īs I watched the newsfeed in Frankfurt, I also had no idea that I would spend the next two years of my life investigating the World Trade Center bombing and the New York Landmarks bomb plot that was connected to it, which targeted the Lincoln Tunnel, the United Nations Headquarters and the Javits Federal Building in Manhattan among other locations. ![]() So we knew what the attackers were - jihadists who had returned from Afghanistan - we just didn’t have a name for them yet. (Agents assigned to my office attended the bomb-making course because knowing what is required to make a bomb is crucial when investigating a bombing.)Īfter the CIA station chief assured us that he and his people were not behind the Aden and Sanaa attacks, we concluded that the attackers were most likely Yemenis who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet occupation and had received some training from the CIA’s Office of Technical Services - or someone it had trained. Several specific elements of those attacks matched techniques I had learned when I attended the CIA’s improvised explosive device training course. embassy had been conducted, we were fairly certain the attacks were not the work of the Libyan intelligence service or one of its usual proxies such as the Abu Nidal Organization or the Japanese Red Army, also known as the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade.īut the manner in which that attacks were conducted did tell us one important thing: The CIA had trained whoever had conducted them. However, after examining the Aden device and the manner in which the rocket attack against the U.S. One of the explosive devices in the Aden attack had failed to detonate, and we wanted to examine it to see if it matched any of the components or bomb-making signatures from devices used in previous Libyan and Libyan-sponsored attacks. We suspected the Libyans might have conducted those attacks after seriously wounding embassy communicator Arthur Pollick in a 1986 shooting in Sanaa and conducting a series of other attacks against U.S. I had initially flown to Yemen with a colleague from the explosives section of the FBI laboratory to investigate the strikes against U.S. Later it would be discovered that the same group that conducted the Yemen attacks also bombed the Trade Center: al Qaeda. Embassy in Sanaa in January 1993.Īs I stood in the airport terminal looking at the first reports of the World Trade Center bombing, I had no idea the attack was linked to the incidents I had been investigating in Yemen. Air Force personnel in Aden on December 29, 1992, and a rocket attack against the U.S. I was working as a Special Agent for the Diplomatic Security Service investigating a bombing attack against U.S. ![]() Had a device of the same magnitude been detonated at street level during rush hour, it would have likely killed scores if not hundreds of people and wounded perhaps thousands more.Īn hour or two after the bombing, I landed in Frankfurt, Germany, on my way back to Washington from Yemen. They wanted to topple the North Tower onto the South Tower to destroy them both and kill thousands. That such a powerful explosion killed only six people is nothing short of miracle, for the attackers had a goal much more grandiose. In addition to causing structural damage, the explosion destroyed or heavily damaged hundreds of vehicles parked in the garage. The blast wave was so powerful that it penetrated five stories of the reinforced concrete building. On the morning of February 26, 1993, a massive truck bomb ripped a hole almost 100 feet across the B-2 level of the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center’s North Tower. State Department for 10 years and was involved in hundreds of terrorism investigations. Before joining Stratfor, Stewart was a special agent with the U.S. Scott Stewart supervises the day-to-day operations of Stratfor’s intelligence team and plays a central role in coordinating the company’s analytical process with its business goals. Editor’s Note: The following article by Scott Stewart originally appeared on Stratfor, and is republished with permission of Stratfor, a company that uses a unique, intel-based approach to analyze world affairs, and provide global awareness and guidance to individuals, governments, and businesses.
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