Thirty years ago, on a Sunday, the largest terrorist attack in American history at that time occurred when a 1,200-pound bomb exploded beneath the World Trade Center in New York City.
It was fortunate that the explosion did not topple the entire skyscraper and kill thousands of people.
Politicians marked the anniversary, but dignitaries did not mention the FBI’s role in that disaster.
On November 5, 1990, Rabbi Meir Kahane was assassinated at a New York hotel. Kahane was an advocate for banishing all Arabs from Israel and the territories, and his political party was banned from the Knesset for “inciting racism” and “endangering security.”
Kahane was shot by a 36-year-old Egyptian immigrant El Sayyid Nosair, who was part of an anti-Israeli cabal of New York-area Muslims.
The police searched Nosair’s residence and took away 47 boxes of documents, paramilitary manuals, maps, and diagrams of buildings, including the World Trade Center.
Because no one in the New York FBI office could read Arabic, those documents were left in storage for more than two years, although they were later labelled as “a road map” to the 1993 bombing.
A 2002 congressional report revealed that the NYPD “resisted attempts to label the Kahane assassination a ‘conspiracy’ despite the apparent links to a broader network of radicals” because it “wanted the appearance of speedy justice and a quick resolution to a volatile situation.” Osama bin Laden reportedly financed Nosair’s legal defence.
The trial began in late 1991 and included riots outside the courthouse, death threats, and chants of “Death to the Jews.” The FBI placed an informant named Emad Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian military officer, in the midst of the Muslim protesters.
Salem insinuated himself and became the bodyguard for Sheik Abdel Rahman, a radical Muslim cleric.
Despite stark evidence, a New York jury bizarrely found Nosair not guilty of murder.
In mid-1992, Salem repeatedly warned the FBI that radical Muslims were planning to carry out a catastrophic bombing in New York City. FBI supervisors were convinced he was concocting tall tales and ended payments.
On February 26, 1993, a massive bomb in a van exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center, killing six people, injuring more than a thousand, and causing half a billion dollars in damage. The FBI “cracked the case” when a knucklehead plotter demanded a refund for his $400 deposit for the Ryder rental van used for the bombing.
After the bombing, the FBI quickly rehired Salem and promised him $1 million to develop evidence of additional terrorist plots. Salem didn’t trust the feds to pay, so he secretly recorded his conversations with FBI agents.
In August 1993, as the case was heading for trial, news leaked that Salem had made tapes of more than 100 hours of his conversations with FBI agents and handlers.
Those tapes portrayed the FBI as co-conspirators with the terrorist plotters.
The FBI’s gross negligence “contributed to the United States becoming, in effect, a sanctuary for radical terrorists,” a 2002 congressional investigation found.
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing is a reminder that Americans are unlikely to hear about FBI fiascos until long after the damage is done, if ever.
»Going down the history lane of the largest terrorist attack in America«
↯↯↯Read More On The Topic On TDPel Media ↯↯↯