Tower Terror

A murderous explosion in the heart of New York City raises the specter of terrorism in America and sets off a feverish hunt for the bomber

By Richard Lacayo Monday, Mar. 08, 1993

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    In a meeting late Friday evening, the state and federal agencies involved in the case hammered out a protocol to govern the inquiry. The first priority was to stabilize the pillars that hold up the Vista Hotel on the Trade Center plaza and which were supported in turn by the garage floors that were ripped away in the blast. Before investigators can safely enter the blast site, workers must buttress the dangerous sagging remnants of the garage and lay a web of tubular steel beams across the crater left by the bomb. It may be days before investigators can begin to sift through the tons of debris for clues to the bomber.

    Then the hard work begins. Once they enter the damaged area, investigators will face the tedious process of finding chemical traces and fragments of the vehicle to help identify the type of bomb. Most well-known terrorist groups have their own "signatures" -- characteristic explosive compounds, detonators and even device designs. If investigators find enough clues, "they can detect who made this particular bomb," says Professor Robert Phillips, an expert in terrorism at the University of Connecticut. "They're able to detect even individual bombmakers' ways of doing things, of placing wires, of placing fuses, how they put the whole thing together. There aren't lots of people in the world who do this well." At the top of Phillips' suspect list are Middle Eastern and Balkan terrorists. Says Phillips: "The car bomb is very much the signature of these groups."

    According to Inman, the sheer difficulty of constructing bombs of this nature almost rules out an American-made device. "There hasn't been a domestic development of the kind of skills that are needed for this, as there has been in Northern Ireland or the Middle East," says Inman.

    Outside experts liken the task of identifying the Trade Center bomb to the inquiry into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, in which debris was scattered for miles. Investigators in that case drew a life-size diagram of the plane on a warehouse floor, then set about reconstructing it piece by piece like a jigsaw puzzle. From that they could determine where in the plane's body the blast occurred, because "the metal would be bent to follow the contours of the vectors of the explosion," says Phillips.

    Though the FBI does not yet know whether enough evidence is left to piece together the car bomb it believes was there, its experts plan to move large quantities of debris to a secure location and examine it with microscopic care. They will search for tiny remnants that don't really belong at the scene -- that are not, say, part of a car's headlights or dashboard. Items as small as a bit of wire can point to whether a timing device was used.

    The whole area will also be examined for chemical residue, which will help in determining what kind of explosive was used. In car bombings, bits of explosive matter are often found in the nooks and crannies of what is left of the auto's trunk lid. Nitrate, traces of which were found in the Trade Center crater, is the most basic component of most explosive mixtures. The next step is to find traces of chemicals that may be unique to a certain compound, like potassium or ammonium, which would identify the explosive far more precisely.

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