The four main positions on Iraq war, and where each Pres. candidate stands

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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."

In the World Trade Center bombing (February 26, 1993) a car bomb was detonated by Arab Islamist terrorists in the underground parking garage below Tower One of the World Trade Center in New York City. The 1,500-lb (680Kg) urea nitrate-fuel oil device killed six and injured 1,042 people. It was intended to devastate the foundation of the North Tower, causing it to collapse onto its twin.

The attack was planned by a group of conspirators including Ramzi Yousef, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, El Sayyid Nosair, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammad Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Ahmad Ajaj, and Abdul Rahman Yasin. They received financing from al-Qaeda member Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef's uncle.

I'm a republican.  And way more of a repulican than you.  Please research your party's ideals.  Bush, and you have abandoned them.  You're no longer worthy of debate. 

240: LIBERAL, DEMOCRAT, SUPPORTS CLINTON OVER BUSHX2 AND REAGAN.  Your posts have backed my statements.  You are no Republican.  You stir up shit for fun and that is fine but don't lie pal.  Get a life.  You don't debate.  To debate you have to counter someone's posts which you never do.  Never.  Keep posting your bullshit and the rest of us can laugh at how ridiculous you sound.  You don't talk about it on public because people would laugh in your liberal face.  I was raised Repub conservative and will die that way.  That is true.  I'm better off that way.

[24KT]

Why don't you swallow some Draino and do us all a favor.  Bring on the conspiracy theories.  The LIBERAL DUO at it's finest. 

Well at least this didn't come in through PM

I'm telling ya Cap, a stagnant arctic airmass caused by Global warming will slow the meltdown process.

[Cap]

Yousef was assisted by Iraqi bomb maker Abdul Rahman Yasin [1] . Yasin's complex 1310 lb (600 kg) bomb was made of urea pellets, nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, aluminum azide, magnesium azide, and bottled hydrogen. He added sodium cyanide to the mix as the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators of the towers.

The Ryder van used in the bombing had 295 ft³ (8.3 m³) of space, which would hold up to a ton (907 kg) of explosives. However, the van was not filled to capacity. Yousef used four 20 ft (6 m) long fuses, all covered in surgical tubing. Yasin calculated that the fuse would trigger the bomb in twelve minutes after he had used a cigarette lighter to light the fuse.

Yousef wanted the smoke to remain in the tower, therefore catching the public eye by smothering people inside, killing them slowly. He anticipated Tower One collapsing onto Tower Two after the blast. The materials to build the bomb cost approximately US$129

The bomb exploded in the underground garage at 12:18 P.M., generating a pressure estimated over one GPa and opening a 30-meter-wide hole through four sublevels of concrete. The detonation velocity of this bomb was about 15,000 ft/s (4.5 km/s). The cyanide gas generated is assumed to have burned in the explosion.

Six people were killed. At least 1,040 others were injured. However, the towers were not destroyed as Yousef intended. However, the WTC’s architect would later tell jurors that if the van had been left closer to the poured concrete foundations, they would have succeeded. The tower would have fallen.[2] Yousef escaped to Pakistan several hours later.

The bomb cut off the center's main electrical power line and cut off telephone service for much of lower Manhattan. The bomb caused smoke to rise up to the 93rd floor of both towers, and cut off the towers' four stairwells and emergency lighting system. Also as a result of the loss of electricity most of New York City's radio and television stations lost their over-the-air broadcast signal for almost a week, with television stations only being able to broadcast via cable and satellite via a microwave hookup between the stations and three of the New York area's largest cable companies, Cablevision, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable.

[24KT]

I was raised Repub conservative and will die that way.  That is true.  I'm better off that way.

Nope, ...no narrow-minded myopia here. Nothing but clear concise and well reasoned articulation of the issues

[Dos Equis]

240: LIBERAL, DEMOCRAT, SUPPORTS CLINTON OVER BUSHX2 AND REAGAN.  Your posts have backed my statements.  You are no Republican.  You stir up shit for fun and that is fine but don't lie pal.  Get a life.  You don't debate.  To debate you have to counter someone's posts which you never do.  Never.  Keep posting your bullshit and the rest of us can laugh at how ridiculous you sound.  You don't talk about it on public because people would laugh in your liberal face.  I was raised Repub conservative and will die that way.  That is true.  I'm better off that way.

Actually, he says he is a libertarian, but I agree he is a liberal.  

December 16, 2006, 10:59:08 PM » Quote by 240:  

I'm a libertarian.  

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Nope, ...no narrow-minded myopia here. Nothing but clear concise and well reasoned articulation of the issues

Keep telling yourself that.  If so, why post the KY pictures and other nonsensical stuff? 

[Cap]

In his letters Yousef admitted that the World Trade Center bombing was an act of terrorism, but that this was justified because 'the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one.'