September 11, 2025 • 41 mins
A truck bomb rips through the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring thousands. As smoke clears, investigators follow a shard of metal to a hidden terrorist network.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
that has defined American history. These are their stories. February
twenty sixth, nineteen ninety three, twelve eighteen pm, New York City.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
The CEO of the World Trade Center, Charlie Makish, was
high above the city alone in his office when suddenly
the floor moved beneath him.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I was sitting at my desk when I felt the
whole building heath. It actually lifted. My office was on
the thirty sixth floor. I looked out the window on
the side where the Hudson River was, and I actually
saw a ripple go across the Hudson River. I said,
what's going on here?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
It didn't take long to get an answer.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Within seconds, my secretary got a call that we had
a major explosion within the Trade Center itself.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
In an instant, an ordinary work day turned into a crisis.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I had let my deputies know that they should organize
the command center I said, get everybody together in the
conference room and I'll see you downstairs.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Every protocol says to stay put, but for Charlie that
wasn't an option. He built the towers and felt responsible
for everyone inside. He needed to find out what was
going on.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I had a fire key, and I keyed one of
the elevators so that I could take the elevator down.
I was down within minutes or two of being to fight.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
What waited at the bottom was worse than anything he
could have imagined.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
When I came out of the elevator, there was heavy
dog smoke, a lot of players one hundred feet beyond
where you're looking at, and there's a flash of light
and the building ship flash of light.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
You started the pendice.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
You could hear the building actually making noises because like.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
Night of a living day, he came out of nowhere.
The whole area is completely distorted, ceiling walls locking.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
A tremendous explosion from behind us. The room that we
were in was devastated. I got a call, get out
to LaGuardia Airport. There's been a bombing.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
There was a thirty two foot crater in front of
what was left of the building.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I was trying to figure out am I dead? Am
I alive? Where am I? I'm aniseg and NICOLASI.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
That's why terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is law and order,
criminal justice system. The early nineteen nineties were a time
of transformation. The Cold War was over and global capitalism
was taking root. Skylines stretched higher and borders grew thinner,
(03:17):
and the United States, especially New York, stood at the
center of it all. But not everyone saw that as progress.
With extremism on the rise, a new kind of anger
was brewing and found a target in the World Trade Center,
a symbol of American economic power, international trade and the
(03:38):
spirit of New York City. The buildings were towering and unmistakable,
and from the day they rose over the skyline, there
were those determined to bring them crashing down.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Heney.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
This has been a terrible day for New York City,
an apparent active terrorism in the city's tallest building, with
of course, hundreds of innocent victims, and the tragedy speaks
for itself, But it has also been one of those
days that proves New York City's greatness. From the professionalism
of the emergency service workers, the police, and the firefighters,
to the toughness of ordinary New Yorkers.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Long before the World Trade Center was built in Lower Manhattan,
Charlie Makish was just a kid from the Bronx, still
finding his footing.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I started with a program at Manhattan College and Engineering,
and I saw myself basically as a civil engineer. But
I interrupted that study to go into a seminary for
two years. Once I was told that I started at
the very top, close to God, and then I fell
to the very bottom when I became a lawyer and
a banker.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
He may have wandered for a while, but Charlie soon
found his way back to engineering and onto the most
ambitious construction site in New York City.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I went to work for the Port Authority in nineteen
sixty eight as a field engineer on the construction of
the World Trade Center.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
This wasn't just any office space. The World Trade Center
promised to attract and house the powerhouses of business from
far and wide.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
And that's what authorized the Port Authority to build those towers.
Because the Port Authority was charged with facilitating international trade
and commerce.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
What began as a construction assignment would evolve into his
calling and his legacy.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I helped build it, I helped defend it, and then
I was its chief executive. So they were my twins.
I used to refer to them as my twins, and
they were my life for twenty seven years.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And what he helped build was more than a set
of towers. It was a vision, a bet on scale,
on strength, and on what America could raise from the
river's edge. The ambition wasn't just to build high. It
was to build differently.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
And that was a concept of building a perimidal wall
in panels, so that eventually you had a closed box
that was buried.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
The approach started from beneath, in a pit where the
Hudson River pressed close. What happened there would become the
foundation for one of the most recognizable structures on Earth.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
The slurry wall. It was a technology that was used
in Italy to retain the river and the groundwater back
and eventually what you wound up with was what we
called the bathtub, which was an area that was totally excavated,
but there was no bracing on the inside of it.
Those two towers went down to rock sixty to eighty
feet below the street level, and it was an eight
(06:43):
acre bath tub, so that was the first time in
the country that it was constructed that way.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Two towers would rise from that space, each with a
structural logic that broke with tradition.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
They were basically a box within a box. The exterior
wall of the trade Center towers was structural. It actually
served to support the trade center itself, and then there
was an interior core where the elevators were in all
the infrastructure, and that was basically very heavy steel and
concrete construction going up.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
The outer walls bore the wind. The inner core carried
the load.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
We would have anywhere between four and six thousand people
in each of the towers every day, and then we
would have as much as fifty thousand people in the complex.
You had one hundred and ten stories, and it actually
went down six stories. In each of the towers. You
had four million square feet of commercial office space, and
(07:42):
then you had the space below.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
As well between them, room to dream and rent. The
twin towers significantly expanded Manhattan's commercial space.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
The floor space within the bathtub comprised ten million square
feet of lower Manhattan had one hundred million square feet
of commercial space we were adding ten percent to that inventory.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
It was more than a workplace. It was a world
of its own commerce layered with retail, restaurants, utilities, and transit.
But all of it was possible because of its construction.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
They would sway three foot off center or six feet
if we had a heavy wind, and you could actually
see the water sloshing in the commodes at the top
of the building. When that happened, it was like being
in a ship sometimes, but you never really felt it
unless you looked out the window, so people did not
get motion sickness as a result of that, and the
windows was small so that people would not feel the
(08:43):
height when they were up there.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
The World Trade Center's towers were much more than just
a pair of unique skyscrapers. Everything about them celebrated globalization
and the US's economic power. Sixteen acres of intentional ambition
spread across seven buildings.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Surrounding the Trade Center were a number of perimeter buildings.
There was four World Trade Center, five World Trade Center,
and between those buildings and the towers was a plaza,
an eight acre plaza. It could hold as much as
ten thousand people for an event.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
A transit network underneath linked five subway lines to the
path trains coming from New Jersey, and above it all
was a rare kind of vertical density, offices stacked over, retailers, embassies,
besides banks. It was an ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
It was a city within a city, and the jurisdiction
of that area was in the port authority. The city
police didn't have jurisdiction, although the city fire department responded.
Our police were also firemen themselves. It was built as
an independent entity within the complex.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
By the end of the nineteen seventies, the World Trade
Center had transformed a neglected corner of Manhattan into a
global command post. It was built as a symbol of trade,
but by the early nineteen nineties it had come to
represent something else. Power.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
It was the icon or the symbol of Western capitalism,
our way of life. When I traveled internationally to visit
my tenants, anywhere I went backdrop to CNN was the
World Trade Center TALIS. Whether you were in Japan, whether
you were in China, whether you were in Europe, CNN
always had the Trade Center as the backdrop.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And by then the man in charge of it all
was the same engineer who'd once helped design its foundation.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I was its chief executive. I was the directive. Whether
it was leasing, commercial operations, capital improvements, budget security, all
aspects of the World Trade Center were within my purview
as the executive. I started in sixty eight in the
mud as a young civil engineer and wound up in
the sky ninety three.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The Trade Center was complex and tightly managed. Everyone had
their role and everything had its place. Then came the
warning that threatened to destroy it.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
My police captain got an alert from the Israelis that
they had intercepted a phone call from a terrorist group
saying they were going to bomb a commercial office complex
in Manhattan. We took action at that point to shut
the observation deck, remove all of the trash cans, et cetera,
et cetera, put in an additional police But that never happened
(11:33):
in January. It happened in February.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Charlie Makish was in his thirty sixth floor office when
the Trade Center lurched beneath him. He saw a ripple
across the Hudson, then got the call there'd been an explosion.
Within minutes, he was heading down into the unknown. Thick
smoke was everywhere.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Both towers were affected. The elevator pits were blown out,
the elevators were not operating, and the smoke actually went
up through the elevator shafts. It acted like a chimney
and spread throughout the entire trade center. People were coming
down the stairs where they were putting their hands on
the shoulders in front of the people in front of
them and moving very slowly to get down, and some
(12:23):
of them were coming down ninety to one hundred stories.
We had no lighting in the stairwell, and we had
no communication in the stairwell. Took about an hour and
twenty minutes to get down, no public announcement system. Didn't
know whether they could go and stay there.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And while they weren't yet sure what happened, they knew
this was a disaster.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
It was pretty messy, glad to brie all over the place.
Fire broke out, electrical wires.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
Well, was it just an explosion.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I don't know what it was yet.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
We're still trying to verify what it was.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
But it felt it felt like the walls collapses. The
world just like blew up and came towards you.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
There was smoke all over the place. You could not
see you couldn't see the next step you were going
to take. Here, Charlie soon saw the first of what
would become a steady stream of survivors, wounded and stunned
by the blast devastation.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
We had airline ticket booths along the south wall in
the concourse of one World Trade Center. One of the
ticket agents, a young lady, came around the corner and
she was bleeding. She had been injured, her face was cut,
and she was somewhat hysterical. And I grabbed her, and
I grabbed the concierge. I said, if you have a towel,
put the towel on her face. Get her some help.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Charlie could tell that this impact was much bigger than
a single hallway or a storefront. Crowds were streaming through
the concourse.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
The lobby of the Trade Center was evacuated. Everybody was
going out to West Street.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
It was there that the World Trade Center CEO got
his first look at the gaping void that marked the
epicenter of the explosion.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And I could see heavy dog smoke coming out of
the two ramps that fed the parking for the Trade
Center under the towers.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Next he realized the scale, Then the human toll.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
There was a litany of more serious injuries, cardiac arrests,
concussion injuries, trauma from the explosion itself, plus fractured and
broken bones.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Some of the injured didn't retreat, they returned.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I had a lieutenant, his name was Lieutenant Gebora, and
this is an interesting fact. He was taking the Beakman
Downtown Hospital because he was injured. He received the head injury.
He came back bandage, put on a Scott airpack and
went up into the towers. That's how dedicated these people.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Were, but not everyone survived. The grim reality and the
magnitude of this disaster quickly set in.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
We knew that the people in the lunchrom had died.
We knew that there were other people injured. Ambulances had responded,
and we knew that people were being injured coming down
the stalewell because they were breathing in this dark, heavy smoke,
so we had smoke inhalation problems. We knew that people
were psychologically damaged as a result of the terror that
they felt coming down those stairwells. We had up to
(15:18):
ten thousand people between the two towers.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It only took minutes before sirens were converging from every
corner up Manhattan.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Suddenly, the street surrounding the one hundred and ten story
building turned into a sea of rescue equipment.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
Thousands of people.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Were trying to escape the smoke billowing into their offices
at hallways.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
The fire department had already responded. It was an all
city response meeting. Every piece of equipment in the City
of New York was called to respond.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
While the city's first responders were in motion, Charlie secured
a base of operations and began mobilizing his ranks.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
My staff started to arrive on West Street. I told
them that we would set up a command center in
the ballroom of the Vista Hotel right off of West Street.
I made contact with the police desk at the Holland Tunnel.
They had a van that they sent over, and the
police captain used that as his command center for the
(16:18):
Port Authority police.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
The question soon turned to what happened. At this point,
there was only speculation, and back in nineteen ninety three,
terrorism wasn't the first thought that came to mind.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Think back to the sixties. You could go to an
airport and walk through to the gate before there was
any security that would affect your boarding the aircraft. You know,
you could get ticketed at the gate and go right up.
So that's when the Trade Center was designed. It was
designed in the early sixties and terrorism was not a factor.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
And as a result, modern day protective measures weren't yet
a consideration.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
In fact, in ninety three, security started at the tenant's door.
We had no turnstiles, We had no package delivery vetting system,
we had no visitor vetting system. You didn't see bollards
all over the city around buildings, and you didn't see
visitor desks in the buildings where you had to be
checked in, et cetera. Because the concept of terrorism and
(17:21):
commercial office space was not joined together before ninety three.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So when the explosion occurred, no one assumed wrongdoing, not
even Charlie. He thought it was the systems beneath the
blast zone, the machinery that powered the towers in.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
The refrigeration plant, which was directly below where this bomb
went off. We had large transformers for stepping power down
to basically power these seven ton refrigeration plants. We had
enough cooling capacity in the Trade Center again to cool
all the homes in Cleveland. That's how big it was.
It was fifty thousand puns of air condition capacity in
(18:01):
the trade center. So the first thing that I thought
of is that we have multiple transformers explode.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
But within hours one of the investigators came to a
different conclusion.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
ATF and FBI responded immediately. The ATF guy was a
bomb expert, and he identified very quickly from the residue
that it was a bomb, what they call an iod,
a truck bomb. It created a crater half the size
of a football field.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
And the FBI agent Charlie's talking about.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
David Williams, I go by Dave, and I spent a
total of twenty seven years with the FBI, the majority
of it in the FBI Explosives Unit Laboratory. I was
a supervisory special Agent Hazardous material and Explosives specialist at
the FBI lab in Washington.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
That morning, Dave wasn't at his desk in Washington, he
wasn't in New York and nowhere near a crime scene.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
Well, I was on a golf course in Maryland, and
of course it was snowing. We got the call on
our shoe phone, and back then they were as big
as a car battery. Said, there's been an explosion at
the Trade Center and looks like you have the ticket
to go up there, And at the time they thought
it may have been a generator that exploded. So we
(19:22):
took Amtrak up to New York because the airports were
shutting down because of the amount of snow. It took
us six hours to get from DC to New York
Penn Station, so by the time we got there it
was well after midnight, checked in the hotel, changed clothes,
where we were escorted to the crime scene itself.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
By the time Dave arrived, the smoke had begun to
clear and he got right to work.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
When I walked down the West Street exit rampant by
the South Tower, one of the first things I saw
was a crater, the widest part being on the B
two level at one hundred and twenty some feet diameter.
Gradually it tapered down to the lowest level on BE
four that was breached, so you can imagine an ice
(20:08):
creaking cone if you will. As far as the crater itself.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
And what he saw didn't look like an explosion resulting
from mechanical failure.
Speaker 5 (20:18):
By looking at that crater area, it was obvious that
the device exploded right on the B two level, and
there was no other components there that could have exploded,
so that immediately suggested that it was not something mechanical.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
For Dave, the scene read like a crime.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
The automobiles were caved in or overturned, and a lot
of the different materials suggested to me that the explosive
that was present in there from the time it initiated
till the event was over, the velocity of detonation was
about fifteen thousand feet per second, and by looking at
the totality of the damage, I was able to guess,
(21:03):
if you will, that there was about fifteen hundred pounds
shy of a ton of explosives that caused that kind
of damage.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
And from there what caused it, or should I say,
what carried it in soon came into focus.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Fifteen hundred pounds likely didn't come in in a sedan,
an automobile, and it's unlikely it was in the back
of a pickup truck. It's in Manhattan, you don't see
a lot of pickup trucks, probably a panel truck, a van,
and the clearance in that area to get into that
specific spot was only six foot eight inches. That eliminated
(21:43):
Dodge and Chevrolet vehicles to make the clearance, so that
probably came in in a Ford panel truck.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
The Trade Center didn't fall that day, but it did fracture,
and in the hours that followed the priority went from
rescue and recovery to keeping the towers from collapsing. Thousands
made it out of the buildings to safety.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
We evacuated the other buildings as well, the Customs House
and the Northeast and Southeast Plaza building.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
But none of what remained of the complex itself, including
Charlie's command center, was safe.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
We had gathered in the ballroom of the Vista Hotel.
The chief engineer, Jean Fassolo, came down. We got Les Robinson,
who was the engineer of record, to come down and
less in Gene while the place was still burning. I
went down into the below grade area to take a
look at the structural damage. And they came back and
they said, the flaws under the Vista Hotel, which are
(22:43):
the lateral support for the columns, is gone, so the
Vista Hotel is actually sitting on stilts. They said to me,
you've got to empty this because this is in jeopardy.
The hotel itself could collapse. So I got up on
the stage in that ballroom and I said to everybody,
you have to leave, and we're going over to the
Big Kitchen, which was vacant space in the concourse, and
(23:05):
set up a command center. Nobody listened to me. So
I got a bullhorn and I said, listen, it's structurally
unsound below this floor. You all have to leave.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Next came fast decisions.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
When we went over to the big kitchen, I called
for a conference of the top leaders in the various agencies.
We got around in a circle and I said, we're
not going to deal with what we're going to do
tomorrow with the next day. We're going to deal with
what we're going to do with the next three, six
and nine hours.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
First on that list, who was in charge of what We.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Had three different police jurisdictions present there. My police captain
was there, and Fox, the regional director of the FBI,
was standing there. He said to me, you know this
is a crime scene. It's a federal crime scene. We
have jurisdiction. I said, define for me the federal crime scene.
He said, anything affected by the bomb. I said, that's
the whole trade center. I said, mister Fox, if you
(23:59):
don't let us do what I want to do. You're
gonna have a hotel sitting in your crime scene because
it's going to collapse. So he said, all right, He said,
I'll define the crime scene as the crater, and everything
around the crater is the federal crime scene. Fine, you've
got that, I told Ray Kelly, the police commissioner. He said,
the Portathori police have jurisdiction within the trade center. We
(24:20):
need New York City Police to secure the perimeter of
the trade center. He says, you got it.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Their next priority was the buildings themselves.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Second thing we needed to do was to establish the
structural integrity where the tower is going to collapse. We
were concerned about the slurry wall collapsing and the Hudson
River pouring into the basement of the Trade Center because
the below grade flows had been compromised. If that had
come to fruition, we could have lost part of West Street,
which was a major thoroughfare. As you know, as the
(24:51):
slurry wall collapse, what would have come in is mud
and water. That roadway would have.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Collapsed, and if that happened, it wouldn't stop at the pavement.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
It may have caused the same to occur to the
telephone building that was on the corner of VZ and
nine A, and that was a major, major telephone switch
facility for the region. Actually the international phone lines went
through there.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Another mission also pressed forward, controlling misinformation and preventing panic.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
The third thing that we needed to do was to
ensure the public that the smoke and the air quality
was okay. It was lightly snowing that day, and the
press was reporting that the snow was actually asbestos when
it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
I can just imagine the mayhem that report caused.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Oh it did it cause mayhem. We took air samples,
and we took soot samples, and we were going to
put out a press release saying that the air was
safe around the trade center.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
All the necessary to do lists were physically and mentally exhausting.
Next came the lights.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
I got to get Jean McGrath, the head of Connett,
isn't really credit for this. I said to him, you know,
we got to get power restored to the towers. And
Jean said, I can run temporary lines. And I said
to him, the towers will not stand dark against the
skyline because it would send the wrong message to those
that try to impose terror upon us.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Through the night, Cruz stabilized steel braced walls, and kept
watch on the river. The towers were still standing, the
city was still connected, but what caused this catastrophe was
still a mystery because the next morning's headlines still hadn't
caught up with the reality being uncovered underground, and at
(26:40):
dawn politics arrived.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Governor Cuomo was told that it was a transformer explosion.
And when I saw him early the next morning, the
Governor got out of his Christ's Look. You wouldn't catch
him in a Mercedes Pepatone was his advanced man, and
he had a state trooper with him who was his driver.
And the governor said to me, who are you. I said,
I'm the director of the Trade Center. And he said
to me, oh, you're the guy I'm going to fire.
(27:04):
You can't even handle a transformer explosion. And I said
to him, Governor, you know you're a lawyer with whole
judgment until you see what I'm going to show you.
I took him into the center of the Trade Center,
to the center stairwell, and we started walking down to
the below grade and there was water still coming down
the stairs and Peppertone said to me, he's not going
to get his shoes wet, is he? And I said why,
(27:26):
he said, because he's very particular about his shoes. I
walked him in water up to his ankles, and I
walked him through collapsed banks of conduit the international telephone
lines to the edge of the crater. And actually the
troopers said to me, you're going to kill the governor.
I said, I'm not going to kill the governor, but
he needs to see this. And that's when he saw
the crater and he said, this wasn't a transformer explosion,
(27:47):
it was a bomb.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
The day after the nineteen ninety three World Trade Center attack,
the wreckage was unmistakable, and the silence that left behind
was even louder. The human toll was beginning to sink in.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
The last thing that I needed to get done was
to notify the families of those that had been killed.
On my staff. Six people in an unborn child were.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Killed John di Giovanni, Robert Kirkpatrick, Stephen Knapp, William Mako,
Bofredo Mercado, and Monica Rodriguez Smith. She was pregnant when
she died. Who lived and who died came down to
nothing more than timing and location, a margin measured in
(28:46):
moments and mere feet. The list of survivors was enormous.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
We had thousands of others that were injured as a
result of this, whether it be smoke inhalation or whether
it be the impact of the bomb itself, and they
were in the low grade area, they were injured.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
The odds that day had been razor.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Then we had at least in the buildings themselves, anywhere
between ten and fifteen thousand people evacuated. And then you
had people in the concourse and in the retail, and
on the observation deck, and in windows on the world,
in the restaurants. We could have as much as fifty
thousand people in the complex on any day that day.
(29:26):
It's hard to say it happened at lunchtime too, And
if the bomb had been moved one hundred feet west,
it would have exploded under the concourse and killed many
more people. It basically exploded between the two towers, where
there was very few people except white people in the
lunch room and the people that were in the parking garages.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
As the families and friends began to grieve and others
worked to secure the buildings themselves. The question remained, if
this attack was intentional, then who was responsible.
Speaker 7 (29:57):
The FBI is confirming what was suspected all along. The
massive explosion at the World Trade Center was caused by
a bomb.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
The question now is who planted it and what kind
of bomb could do this. The theories were flying, but
once the investigators got in, one thing was clear. It
would take an army to process the wreckage. What started
as a local emergency ultimately triggered one of the largest
(30:26):
joint responses in the city's history.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Right off the bat, it was immediately determined to be
a task force project. So we had local law enforcement,
state and federal agencies all in the same group, and
by the time it became daylight, we had an office
set up for our evidence response team, and we had
a place to take the evidence.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
The tools they needed weren't guns or handcuffs. They were
ones you'd find in a hardware store.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
I grabbed the one agent and said, I need five
hundred rakes, five hundred shovels, I need two hundred sifting
screens with quarter inch mesh, and get it done.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Every inch of rubble might hold a clue, every scrap
of metal might tell a piece of the story. As
the equipment arrived, so did the manpower.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
We were running twenty four hours a day, usually eight
to ten hours per shift, with a little bit of overlap,
and in total we had seventeen hundred people processing that
crime scene. Some of them had knowledge of post last
some of them were for encounter intelligence or white collar
crime agents, so they had no knowledge. So in the
(31:40):
process of processing the crime scene, we also educated the
people picking up the pieces.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
This was a collaboration in full force behind the scenes.
It was a masterclass in coordination, agencies from every corner
coming together with a single mission to piece together what happened.
Investigators first had to preserve what was left.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Before human intervention gets in there, and before too much
water is put on the crime scene. We want to
get chemists in there to start taking samples to try
to determine explosive residue. It was probably about two am
when I had three teams. Each team consisted of two
chemists and two bomb texts to escort the chemists, because
(32:26):
when you put a chemist in an environment like that
twisted steel, they're going to be not paying attention to
where they're going. So the bomb. Text job was to
keep them safe.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
They worked tirelessly collecting chemical traces from the crater, essentially
reconstructing the bomb from the inside out, not just how
it exploded, but what it was meant to do.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
There was a sixteen hundred pound bomb in a van,
made up a fertilizer and oil, and they laced it
with cyanide. It was ignited by a fuse, and the
fuse was in tubing wrapped around the inside of the van.
It was self oxygen eating and it was a time fuse.
They actually laid cylinders of hydrogen on top of the
(33:12):
bomb itself to accelerate the bomb and to vaporize the
cyanide into a gas, but it didn't. What happened is
the cyanides just burned.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
The architects of the bomb had placed it with surgical intent.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
They were trying to collapse the trade Center from the
south wall of the North tower and hopefully hit the
South tower. They were trying to kill everybody in the complex.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
They had the bomb, the fuse, and the target, but
what they lacked was an understanding of the engineering.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
What they didn't realize was that the steel columns that
supported the Trade Center at that point were mass huge.
They were four inch plates steeled each column which went
up three stories, weighed fifty tons.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
And even with out structural collapse, the device still achieved
what it was meant to do. It wounded and it killed,
It terrorized thousands, and it marked the start of a
new era in American law enforcement. This was one of
the first major terror investigations run through the Joint Terrorism
Task Force or JTTF, and one of their first orders
(34:22):
of business was to find the truck that brought in
the bomb, and utilizing their pooled resources, it didn't take
them long.
Speaker 8 (34:30):
The World Trade Center bombing investigation is a perfect example
of how the Joint Terrorist Task Force concept works that
we use not just federal resources, but stayed local as well.
We had our Evidence Response Team, our ERT team, and
they were key to breaking this case.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
That's Jim Maxwell, who by ninety three was already a
veteran FBI agent out of Trenton, New Jersey, assigned to
violent crime and drug cases by day, but also trained
and working SWAT as a SWAT operator and defensive tactics instructor.
He was one of the bureau's boots on the ground
responders when their specialized skill set was needed. So when
(35:13):
the call came in about the World Trade Center bombing,
Jim and his team were ready and that's where he
got a front row seat to the JTTF.
Speaker 8 (35:22):
In action, it expands the eyes and ears of law enforcement.
The FBI doesn't do traffic stops. Local police officers do that,
and sometimes they encounter or come across things that we
would never see while they're doing their normal duties.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Like a serial number found in the middle of a
massive crater.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
They located the VIN number off the rider truck that
was used in the bombing.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Dave Williams remembers the moment of discovery.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
I guess it was about four o'clock in the morning.
I walked back into the crime scene and I saw
two two of the bomb techs carrying a stretcher out,
and I thought, oh man, one of our chemists bit
the dust. But it turns out in the bottom of
that crater they found what appeared to be the frame
rail with explosive damage. It was that frame rail they
(36:16):
were carrying out. On that frame rail was a dot
Matrix number, which was the confidential vehicle identification number of
a vehicle, and by looking at that frame rail, you
could tell that it was very near the seat of
the explosion. Not to mention it was found directly under
where the seat was on the B two level, but
(36:37):
down in the B five level.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Every car has a signature, you just have to know
where to look.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
All vehicles have a vehicle identification plate, usually on the windshield,
on the dash. It's also on the inside of the
door on a vinyl sticker, but on two, three or
four different places, depending on the vehicle. There will be
a dot matrix number. It would be stamped in the
frame rail, this particular one on the left rear frame.
Speaker 8 (37:07):
Rail, and from that identification they were able to determine
who rented the vehicle, and the rest of the case blossomed.
Speaker 7 (37:16):
Mayor Dinkin started his day by meeting with the heads
of city, state, and federal agencies that are investigating the explosion. Later,
he said that the city must assume that the bombing
was the work of terrorists until it is proven otherwise.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
While the FBI hunted for the men responsible, another kind
of urgency was building across the street. Because the World
Trade Center wasn't just a crime scene, it was a symbol.
It was home to more than three hundred and fifty businesses,
and shutting it down also meant shutting down a part
of the city's economy, and the pressure to bring it
(37:56):
back to life was mounting.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Governor Cuomo asked me the very pointed question. He said, Charlie,
how long is it going to take you to bring
the trade center back? And what I said to him is, Governor,
we have no way of cooling the trade Center. By
the time we get the refrigeration plant back, I said,
it's gonna be months. I said, we're talking about probably
next four six to nine months. And he said to me,
(38:19):
you don't have six to nine weeks, Charlie. He said,
because if the trade Center is not reopened and functioning
within that period of time, it's going to have a
major impact on the economy of Lower Manhattan. It's going
to have a major impact upon the economy of the
state and the nation.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
What was at risk was clear, and.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Then he said, you have all of the resources of
the state available to you to get this done. I
said to myself, I don't know how I'm going to
do this, but we'll get it done. That night, the
Board of the Port Authority met passed the resolution authorizing
the Executive Director and the Director of World Trade to
take any and all actions necessary for the full recovery
and restoration of the Trade Center without my mind miltary limitation.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
There were two races now, one to reopen the trade
Center and another to find the men who tried to
bring it down.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 5 (39:20):
They were actually manufacturing their own nitriglacering. In that storage area.
We found one two court glass bottle that was about
half full of liquid nitroglasering.
Speaker 8 (39:31):
That one piece of evidence really broke the whole case open.
Speaker 6 (39:36):
We ultimately figured out at least one suspect and within
a few days had search warrants being executed and the
rest and within a couple of days, I'm in court
doing an arrangement.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolaze.
The show was written by Cooper Mall, executive produced by
Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment
on behalf of iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers Trevor Young and
(40:17):
Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk.
This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolaze. Our
researchers are Luke Stantz and Carolyn Tolmidge. Editing and sound
designed by Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Original music by
(40:38):
John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post with additional music
by Steve Moore and additional voice over by me Steve Zarnkelton.
Special thanks to Fox five in New York for providing
archival material for the show. For more podcasts from iHeart
in Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pope podcast,
(41:00):
or wherever you get your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
In the criminal justice system, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
that has defined American history. These are their stories. February
twenty sixth, nineteen ninety three, twelve eighteen pm, New York City.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
The CEO of the World Trade Center, Charlie Makish, was
high above the city alone in his office when suddenly
the floor moved beneath him.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I was sitting at my desk when I felt the
whole building heath. It actually lifted. My office was on
the thirty sixth floor. I looked out the window on
the side where the Hudson River was, and I actually
saw a ripple go across the Hudson River. I said,
what's going on here?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
It didn't take long to get an answer.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Within seconds, my secretary got a call that we had
a major explosion within the Trade Center itself.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
In an instant, an ordinary work day turned into a crisis.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
I had let my deputies know that they should organize
the command center I said, get everybody together in the
conference room and I'll see you downstairs.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Every protocol says to stay put, but for Charlie that
wasn't an option. He built the towers and felt responsible
for everyone inside. He needed to find out what was
going on.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I had a fire key, and I keyed one of
the elevators so that I could take the elevator down.
I was down within minutes or two of being to fight.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
What waited at the bottom was worse than anything he
could have imagined.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
When I came out of the elevator, there was heavy
dog smoke, a lot of players one hundred feet beyond
where you're looking at, and there's a flash of light
and the building ship flash of light.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
You started the pendice.
Speaker 4 (02:17):
You could hear the building actually making noises because like.
Speaker 5 (02:20):
Night of a living day, he came out of nowhere.
The whole area is completely distorted, ceiling walls locking.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
A tremendous explosion from behind us. The room that we
were in was devastated. I got a call, get out
to LaGuardia Airport. There's been a bombing.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
There was a thirty two foot crater in front of
what was left of the building.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I was trying to figure out am I dead? Am
I alive? Where am I? I'm aniseg and NICOLASI.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
That's why terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is law and order,
criminal justice system. The early nineteen nineties were a time
of transformation. The Cold War was over and global capitalism
was taking root. Skylines stretched higher and borders grew thinner,
(03:17):
and the United States, especially New York, stood at the
center of it all. But not everyone saw that as progress.
With extremism on the rise, a new kind of anger
was brewing and found a target in the World Trade Center,
a symbol of American economic power, international trade and the
(03:38):
spirit of New York City. The buildings were towering and unmistakable,
and from the day they rose over the skyline, there
were those determined to bring them crashing down.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Heney.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
This has been a terrible day for New York City,
an apparent active terrorism in the city's tallest building, with
of course, hundreds of innocent victims, and the tragedy speaks
for itself, But it has also been one of those
days that proves New York City's greatness. From the professionalism
of the emergency service workers, the police, and the firefighters,
to the toughness of ordinary New Yorkers.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Long before the World Trade Center was built in Lower Manhattan,
Charlie Makish was just a kid from the Bronx, still
finding his footing.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I started with a program at Manhattan College and Engineering,
and I saw myself basically as a civil engineer. But
I interrupted that study to go into a seminary for
two years. Once I was told that I started at
the very top, close to God, and then I fell
to the very bottom when I became a lawyer and
a banker.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
He may have wandered for a while, but Charlie soon
found his way back to engineering and onto the most
ambitious construction site in New York City.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I went to work for the Port Authority in nineteen
sixty eight as a field engineer on the construction of
the World Trade Center.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
This wasn't just any office space. The World Trade Center
promised to attract and house the powerhouses of business from
far and wide.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
And that's what authorized the Port Authority to build those towers.
Because the Port Authority was charged with facilitating international trade
and commerce.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
What began as a construction assignment would evolve into his
calling and his legacy.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
I helped build it, I helped defend it, and then
I was its chief executive. So they were my twins.
I used to refer to them as my twins, and
they were my life for twenty seven years.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
And what he helped build was more than a set
of towers. It was a vision, a bet on scale,
on strength, and on what America could raise from the
river's edge. The ambition wasn't just to build high. It
was to build differently.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
And that was a concept of building a perimidal wall
in panels, so that eventually you had a closed box
that was buried.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
The approach started from beneath, in a pit where the
Hudson River pressed close. What happened there would become the
foundation for one of the most recognizable structures on Earth.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
The slurry wall. It was a technology that was used
in Italy to retain the river and the groundwater back
and eventually what you wound up with was what we
called the bathtub, which was an area that was totally excavated,
but there was no bracing on the inside of it.
Those two towers went down to rock sixty to eighty
feet below the street level, and it was an eight
(06:43):
acre bath tub, so that was the first time in
the country that it was constructed that way.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Two towers would rise from that space, each with a
structural logic that broke with tradition.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
They were basically a box within a box. The exterior
wall of the trade Center towers was structural. It actually
served to support the trade center itself, and then there
was an interior core where the elevators were in all
the infrastructure, and that was basically very heavy steel and
concrete construction going up.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
The outer walls bore the wind. The inner core carried
the load.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
We would have anywhere between four and six thousand people
in each of the towers every day, and then we
would have as much as fifty thousand people in the complex.
You had one hundred and ten stories, and it actually
went down six stories. In each of the towers. You
had four million square feet of commercial office space, and
(07:42):
then you had the space below.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
As well between them, room to dream and rent. The
twin towers significantly expanded Manhattan's commercial space.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
The floor space within the bathtub comprised ten million square
feet of lower Manhattan had one hundred million square feet
of commercial space we were adding ten percent to that inventory.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
It was more than a workplace. It was a world
of its own commerce layered with retail, restaurants, utilities, and transit.
But all of it was possible because of its construction.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
They would sway three foot off center or six feet
if we had a heavy wind, and you could actually
see the water sloshing in the commodes at the top
of the building. When that happened, it was like being
in a ship sometimes, but you never really felt it
unless you looked out the window, so people did not
get motion sickness as a result of that, and the
windows was small so that people would not feel the
(08:43):
height when they were up there.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
The World Trade Center's towers were much more than just
a pair of unique skyscrapers. Everything about them celebrated globalization
and the US's economic power. Sixteen acres of intentional ambition
spread across seven buildings.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Surrounding the Trade Center were a number of perimeter buildings.
There was four World Trade Center, five World Trade Center,
and between those buildings and the towers was a plaza,
an eight acre plaza. It could hold as much as
ten thousand people for an event.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
A transit network underneath linked five subway lines to the
path trains coming from New Jersey, and above it all
was a rare kind of vertical density, offices stacked over, retailers, embassies,
besides banks. It was an ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
It was a city within a city, and the jurisdiction
of that area was in the port authority. The city
police didn't have jurisdiction, although the city fire department responded.
Our police were also firemen themselves. It was built as
an independent entity within the complex.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
By the end of the nineteen seventies, the World Trade
Center had transformed a neglected corner of Manhattan into a
global command post. It was built as a symbol of trade,
but by the early nineteen nineties it had come to
represent something else. Power.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
It was the icon or the symbol of Western capitalism,
our way of life. When I traveled internationally to visit
my tenants, anywhere I went backdrop to CNN was the
World Trade Center TALIS. Whether you were in Japan, whether
you were in China, whether you were in Europe, CNN
always had the Trade Center as the backdrop.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And by then the man in charge of it all
was the same engineer who'd once helped design its foundation.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I was its chief executive. I was the directive. Whether
it was leasing, commercial operations, capital improvements, budget security, all
aspects of the World Trade Center were within my purview
as the executive. I started in sixty eight in the
mud as a young civil engineer and wound up in
the sky ninety three.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The Trade Center was complex and tightly managed. Everyone had
their role and everything had its place. Then came the
warning that threatened to destroy it.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
My police captain got an alert from the Israelis that
they had intercepted a phone call from a terrorist group
saying they were going to bomb a commercial office complex
in Manhattan. We took action at that point to shut
the observation deck, remove all of the trash cans, et cetera,
et cetera, put in an additional police But that never happened
(11:33):
in January. It happened in February.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Charlie Makish was in his thirty sixth floor office when
the Trade Center lurched beneath him. He saw a ripple
across the Hudson, then got the call there'd been an explosion.
Within minutes, he was heading down into the unknown. Thick
smoke was everywhere.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Both towers were affected. The elevator pits were blown out,
the elevators were not operating, and the smoke actually went
up through the elevator shafts. It acted like a chimney
and spread throughout the entire trade center. People were coming
down the stairs where they were putting their hands on
the shoulders in front of the people in front of
them and moving very slowly to get down, and some
(12:23):
of them were coming down ninety to one hundred stories.
We had no lighting in the stairwell, and we had
no communication in the stairwell. Took about an hour and
twenty minutes to get down, no public announcement system. Didn't
know whether they could go and stay there.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And while they weren't yet sure what happened, they knew
this was a disaster.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
It was pretty messy, glad to brie all over the place.
Fire broke out, electrical wires.
Speaker 5 (12:52):
Well, was it just an explosion.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I don't know what it was yet.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
We're still trying to verify what it was.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
But it felt it felt like the walls collapses. The
world just like blew up and came towards you.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
There was smoke all over the place. You could not
see you couldn't see the next step you were going
to take. Here, Charlie soon saw the first of what
would become a steady stream of survivors, wounded and stunned
by the blast devastation.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
We had airline ticket booths along the south wall in
the concourse of one World Trade Center. One of the
ticket agents, a young lady, came around the corner and
she was bleeding. She had been injured, her face was cut,
and she was somewhat hysterical. And I grabbed her, and
I grabbed the concierge. I said, if you have a towel,
put the towel on her face. Get her some help.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Charlie could tell that this impact was much bigger than
a single hallway or a storefront. Crowds were streaming through
the concourse.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
The lobby of the Trade Center was evacuated. Everybody was
going out to West Street.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
It was there that the World Trade Center CEO got
his first look at the gaping void that marked the
epicenter of the explosion.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And I could see heavy dog smoke coming out of
the two ramps that fed the parking for the Trade
Center under the towers.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Next he realized the scale, Then the human toll.
Speaker 5 (14:18):
There was a litany of more serious injuries, cardiac arrests,
concussion injuries, trauma from the explosion itself, plus fractured and
broken bones.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Some of the injured didn't retreat, they returned.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I had a lieutenant, his name was Lieutenant Gebora, and
this is an interesting fact. He was taking the Beakman
Downtown Hospital because he was injured. He received the head injury.
He came back bandage, put on a Scott airpack and
went up into the towers. That's how dedicated these people.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Were, but not everyone survived. The grim reality and the
magnitude of this disaster quickly set in.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
We knew that the people in the lunchrom had died.
We knew that there were other people injured. Ambulances had responded,
and we knew that people were being injured coming down
the stalewell because they were breathing in this dark, heavy smoke,
so we had smoke inhalation problems. We knew that people
were psychologically damaged as a result of the terror that
they felt coming down those stairwells. We had up to
(15:18):
ten thousand people between the two towers.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It only took minutes before sirens were converging from every
corner up Manhattan.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
Suddenly, the street surrounding the one hundred and ten story
building turned into a sea of rescue equipment.
Speaker 6 (15:34):
Thousands of people.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Were trying to escape the smoke billowing into their offices
at hallways.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
The fire department had already responded. It was an all
city response meeting. Every piece of equipment in the City
of New York was called to respond.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
While the city's first responders were in motion, Charlie secured
a base of operations and began mobilizing his ranks.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
My staff started to arrive on West Street. I told
them that we would set up a command center in
the ballroom of the Vista Hotel right off of West Street.
I made contact with the police desk at the Holland Tunnel.
They had a van that they sent over, and the
police captain used that as his command center for the
(16:18):
Port Authority police.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
The question soon turned to what happened. At this point,
there was only speculation, and back in nineteen ninety three,
terrorism wasn't the first thought that came to mind.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Think back to the sixties. You could go to an
airport and walk through to the gate before there was
any security that would affect your boarding the aircraft. You know,
you could get ticketed at the gate and go right up.
So that's when the Trade Center was designed. It was
designed in the early sixties and terrorism was not a factor.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
And as a result, modern day protective measures weren't yet
a consideration.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
In fact, in ninety three, security started at the tenant's door.
We had no turnstiles, We had no package delivery vetting system,
we had no visitor vetting system. You didn't see bollards
all over the city around buildings, and you didn't see
visitor desks in the buildings where you had to be
checked in, et cetera. Because the concept of terrorism and
(17:21):
commercial office space was not joined together before ninety three.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So when the explosion occurred, no one assumed wrongdoing, not
even Charlie. He thought it was the systems beneath the
blast zone, the machinery that powered the towers in.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
The refrigeration plant, which was directly below where this bomb
went off. We had large transformers for stepping power down
to basically power these seven ton refrigeration plants. We had
enough cooling capacity in the Trade Center again to cool
all the homes in Cleveland. That's how big it was.
It was fifty thousand puns of air condition capacity in
(18:01):
the trade center. So the first thing that I thought
of is that we have multiple transformers explode.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
But within hours one of the investigators came to a
different conclusion.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
ATF and FBI responded immediately. The ATF guy was a
bomb expert, and he identified very quickly from the residue
that it was a bomb, what they call an iod,
a truck bomb. It created a crater half the size
of a football field.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
And the FBI agent Charlie's talking about.
Speaker 5 (18:34):
David Williams, I go by Dave, and I spent a
total of twenty seven years with the FBI, the majority
of it in the FBI Explosives Unit Laboratory. I was
a supervisory special Agent Hazardous material and Explosives specialist at
the FBI lab in Washington.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
That morning, Dave wasn't at his desk in Washington, he
wasn't in New York and nowhere near a crime scene.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
Well, I was on a golf course in Maryland, and
of course it was snowing. We got the call on
our shoe phone, and back then they were as big
as a car battery. Said, there's been an explosion at
the Trade Center and looks like you have the ticket
to go up there, And at the time they thought
it may have been a generator that exploded. So we
(19:22):
took Amtrak up to New York because the airports were
shutting down because of the amount of snow. It took
us six hours to get from DC to New York
Penn Station, so by the time we got there it
was well after midnight, checked in the hotel, changed clothes,
where we were escorted to the crime scene itself.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
By the time Dave arrived, the smoke had begun to
clear and he got right to work.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
When I walked down the West Street exit rampant by
the South Tower, one of the first things I saw
was a crater, the widest part being on the B
two level at one hundred and twenty some feet diameter.
Gradually it tapered down to the lowest level on BE
four that was breached, so you can imagine an ice
(20:08):
creaking cone if you will. As far as the crater itself.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
And what he saw didn't look like an explosion resulting
from mechanical failure.
Speaker 5 (20:18):
By looking at that crater area, it was obvious that
the device exploded right on the B two level, and
there was no other components there that could have exploded,
so that immediately suggested that it was not something mechanical.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
For Dave, the scene read like a crime.
Speaker 5 (20:40):
The automobiles were caved in or overturned, and a lot
of the different materials suggested to me that the explosive
that was present in there from the time it initiated
till the event was over, the velocity of detonation was
about fifteen thousand feet per second, and by looking at
the totality of the damage, I was able to guess,
(21:03):
if you will, that there was about fifteen hundred pounds
shy of a ton of explosives that caused that kind
of damage.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
And from there what caused it, or should I say,
what carried it in soon came into focus.
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Fifteen hundred pounds likely didn't come in in a sedan,
an automobile, and it's unlikely it was in the back
of a pickup truck. It's in Manhattan, you don't see
a lot of pickup trucks, probably a panel truck, a van,
and the clearance in that area to get into that
specific spot was only six foot eight inches. That eliminated
(21:43):
Dodge and Chevrolet vehicles to make the clearance, so that
probably came in in a Ford panel truck.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
The Trade Center didn't fall that day, but it did fracture,
and in the hours that followed the priority went from
rescue and recovery to keeping the towers from collapsing. Thousands
made it out of the buildings to safety.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
We evacuated the other buildings as well, the Customs House
and the Northeast and Southeast Plaza building.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
But none of what remained of the complex itself, including
Charlie's command center, was safe.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
We had gathered in the ballroom of the Vista Hotel.
The chief engineer, Jean Fassolo, came down. We got Les Robinson,
who was the engineer of record, to come down and
less in Gene while the place was still burning. I
went down into the below grade area to take a
look at the structural damage. And they came back and
they said, the flaws under the Vista Hotel, which are
(22:43):
the lateral support for the columns, is gone, so the
Vista Hotel is actually sitting on stilts. They said to me,
you've got to empty this because this is in jeopardy.
The hotel itself could collapse. So I got up on
the stage in that ballroom and I said to everybody,
you have to leave, and we're going over to the
Big Kitchen, which was vacant space in the concourse, and
(23:05):
set up a command center. Nobody listened to me. So
I got a bullhorn and I said, listen, it's structurally
unsound below this floor. You all have to leave.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Next came fast decisions.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
When we went over to the big kitchen, I called
for a conference of the top leaders in the various agencies.
We got around in a circle and I said, we're
not going to deal with what we're going to do
tomorrow with the next day. We're going to deal with
what we're going to do with the next three, six
and nine hours.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
First on that list, who was in charge of what We.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Had three different police jurisdictions present there. My police captain
was there, and Fox, the regional director of the FBI,
was standing there. He said to me, you know this
is a crime scene. It's a federal crime scene. We
have jurisdiction. I said, define for me the federal crime scene.
He said, anything affected by the bomb. I said, that's
the whole trade center. I said, mister Fox, if you
(23:59):
don't let us do what I want to do. You're
gonna have a hotel sitting in your crime scene because
it's going to collapse. So he said, all right, He said,
I'll define the crime scene as the crater, and everything
around the crater is the federal crime scene. Fine, you've
got that, I told Ray Kelly, the police commissioner. He said,
the Portathori police have jurisdiction within the trade center. We
(24:20):
need New York City Police to secure the perimeter of
the trade center. He says, you got it.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Their next priority was the buildings themselves.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Second thing we needed to do was to establish the
structural integrity where the tower is going to collapse. We
were concerned about the slurry wall collapsing and the Hudson
River pouring into the basement of the Trade Center because
the below grade flows had been compromised. If that had
come to fruition, we could have lost part of West Street,
which was a major thoroughfare. As you know, as the
(24:51):
slurry wall collapse, what would have come in is mud
and water. That roadway would have.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Collapsed, and if that happened, it wouldn't stop at the pavement.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
It may have caused the same to occur to the
telephone building that was on the corner of VZ and
nine A, and that was a major, major telephone switch
facility for the region. Actually the international phone lines went
through there.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Another mission also pressed forward, controlling misinformation and preventing panic.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
The third thing that we needed to do was to
ensure the public that the smoke and the air quality
was okay. It was lightly snowing that day, and the
press was reporting that the snow was actually asbestos when
it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
I can just imagine the mayhem that report caused.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Oh it did it cause mayhem. We took air samples,
and we took soot samples, and we were going to
put out a press release saying that the air was
safe around the trade center.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
All the necessary to do lists were physically and mentally exhausting.
Next came the lights.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
I got to get Jean McGrath, the head of Connett,
isn't really credit for this. I said to him, you know,
we got to get power restored to the towers. And
Jean said, I can run temporary lines. And I said
to him, the towers will not stand dark against the
skyline because it would send the wrong message to those
that try to impose terror upon us.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Through the night, Cruz stabilized steel braced walls, and kept
watch on the river. The towers were still standing, the
city was still connected, but what caused this catastrophe was
still a mystery because the next morning's headlines still hadn't
caught up with the reality being uncovered underground, and at
(26:40):
dawn politics arrived.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Governor Cuomo was told that it was a transformer explosion.
And when I saw him early the next morning, the
Governor got out of his Christ's Look. You wouldn't catch
him in a Mercedes Pepatone was his advanced man, and
he had a state trooper with him who was his driver.
And the governor said to me, who are you. I said,
I'm the director of the Trade Center. And he said
to me, oh, you're the guy I'm going to fire.
(27:04):
You can't even handle a transformer explosion. And I said
to him, Governor, you know you're a lawyer with whole
judgment until you see what I'm going to show you.
I took him into the center of the Trade Center,
to the center stairwell, and we started walking down to
the below grade and there was water still coming down
the stairs and Peppertone said to me, he's not going
to get his shoes wet, is he? And I said why,
(27:26):
he said, because he's very particular about his shoes. I
walked him in water up to his ankles, and I
walked him through collapsed banks of conduit the international telephone
lines to the edge of the crater. And actually the
troopers said to me, you're going to kill the governor.
I said, I'm not going to kill the governor, but
he needs to see this. And that's when he saw
the crater and he said, this wasn't a transformer explosion,
(27:47):
it was a bomb.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
The day after the nineteen ninety three World Trade Center attack,
the wreckage was unmistakable, and the silence that left behind
was even louder. The human toll was beginning to sink in.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
The last thing that I needed to get done was
to notify the families of those that had been killed.
On my staff. Six people in an unborn child were.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Killed John di Giovanni, Robert Kirkpatrick, Stephen Knapp, William Mako,
Bofredo Mercado, and Monica Rodriguez Smith. She was pregnant when
she died. Who lived and who died came down to
nothing more than timing and location, a margin measured in
(28:46):
moments and mere feet. The list of survivors was enormous.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
We had thousands of others that were injured as a
result of this, whether it be smoke inhalation or whether
it be the impact of the bomb itself, and they
were in the low grade area, they were injured.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
The odds that day had been razor.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Then we had at least in the buildings themselves, anywhere
between ten and fifteen thousand people evacuated. And then you
had people in the concourse and in the retail, and
on the observation deck, and in windows on the world,
in the restaurants. We could have as much as fifty
thousand people in the complex on any day that day.
(29:26):
It's hard to say it happened at lunchtime too, And
if the bomb had been moved one hundred feet west,
it would have exploded under the concourse and killed many
more people. It basically exploded between the two towers, where
there was very few people except white people in the
lunch room and the people that were in the parking garages.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
As the families and friends began to grieve and others
worked to secure the buildings themselves. The question remained, if
this attack was intentional, then who was responsible.
Speaker 7 (29:57):
The FBI is confirming what was suspected all along. The
massive explosion at the World Trade Center was caused by
a bomb.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
The question now is who planted it and what kind
of bomb could do this. The theories were flying, but
once the investigators got in, one thing was clear. It
would take an army to process the wreckage. What started
as a local emergency ultimately triggered one of the largest
(30:26):
joint responses in the city's history.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Right off the bat, it was immediately determined to be
a task force project. So we had local law enforcement,
state and federal agencies all in the same group, and
by the time it became daylight, we had an office
set up for our evidence response team, and we had
a place to take the evidence.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
The tools they needed weren't guns or handcuffs. They were
ones you'd find in a hardware store.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
I grabbed the one agent and said, I need five
hundred rakes, five hundred shovels, I need two hundred sifting
screens with quarter inch mesh, and get it done.
Speaker 1 (31:08):
Every inch of rubble might hold a clue, every scrap
of metal might tell a piece of the story. As
the equipment arrived, so did the manpower.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
We were running twenty four hours a day, usually eight
to ten hours per shift, with a little bit of overlap,
and in total we had seventeen hundred people processing that
crime scene. Some of them had knowledge of post last
some of them were for encounter intelligence or white collar
crime agents, so they had no knowledge. So in the
(31:40):
process of processing the crime scene, we also educated the
people picking up the pieces.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
This was a collaboration in full force behind the scenes.
It was a masterclass in coordination, agencies from every corner
coming together with a single mission to piece together what happened.
Investigators first had to preserve what was left.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Before human intervention gets in there, and before too much
water is put on the crime scene. We want to
get chemists in there to start taking samples to try
to determine explosive residue. It was probably about two am
when I had three teams. Each team consisted of two
chemists and two bomb texts to escort the chemists, because
(32:26):
when you put a chemist in an environment like that
twisted steel, they're going to be not paying attention to
where they're going. So the bomb. Text job was to
keep them safe.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
They worked tirelessly collecting chemical traces from the crater, essentially
reconstructing the bomb from the inside out, not just how
it exploded, but what it was meant to do.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
There was a sixteen hundred pound bomb in a van,
made up a fertilizer and oil, and they laced it
with cyanide. It was ignited by a fuse, and the
fuse was in tubing wrapped around the inside of the van.
It was self oxygen eating and it was a time fuse.
They actually laid cylinders of hydrogen on top of the
(33:12):
bomb itself to accelerate the bomb and to vaporize the
cyanide into a gas, but it didn't. What happened is
the cyanides just burned.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
The architects of the bomb had placed it with surgical intent.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
They were trying to collapse the trade Center from the
south wall of the North tower and hopefully hit the
South tower. They were trying to kill everybody in the complex.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
They had the bomb, the fuse, and the target, but
what they lacked was an understanding of the engineering.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
What they didn't realize was that the steel columns that
supported the Trade Center at that point were mass huge.
They were four inch plates steeled each column which went
up three stories, weighed fifty tons.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
And even with out structural collapse, the device still achieved
what it was meant to do. It wounded and it killed,
It terrorized thousands, and it marked the start of a
new era in American law enforcement. This was one of
the first major terror investigations run through the Joint Terrorism
Task Force or JTTF, and one of their first orders
(34:22):
of business was to find the truck that brought in
the bomb, and utilizing their pooled resources, it didn't take
them long.
Speaker 8 (34:30):
The World Trade Center bombing investigation is a perfect example
of how the Joint Terrorist Task Force concept works that
we use not just federal resources, but stayed local as well.
We had our Evidence Response Team, our ERT team, and
they were key to breaking this case.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
That's Jim Maxwell, who by ninety three was already a
veteran FBI agent out of Trenton, New Jersey, assigned to
violent crime and drug cases by day, but also trained
and working SWAT as a SWAT operator and defensive tactics instructor.
He was one of the bureau's boots on the ground
responders when their specialized skill set was needed. So when
(35:13):
the call came in about the World Trade Center bombing,
Jim and his team were ready and that's where he
got a front row seat to the JTTF.
Speaker 8 (35:22):
In action, it expands the eyes and ears of law enforcement.
The FBI doesn't do traffic stops. Local police officers do that,
and sometimes they encounter or come across things that we
would never see while they're doing their normal duties.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Like a serial number found in the middle of a
massive crater.
Speaker 8 (35:46):
They located the VIN number off the rider truck that
was used in the bombing.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Dave Williams remembers the moment of discovery.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
I guess it was about four o'clock in the morning.
I walked back into the crime scene and I saw
two two of the bomb techs carrying a stretcher out,
and I thought, oh man, one of our chemists bit
the dust. But it turns out in the bottom of
that crater they found what appeared to be the frame
rail with explosive damage. It was that frame rail they
(36:16):
were carrying out. On that frame rail was a dot
Matrix number, which was the confidential vehicle identification number of
a vehicle, and by looking at that frame rail, you
could tell that it was very near the seat of
the explosion. Not to mention it was found directly under
where the seat was on the B two level, but
(36:37):
down in the B five level.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Every car has a signature, you just have to know
where to look.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
All vehicles have a vehicle identification plate, usually on the windshield,
on the dash. It's also on the inside of the
door on a vinyl sticker, but on two, three or
four different places, depending on the vehicle. There will be
a dot matrix number. It would be stamped in the
frame rail, this particular one on the left rear frame.
Speaker 8 (37:07):
Rail, and from that identification they were able to determine
who rented the vehicle, and the rest of the case blossomed.
Speaker 7 (37:16):
Mayor Dinkin started his day by meeting with the heads
of city, state, and federal agencies that are investigating the explosion. Later,
he said that the city must assume that the bombing
was the work of terrorists until it is proven otherwise.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
While the FBI hunted for the men responsible, another kind
of urgency was building across the street. Because the World
Trade Center wasn't just a crime scene, it was a symbol.
It was home to more than three hundred and fifty businesses,
and shutting it down also meant shutting down a part
of the city's economy, and the pressure to bring it
(37:56):
back to life was mounting.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Governor Cuomo asked me the very pointed question. He said, Charlie,
how long is it going to take you to bring
the trade center back? And what I said to him is, Governor,
we have no way of cooling the trade Center. By
the time we get the refrigeration plant back, I said,
it's gonna be months. I said, we're talking about probably
next four six to nine months. And he said to me,
(38:19):
you don't have six to nine weeks, Charlie. He said,
because if the trade Center is not reopened and functioning
within that period of time, it's going to have a
major impact on the economy of Lower Manhattan. It's going
to have a major impact upon the economy of the
state and the nation.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
What was at risk was clear, and.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Then he said, you have all of the resources of
the state available to you to get this done. I
said to myself, I don't know how I'm going to
do this, but we'll get it done. That night, the
Board of the Port Authority met passed the resolution authorizing
the Executive Director and the Director of World Trade to
take any and all actions necessary for the full recovery
and restoration of the Trade Center without my mind miltary limitation.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
There were two races now, one to reopen the trade
Center and another to find the men who tried to
bring it down.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 5 (39:20):
They were actually manufacturing their own nitriglacering. In that storage area.
We found one two court glass bottle that was about
half full of liquid nitroglasering.
Speaker 8 (39:31):
That one piece of evidence really broke the whole case open.
Speaker 6 (39:36):
We ultimately figured out at least one suspect and within
a few days had search warrants being executed and the
rest and within a couple of days, I'm in court
doing an arrangement.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is a production of
Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolaze.
The show was written by Cooper Mall, executive produced by
Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf and Stephen Michael at Wolf Entertainment
on behalf of iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers Trevor Young and
(40:17):
Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk.
This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolaze. Our
researchers are Luke Stantz and Carolyn Tolmidge. Editing and sound
designed by Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Original music by
(40:38):
John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post with additional music
by Steve Moore and additional voice over by me Steve Zarnkelton.
Special thanks to Fox five in New York for providing
archival material for the show. For more podcasts from iHeart
in Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pope podcast,
(41:00):
or wherever you get your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
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