The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing: Foresight and Warning

The World Trade Center was both a great engineering feat and a potent symbol. This careful analysis asserts that it was also a security hazard for almost all of its existence. The author, until recently a detective sergeant and antiterrorist officer at the World Trade Center with experience in airport security, voices harsh criticisms of the security lapses that allowed the 1993 bombing to take place, a precursor and unheeded warning of the 2001 disaster. Completed before this cataclysmic event, this book gives an insider 's perspective on Port Authority attitudes and on the mismanagement of security functions at the World Trade Center. It claims that officials did not give serious attention to the resentment of the United States' policy in the Middle East, nor to the mindset of Islamic fundamentalists, or even to expressed threats from dedicated terrorists. The author himself, of Arab-American descent, paints an indignant but well-informed picture of the situation prior to the attack in 1993. He offers chilling evidence that terrorists regarded the 1993 bombing as a bungled job that needed completion.