The FBI Allowed the 1993
WTC Bombing to Happen
WTC Bombing to Happen
THE NEW YORK TIMES
* * * * *
Thursday October 28, 1993 Page A1
"Tapes Depict
Proposal to Thwart
Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast"
By Ralph Blumenthal
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 the 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 Salem, should be used, the informer said.
The account, which is
given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings that Mr.
Salem secretly made of his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the
authorities as being in a far better position than previously known to foil
the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers.
The explosion left six
people dead, more than a thousand people injured, and damages in excess of
half-a-billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court
[on charges of involvement] in that attack.
Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old
former Egyptian Army officer, was used by the Government [of the United
States] to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists who are 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 World 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 to 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."
The transcript quotes Mr.
Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. Headquarters in
Washington about the Bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded
by an agent identified as John Anticev.
Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev
had told him,
"He said, I don't
think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York
Office to go to Washington, D.C."
Another agent, identified
as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to
agree with it, saying of the `New York people':
"Well, of course not,
because they don't want to get their butts chewed."
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See also:
Mossad Link to First WTC Bombing
Raises Eyebrows
Damage Caused by the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing
The 9/11 WTC Collapses: An Audio-Video Analysis
Damage Caused by the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing
The 9/11 WTC Collapses: An Audio-Video Analysis
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