1993 World Trade Center Bombing

There has been few and very minor assaults directly against Americans on U.S. soil from foreign adversaries. On January 25, 1993 an illegal Pakistani immigrant, Mir Aimal Kansi, opened fire near the entrance of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Virginia. The attack killed 2 employees and wounded others. Apparently, the Central Intelligence Agency was a target because of its interference in Pakistani matters during the war in Afghanistan. (Kephart, 2005)

According to the Encyclopedia of New York State, at 12:18 P.M. on Friday, 26 Feb 1993, a powerful explosion shook the earth and knocked out the power in Lower Manhattan, New York. Most would say it felt like an earthquake. It had marked the beginning of a new phase of terrorism involving the killing of innocent civilians. A bomb that weighed somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 pounds had exploded in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center (WTC), the tallest building in the Manhattan complex. The explosion created the dark, smoke-filled stairways of the building and forced an immediate evacuation of about 50,000 people from the 110- story WTC that took more than six hours. The bomb had created a crater that was about 150 feet across and five floors deep and killed 6 people who were in the surrounding area. There were more than 1,000 people who were injured and treated for smoke inhalation. There was estimated $500 million in damages that day. (2005. Pg.1723.)

For roughly two months before to the bombing, the plotters had gathered the materials they needed to create this explosive device. Living in New Jersey, the terrorists had rented a storage space where they staged an area to build the device and then loaded the bomb into a rented van...

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...Rahman Yasin has yet to be captured.

The bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 was just a minor situation in history that could have been major. If the criminals had been able to gain more funding for the chemicals they required to make a larger bomb the damage done would had been greater.

Works Cited

"1993 World Trade Center bombing." Encyclopedia of New York State. Syracuse University Press, 2005. 1723. Academic OneFile. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.

Tucker, Jonathan. "February 1993 Bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City." James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Sept. 2001. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. .

Kephart, Janice. "Immigration and Terrorism | Center for Immigration Studies." Center for Immigration Studies. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2014. .