I refer, of course, not to the 911 suicide pilot mission to destroy the WTC, but to the original attempt to blow it up with an underground bomb in 1993. I never knew how it was done until reading about it in a paperback book about a year ago.
After the bomb went off, the FBI was on the scene to investigate. In the beginning, there was suspicion that an electrical transformer had exploded, but investigators considered the damage to be too severe for that theory to be plausible. Then they found the rear transaxle of a motor vehicle. It was completely mangled, even though it had been made from forged steel. And the investigators knew that the bomb had to have been placed right above it for that level of damage to have been caused. They got the serial number off the transaxle, and from that were able to identify the vehicle. It turned out to be a truck registered to U-Haul or Ryder – I can’t remember which, but it was one of the self-drive hire vehicles. They went to the company to find who had hired it, and were given details but were told that the vehicle had been reported stolen only a few days into the rental period and before the bombing.
And now here comes my favourite part! The vehicle had been hired by two guys with Arab connections. One was Ramsey Youssef himself – later convicted of the crime, and sentenced to a life term at a penitentiary in Colorado. The other gentleman made a phone call to the company to tell them that he intended to come into the office so that he could collect a refund for the rental from the time the truck was stolen! ROFL
What an idiot. Needless to say, FBI officers were waiting when he arrived. So the usual stuff happened – dwellings searched, Youssef identified as the mastermind etc. The trail led across the world, and I can’t recall the details for the next part. But Youssef spent some time building bombs etc. He was finally tracked down and arrested in Pakistan, to be returned to the US by the FBI.
