FBI had role in WTC 1993 Bomb Attack

The FBI had an informant, a former Egyptian army officer named Emad Salem. Salem claims to have informed the FBI of the plot to bomb the towers as early as February 6, 1992. Salem’s role as informant allowed the FBI to quickly pinpoint the conspirators out of hundreds of possible suspects.

Salem, initially believing that this was to be a sting operation, claimed that the FBI’s original plan was for Salem to supply the conspirators with a harmless powder instead of actual explosive to build their bomb, but his FBI handlers overruled him.

Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: October 28, 1993 New York Times

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 A. Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The CIA’s Jihad
The Alkifah Refugee Centre, in addition to providing a hangout for the disaffected, distributed pamphlets and videotapes on the rebel war in Afghanistan. On any given day, a visitor to the centre might take martial-arts classes, or sign up for an automatic-weapons training course taught by instructors from the National Rifle Association. The club even had its own T-shirts: A MUSLIM TO A MUSLIM IS A BRICK WALL. But the highlight for the centres regulars were the inspirational jihad lecture series, featuring CIA-sponsored speakers.

One week on Atlantic Avenue, it might be a CIA-trained Afghan rebel travelling on a CIA-issued visa; the next, it might be a clean-cut Arabic-speaking Green Beret, who would lecture about the importance of being part of the mujaheddin, or warriors of the Lord. The more popular lectures were held upstairs in the roomier Al-Farooq Mosque; such was the case in 1990 when Sheikh Abdel Rahman, travelling on a CIA-supported visa, came to town. The blind Egyptian cleric, with his ferocious rhetoric and impassioned preaching, filled angry, discontented Arab immigrants with a fervour for jihad holy war. This was exactly what the CIA wanted: to stir up support for the Muslim rebels and topple the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan.

The sheikh, however, had a somewhat broader agenda.

A former investigative counsel for the Senate Foreign Relatiosn Committee, now a private attorney in Washington, Jack Blum speaks bitterly but fatalistically. After every covert war there is an unintended disposal problem, he says, as if he were talking about unexpected land mines and not potential Islamic terrorists living in Brooklyn. We steered and encouraged these people. Then we dropped them. Now weve got a disposal problem. When you motivate people to fight for a cause jihad the problem is, how do you shut them off?

The answer for the CIA was, you dont. And then when the fanatical fervour youve whipped up leads to unintended consequences the assassination of a Jewish militant leader in Manhattan, the bombing of the World Trade Centre, a terror conspiracy to blow up the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and other Manhattan landmarks you try to discourage local law enforcement agencies and the FBI from looking into the matter too deeply.

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