September 18, 2025 • 43 mins
From a hidden bomb workshop to a string of swift apprehensions, the World Trade Center bombing probe dismantles a dangerous network, its trial sounding an ominous warning of an attack still to come.
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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):
In the shadows beneath the World Trade Center, the attackers
pulled into the underground garage and stepped out with quiet precision.
They moved quickly, without drawing attention. Their device was already assembled.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Haledda'side is the primary explosive, very sensitive, used in a
detonator to begin that process, functioning magnesium. There were putting
some metal in with their explosives to make it a hotter, faster,
more energetic material.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
The mechanism was crude but carefully built. It didn't need
electronics or circuitry. It only needed to buy them a
head start and delay what was coming just long enough.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
The timing mechanism was a burning link of green hobby fuse.
They kind you'd find on an me eight firecracker that
would burn about twenty seconds per foot inside of a
tigon tubing. It's like clear garden hose, so people wouldn't
see smoke inside of that van if they walked by
the window.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
There was no turning back. The van sacked quietly in
the garage, disguised as ordinary, hiding everything inside. The men
turned and walked away.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
They dropped that van off, and they actually had another
vehicle in there with them that would pick up the
driver and take them out.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
They were almost free, the plan unfolding exactly as they rehearsed,
until they.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Got halfway up the ramp and there was a car
stalled in front of them.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
For a moment, they were trapped. The exit was in sight,
but the path was blocked. Every second felt heavier than
the last.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
They looked at their watches and they figured they didn't
have a lot more time to get out of there.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
The fuse was burning and there was no time to hesitate.
When the stalled car finally moved, they didn't wait. They
hit the gaps.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
They just cleared the ramp when the detonation occurred.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
I got a call get out to the Guardia Airport.
There's been a bombing.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
There was a thirty two foot crater in front of
what was left of the building.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I was trying to figure out, am I dead? Am
I alive?
Speaker 5 (03:01):
Where am I?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I'm Anisega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
That's why terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is law and
order criminal justice system. On a cold Friday afternoon in
nineteen ninety three, a cargo van packed with explosives tore
through the foundations of the World Trade Center. Terrorists didn't
(03:31):
bring the towers down, but they came close. Six people
were killed, among them a woman and her unborn child.
She was just about to go on maternity leave. More
than a thousand were wounded in the aftermath. There was
pandemonium and grief, but there was also resolve to rebuild
(03:54):
and for accountability, starting with identifying and then tracking down
the responsible for the destruction one by one across oceans,
safe houses and bomb stained garages. Investigators read fragments like fingerprints.
They chased shadows through phone calls and chemical residue. While
(04:17):
smoke was still pouring from the base of the World
Trade Center. A young federal prosecutor at the US Attorney's
office in Lower Manhattan, Gil Childers got a knock on his.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
Door February six, ninety three, the day that bombing took
place at the World Trade Center. Roger came into my office.
He said, you heard about something going on over the
Trade Center. I said, yeah, I heard some sort of
transformer fire or explosion or something. He said, yeah, maybe
the Bureau thinks it might be something else, but whatever
(04:48):
it is, it's yours. So I called over to the Bureau,
made contact and said, look, I'm the guy if you
need anything.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Roger, one of Gill's supervisors at the time, was bringing
him in early. And as you might recall from season one,
Gil was one of the cool headed prosecutors who helped
take down the mob with the Commission case, and now
a few years later, his career path was about to
take another sharp turn.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
That evening, I got a call, said, all right, I'll
come into your office tomorrow morning. Went over to twenty
six Federal Plaza where the FBI was. They said, clearly
was not transformed. There's nothing anywhere near where the explosion
took place that could explode or should explode, and we
think it was a car bomb. All of a sudden,
things got very active.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
But even then Gil had no idea what he was
in for.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
Quite honestly, my thoughts were, Okay, fine, this is my case,
but what are the odds of it ever becoming a
prosecution as opposed to a twenty year investigation and never
getting a body to prosecute. So I thought, it'll just
be something that'll be in the back burner of my
career for however long i'm a prosecutor, but never really
(06:02):
do anything.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Come Monday morning, barely two days later, it was no
longer just a crime. It was a case.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
I spent the next two nights in the FBI sleeping
on a couch, and we ultimately figured out at least
one suspect, and within a few days had search warrants
being executed and an arrest, and within a couple of
days I'm in court doing an arraignment. So it all
(06:32):
happened extremely quickly, which is really the subtext for this
entire case.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And this type of case hadn't exactly been in Gill's wheelhouse.
So at this point, how many cases involving terrorism had
you ever handled?
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Let me think that would be zero.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
I knew that answer a massive bombing was now speeding
toward trial and gil. While an experience, Marian's prosecutor had
never handled a case like this before, yet he was
the one in charge of the case that would redefine
how America responded to terrorism. Just six days after the bombing,
(07:15):
investigators were already hot on the trail of those responsible
for the attack. And it all began with a fragment
of steel pulled from the wreckage. Seventeen characters that would
change everything. A bin number etched into the cargo van
that carried the bomb.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
They traced the van to Ford. Who'd you sell it to?
We saw to the writer rental company, the contact writer.
Where was this truck? It was last rented out of
Jersey City just a few days before the bombing, and
this is the guy who rented the van.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
The name on the contract was listed as Mohammed Salome
and due to a stroke of pure luck, the FBI
didn't have to go far to find him.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
We were looking at Solomon and tracing him and then
we get a call from the writer agency in Jersey
City that says, Hey, the guy that rented that truck
just called and he wants to come back and get
his deposit.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
A sting operation was quickly set in motion.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
They put an FBI agent working the counter so when
he came in, the FBI agent could ask him questions.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Former FBI agent Jim Maxwell remembers what happened next.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
He physically came by the store to pick up his
four hundred dollars deposit and was quickly arrested.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
As a result, it gave investigators exactly what they needed Once.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
We had him arrested. That moved the investigation outward and
gave us more information about exactly who he had been
associating with.
Speaker 6 (08:51):
That one piece of evidence really broke the whole case open.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
By then, the FBI was already analyzing phone records and
surveillance leads. One call was traced to someone within a
major tech company.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
That was Nadal Ayod, who was a chemical engineer for
Allied Signal. Allied Signal it's a huge, huge company, a
big time government defense contractor.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Nidal Ayod was just twenty five years old and had
the resume of a success story.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Iod hardly fits the standard description of someone both deranged
and determined. He graduated with honors from Rutgers in ninety
one with a degree in chemical engineering.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
He was sort of living in the American dream. He
was from Jordan At County, United States. He married a
Jordanian woman that came here. He had just had a
baby and he got mixed up in this.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Agents confirmed his identity, mapped his movements, and planned the
takedown in Maplewood.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Neighbors said they didn't know him, but that Iodd's apartment
was a revolving door faceless people.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
The next week we made the second arrest.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Iad was apprehended in his bedroom. Jim was outside.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
My job was to secure the back door of the
residence and not to let anyone exit. We deployed using
two vans, and the first van was the team that
was going to breach the front door.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Five to seven people perteen each with a task the
objective take ayot alive.
Speaker 6 (10:31):
I made my way down the side of the house.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Once Jim was halfway down the side of the house,
something caught his eye.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
I looked at my right and there was a panel
truck parked in the backyard.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
His heart began to pound.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Going through my mind, I said, well, we're working in
an investigation that has to do with a bomb that
was placed inside a panel truck my running by another
bomb here, but luckily it turned out to be empty,
and one of the male relatives of Vyad was trying
to exit out of the back door, and we took
him temporarily into custody.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
At that moment, with Salome and iodding custody, investigators began
mapping the structure of the broader network film logs, rental records,
and surveillance photos.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
And this started dovetailing into a spider web of individuals
to look at. We started writing search warrants on apartments
pretty much all of which happened to be in Jersey City,
and we started tracing where Salome had lived over the
course of the last year or so. The joint Toewsian
(11:43):
Task Force was then going through all of their surveillance
notes trying to find and he mentioned of Salome and
who he was with or whenever he was seen.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Then came the lead that brought them to the heart
of the operation.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
It was a garage apartment behind a building in Jersey
City where the construction of the bomb actually took place.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
The address was a forty Pamrapo Avenue, a standalone building
turned bomb factory, where agents Jim Maxwell and Dave Williams
found chemical burns on the ceiling, scorched walls, and leftover ingredients,
namely uria nitrate.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Which was in fact the main charge in the explosive device.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
If viviben around that it has a very caustic, nauseous
type smell.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
No one was commercially producing urea nitrate, so this is
one of the.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
First Initially, no one could explain how they got their
hands on it, but investigators soon got their answer.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Followed by the name of Abu Nidal was a chemist
at a place in New Jersey that came from Afghanistan,
was placed in Rutgers University and upon graduation he got
this job at this chemical plant. He ordered the chemicals
that they needed.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Then came the cooks.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Ramsey Yosis had the recipe on how to do it,
and then you had the humps Mohammed Salomi and Mahunabulima,
who were actually doing the mixing.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Inside the apartment, agents saw clear signs of crude chemistry,
stained walls, yellowed newspapers and buckets used for mixing.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
They used newspaper to filter it, and as the nitric
acid filtered through the newspaper turns the newsprint yellow doing
a neighborhood around that Pamerapo address, we find neighbors had
seen this large, red haired fella carrying five gallon pails
of yellowed newspaper out to his taxicab.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
They weren't just making one explosive. They were experimenting for
others too, and getting more savvy by the day.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
They were actually manufacturing their own nitrichlists. In that storage area,
we found one two court glass bottle that was about
half full of liquid nitroglycerine, which the New Jersey State
Police bomb squad took in a total containment vessel to
Liberty Park where they detonated it inside of their containment
(14:19):
vessel and it subsequently cracked their containment vessel, so it
was very energetic.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
They also recovered all the components needed to make a
timed detonation system. The safehouse at Pamrapo Avenue had given
up its secrets, but it was who had been seen
at the apartment that truly strengthened the.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Case, identifying through photographs Ramsey Josef had been in there.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Ramsey Usaf.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
He left that night the evening of the twenty sixth.
Matter of fact, the flight that he left from JFK
was delayed because of the bombing.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
But eventually got off the ground. Within hours of the blast,
Yusuf was in the air on a flight bound for Karachi.
Speaker 7 (15:07):
Ramsey Ahmed Yusef is the focus of an international manhunt.
Investigators described the twenty five year old Iraqi born taxi
driver as a major player in the world traits that
are bombing, and they believe he's left the country.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
We didn't know where he was.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
As investigators scrambled to track Yusuf's movements, another person was
also soon identified as part of the attack. He too
had fled the country.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
We had identified Makmud Abohalima, and he was in Egypt.
He was an Egyptian citizen.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
He proved easier to return.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
We send some feelers out. The Egyptians say we have him.
He gets sent back to the US and he gets arraigned.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
While prosecutors focused on building cases against the men already
in custody, investigators kept pulling threads. That's when they discovered
something that had been sitting under their noses for months,
but no one knew it because it sat in an
evidence locker.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
Akhmud Ajaj, who entered the United States with Ramsey Yusef
in September before the bombing, was detained for a counterfeit
visa from September of ninety two until May of ninety three,
when we decided to arrest him and were looking at
(16:31):
a number of materials that he brought in with him
that included bomb manuals, videos about had a blow up buildings,
all sorts of stuff like this that had been sitting
in i ins custody. But then once the connection was
made that all those materials were looked at and we decided, yeah,
even though he was in custody the entire time, he
(16:53):
was part of the conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Ajaj hadn't taken part in the bombing itself, but the
materials he carried into the country suggested something else. Preparation,
training and intent, and also a connection to usup months
before their van ever builed into Manhattan, the blueprint for
the World Trade Center bomb was now fully mapped.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
At that point we knew those were the folks we
would go to trial with.
Speaker 7 (17:22):
They've all entered not guilty please, and they all remained
in jail, held without.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Bond while federal prosecutors prepped their case Downtown. The World
Trade Center's CEO, Charlie Makish was also executing his own strategy.
His objective wasn't conviction, it was resurrection, and he was
on a tight deadline.
Speaker 8 (17:46):
We had transformers reconstructed that would have taken months, if
not a year. We had that done in three weeks
so that we could power the trade center. We had
a temporary refrigeration plan built within that period of time
and interconnected with pressure fittings with the existing refrigeration system
in the trade center.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Everyone worked on overdrive. Two hundred elevator technicians worked around
the clock rebuilding one hundred elevators and because smoke had
permeated through every square inch of the towers, achieving the
cleanup needed would be nothing short of miraculous. Ten million
square feet of office space had to be scrubbed.
Speaker 8 (18:25):
We used a sponge that later became the miracle sponge.
Mister Clean puts out the dry sponge. The restoration company
used the dry sponge to get the certain smoke off
the walls, and they basically put people in front of
a wall and they told them this is your section
of wall that has to be cleaned tonight. They were remarkable.
They cleaned everything in the trade center.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
The pace was extraordinary.
Speaker 8 (18:51):
Work around the clock. We started at six o'clock in
the morning at a coordination meeting as to what had
been done the night before, decided on what we were going
to focus on for that day to get done, and
then we met again at six o'clock at night to
go over what with the progress was and what the
night shifts were going to do. And then we had
engineering meetings after that to figure out how we were
(19:11):
going to put back the fire alarm communication systems, what
we were going to do in terms of temporary security.
All of those meetings we had between the hours of
eight and midnight, and then you went back to the hotel,
got four to five hours sleeping, came back, and you
did this for three weeks.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And on March eighteenth, nineteen ninety three, just three weeks
after the blast, the South Tower officially reopened, followed by
the North tower on April first. They'd rebuilt the World
Trade Center with remarkable speed, but even then it was
clear that things would never be the same.
Speaker 8 (19:49):
We actually built a memorial and it was built right
above where the bomb went off. Ellen Zimmerman was the
architect for the memorial, in which the inscription on it
was that below this spot in nineteen ninety three, February
twenty sixth, international terrorism detonated a sixteen hundred pound bomb
which killed seven people, injured thousands, and made victims of
(20:10):
us all.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
And when the reconstruction was complete, there was one more
act of remembrance.
Speaker 8 (20:18):
The Tibetan monks came over. There were four of them,
and they created what was called the sand Mendela, and
it was a beautiful, beautiful picture that they did in sand.
The idea was that that would capture all of the
negative energy in the building. And after they spent months
and months meticulously creating this mandela, they swept it up
(20:40):
into a pile, put it in a container, and they
paraded over to the Hudson River and they deposited in
the Hudson River. And the whole idea was at that
point the negative energy in the Trade Center had been.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Removed, the towers were open again, and just across the river,
justice would have it turn. As the World Trade Center
(21:15):
got back to business, prosecutors were busy getting ready to
take four of the men responsible for the attack to trial.
Mahmud Abu Halima, who helped manufacture the bomb, Mohammed Salome,
the one who rented the rider, Van Nidal Ayad, a
chemical engineer with corporate access to key suppliers, and Ahmed Ajaj,
(21:38):
who entered the country with a suit case full of
bomb manuals. The evidence was powerful, but law enforcement was
still knee deep in prep The case needed more time,
but the trial judge saw things differently.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
The case was in front of Kevin Thomas Duffy in
the Southern District of New York, and the defense to
turn these very wisely said we very much want to
demand a speedy trial, knowing that we were still really
in early stages of doing the investigation that you would
need where you could actually bring a trial.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
The move forced prosecutors to accelerate their timeline. The judge
made it clear delays weren't an option.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
They said, government, talk to your investigators and tell me
what's the absolute earliest you think this case could go
to trial. I want a real number, because if it's inflaated,
I'm just going to cut it in half. By the
end of May, we had decided that the lab work
would probably be back by July, so maybe we could
(22:45):
think of a trial sometime in the fall, and Duffy said, great,
we'll start September, eighth day after Labor Day. I was
hoping more like November maybe, but he said the trial
date never changed.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Just over three months for any felony trial. That's fast,
and for a case of this magnitude, nearly unheard of,
and that meant there would be no downtime for the prosecutors.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Literally from maybe the second day that I worked on
this in late February until the day of the verdict,
there were two days Thanksgiving and Christmas that we weren't
in the office in that year. And that's it. Sixteen
hour days every day. I lived in New Jersey, I
had an hour commute each way, and I would be
(23:32):
getting home after midnight every night, but I had to
be out of the door by six thirty every morning,
and I had a wife and kid, and I wanted
to try and see a little bit once in a while.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Even with round the clock work, Gil still wasn't sure
exactly what he'd be able to present at trial.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
The day before I delivered the opening statement, I went
through moot a practice of my opening and had had
the leadership of the office listen to it get feedback.
One of the executive assistants in the office said, Gil,
I think it was good, but my general comment is
there's a lack of specificity. I think you need to
(24:14):
go into what your evidence is going to be on
certain things, And I said, I would love to do that,
but I don't know what the evidence is yet.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It was the reality of building a massive federal case
on a wildly compressed timeline.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
It was ludicrous, truthfully.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
But off to trial they went.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
Took about two and a half weeks to pick a
jury and then we opened. Ultimately there'd be two hundred
and seven witnesses called for the government. When I did
that opening, we had spoken to less than half of
the witnesses that we would eventually put on the stand.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
And from personal experience, I'll tell you this, it's nerve
racking for a trial attorney to put a witness on
the stand without knowing what they're going to say. Advance
prep is invaluable when you can get it. It gives
you the roadmap, the strengths, weak spots, when to press forward,
and when to illicit explanation. But when you're forced to
(25:12):
go in cold like Gil was, that's when thinking on
your feet is everything. When Gil stood up to deliver
the opening statement, it was more than the obligatory preview
of the government's case. He also wanted to prepare the
jury for the types of evidence he had and how
many puzzle pieces it would be.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
It was going to be almost an exclusively circumstantial case.
There were going to be thousands of little pieces of
evidence that seemingly didn't do anything on their own, only
when they're tied together, and that's not going to happen
until summation. So I had to prepare the jury for
the fact that you're going to be bored stiff for
(25:55):
weeks at a time as we're putting in little bits
of evidence. I can assure you are important, but you
won't know it when we're putting them.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Then the strategy was to keep their expectations grounded and
to ask them to trust that the many fragments would
eventually reveal its shape. Another hurdle. This attack was unprecedented
and the laws hadn't yet caught up.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
There were no terrorism statutes at the time. The defendants
from ninety three bombing were tried for destruction of a
building used in international commerce by means of explosive.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
The first Major Terrorism Statue didn't enter the law until
nineteen ninety four. After this bombing, Gill and his colleagues
had to use a patchwork of existing laws and repurpose statutes,
statutes that couldn't capture the full scope of the devastation,
but using every law they had at their disposal. The
US government, with Gill at the helm, walked into court
(26:56):
and the trial began, and for the next six months,
the prosecution mapped out the web of connections between the
four defendant standing trial plus the two still at large.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
It was the story of these six individuals working together.
Through a lot of telephone records, were able to demonstrate
that they were calling chemical companies. We didn't know what
the conversations were because these weren't wiretafs. They were calling
around and obviously we could argue looking for places to
buy certain things, and then at the bomb factory we
(27:29):
were able to find packaging and bomb components that would
bear the name of the manufacturer or the place where
they were purchased. They used several pressurized gas canisters as
part of the bomb from a compressed gas supplier called AGL.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Those calls to the gas supplier were made from none
other than the desk of needle iod.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
We also had phone calls to rental car places, including
the writer place in Jersey City, so phone records were
very important as sort of the glue that helped us
piece all this stuff together.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
The case against each defendant wasn't always straightforward.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
The other real challenge was that the case and the
evidence against each of the four defendants was very different.
There were two of the defendants that were never at
the bomb factory the garage apartment where the bombs were made.
They were never there, ever, and these people weren't under
surveillance beforehand.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
The analogy we prosecutors often uses that of a wheel.
Each player is more like the spoke of the wheel.
They are all necessary parts of making the wheel turn.
And besides the obvious significance of this crime, even the
type of case was different than what federal prosecutors most
often work with.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
This was an entirely reactive prosecution, much more like a
typical state case than a federal case, where you do
an investigation, build a case, and bring it down. This
obviously happened with a bomb, and everything else was piecing
it together afterwards.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
And as the evidence came in so did the motive.
Speaker 5 (29:10):
There was a claim of responsibility that was mailed to
the New York Times in a letter saying that the
bombing was carried out because of the US support for
Israel and their policy with respect to Palestine. We were
able to get DNA off the flap of the envelope
and the stamp. One of them came back as a
(29:31):
DNA match to Ayad.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
The case against Abu Halima focused on a detail left behind.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
When we did in search of his apartment in New Jersey,
we found a pair of shoes that had acid burns
and some other chemical residue on one of his shoes.
So between the settings of the car and that shoe,
we were able to tie him to the bomb factory.
There were well over a thousand exhibits, and if you
broke them down component wise, it'd probably three or four
(30:02):
thousand exhibits.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Each was a piece of the puzzle. Placed together, the
full picture came into view. But behind all the exhibits
and evidence tags, at its center, this was a case
about real people.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
So in terms of witnesses that were affected or injured,
we had witnesses who were in the garage. Matter of fact,
two of Our witnesses were Secret Service agents who were
in the garage who were injured, so they were two firs.
They could give a little bit of law enforcement perspective
as well as being actual victims. And we had people
(30:41):
that had come down the stairs. We had people who
were affected not immediately by the blast as opposed to
debris falling from the blast. But most of the testimony
about injuries really came in through first responders.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
The government also called experts like FBI explosive specialist Dave Williams.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
When I started testifying about where and what and how
things were placed, they had the wide open mouth look
the defendants did, how was he watching us do this?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Charlie Makish, the World Trade Center CEO, testify too.
Speaker 8 (31:20):
My role in the trial was to describe the Trade
Center what it stood for, because he had to establish
federal jurisdiction. The fact that it was a center for
international trade and commerce established that federal jurisdiction. And then
I had to describe what the Trade Center was, and
then I had to describe the events of that day
and the bomb.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
As he cited facts about what had happened that day,
the deep toll, it had taken was also clear.
Speaker 8 (31:48):
I told him not to ask me how it affected
me emotionally, and he did and I broke down on
the stand. Afterwards, I said, Gill, you only you weren't
going to do that, and he said, well, Charlie, I
wanted the jury to see it.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
After months of trial, closing arguments and then the court's instruction,
the case was finally given to the jury to deliberate.
It was out of the prosecution's hands and they were
left to wait and wonder what the jury would do.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
Trial lasted just over six months. The verdict came in
actually on the one year anniversary of the first arrest
of Mohammed Salome. The jury was deliberating on the addiversary
of the bombing, just again a reminder of the speed
with which all this happened, and the verdict was all
four defendants on each count, so it was a clean sweep.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
After the convictions were in the court next turned to sentencing.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
Definitely was not available to us for these individuals at
that time. The judge was not allowed to give them life,
so it was important that he actually give a number of.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Years, and the judge found a rather unique way to
quantify what had been lost Judge Duffy.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
He took the six individuals who were killed and looked
at actuarial tables relevant to the six individuals and added
up the years that the tables told them the individuals
would still live, and that total was the number of
years that he gave each of the defendants.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Two hundred and forty years in prison for each defendant.
The sentence was a stark reminder of the two hundred
and forty years taken from the people who'd been killed.
At sentencing, the courtroom heard from the victims' loved ones.
Among them was Ed Smith, who lost his pregnant wife, Monica,
in the blast.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Ed was strong, he was obviously tremendously affected. Not only
lose his wife, but he lost was would have been
his firstborn. It was a boy that had already named him.
He was going to be Eddie Junior. So it was
doubly painful.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
The verdict was a major win. That their work wasn't over.
There were two suspects still out there and investigators were
zeroing in fast. At the nineteen ninety three World Trade
(34:22):
Center trial, four men were convicted, two others were still
at large, Abdul Rama Yacine and the mastermind Ramsey Yusef.
Yusuf slipped out of the country just hours after the blast.
For two years, he stayed one step ahead, vanishing into
the sprawl of Karachi, slipping in and out of Afghanistan.
(34:45):
Then came a break in the Philippines. After a chemical
fire in a Manila apartment, authorities uncovered a laptop belonging
to Yusef, filled with blueprints, airline routes and a plan
to detonate bombs mid air across the Pacific. The plan
was called Ojinka, and buried within its files was another
(35:06):
concept hijacked planes crashed them into American landmarks. Yusuf's name
was now tied not just to New York, but to
a global conspiracy. February seventh, nineteen ninety five, a tip
came in. US officials and Pakistani police converged on a
(35:26):
modest guesthouse. Inside they found forged passports, explosive residue, blueprints
for bombs, and Ramsey Yusuf asleep. The apprehension was swift,
and within hours he was in US custody on a
one way flight back to New York, delivered to the
(35:47):
very city he had tried to destroy.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
The plane some multary aircraft that landed up the Newburgh
at the air base at the time, and then he
was brought by helicopter to Manhattan and they circled the
Trade Center with it. And when the agency's rhythm said,
see they're still standing, and he said they wouldn't have
been if I had more money.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
That chilling remark was more than bravado. It was a
glimpse into Yusuf's intent and it would follow him into court.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
We learned from Ramsey Yusef that his intention was by
putting the bomb next to the south wall of the
North Tower, they were hoping that for that tower to
fall and then take the South tower down with it.
Luckily they didn't know this, but those buildings were built
to a standing awful lot.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And as soon as the flight touched down in Manhattan,
Yusuf officially became a defendant in one of the first
major foreign terrorism trials on US oil. He was tried
more than once. His first trial was about Bojinka. Yusuf
represented himself, called the attacks retain alliation, showed no remorse.
(37:03):
He was convicted. Then came the World Trade Center trial.
Prosecutors laid out the ryder Van rental, the fingerprint evidence,
the bomb chemistry, the plan to kill tens of thousands.
Use have never wavered in his defense, but the jury
saw through it and brought back a thunderous conviction. He
(37:24):
is now serving life without parole plus two hundred and
forty years.
Speaker 8 (37:30):
When he was sentenced, the judge let him go on
for hours. When Ramsey use have said, if it takes
us a thousand years, those evil towers of capitalism will
come down, and that put a chill through me. He said,
they're not going to stop, and they didn't. He was
part of the team of terrorists that formulated the concept
of flying the planes in and presented that to Osama
(37:52):
bin Laden.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
But not everyone was caught. Because in that Manila apartment
investigators did just stop a terror plot. They uncovered the
blueprint for something even worse and what would soon materialize.
With that, they found a name Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who
was Ramsey Yusuf's uncle. Mohammad was listed in FBI reports
(38:18):
and discussed in intelligent cables circulated among agencies, and eight
years after that rider truck detonated in the trade center garage,
Mohammed and another group of men took a more direct approach.
They used boarding passes and box cutters and flight simulators.
Speaker 9 (38:38):
Early reports are just coming in now from the wire
service as a small commuter plane apparently hitting the side
of the World Trade Center happened, oh, just a few
minutes ago. But you can see the smoke. The smoke
tower is growing. There is quite a bit of flame
inside the building. The two towers are fur home at
(39:01):
least during the day to upwards of fifty thousand workers.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
This wasn't a new conflict. It was the same one
escalated and this time the towers were brought down.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
It sounds unbelievable to speak the words, but the World
Trade Center is essentially gone, struck by two airplanes, apparently
both of them them hijacked. This is the second plane
that struck the World Trade Center shortly after nine o'clock
Eastern time this morning. An earlier plane left the tower
of smoke in the upper stories of the building on
(39:37):
the right there. So both towers hit by planes. They
burned for a while, and then one at a time
they both collapsed.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
This podcast isn't focused on nine to eleven, and we
won't be covering it in depth, not out of disregard,
but because it's been examined thoroughly and powerfully elsewhere. Still
for this story important for context. We all know how
the story ends. We all remember where we were when
it happened. September eleventh is etched into global memory not
(40:12):
just as a day of unparalleled loss, but as a
hinge point in history. When the towers fell, the skyline changed,
and with it, so did everything else. What followed was
the most aggressive reorientation of US law enforcement priorities in
modern history. That morning reshaped America's response to terrorism. What
(40:37):
began with manhunts and Manila folders in the nineteen nineties
became something far more expansive, a permanent infrastructure, a new doctrine,
and a machine built to stop the next attack before
it starts. But before all that was put in motion,
there was a time when the threat we feared most
(40:59):
wasn't farn at all. It was already here.
Speaker 10 (41:03):
A federal office building in Oklahoma City lies in ruins tonight,
and here's the very latest. At least twenty six people
were killed. That includes twelve children trapped inside a daycare center,
but the death toll is expected to swell because there
were still three hundred people unaccounted for. Rescue teams were
on the scene within minutes, and they were shocked by
what they found. The entire front of the building was
(41:26):
blown away. Victims told harrowing tales of their escape from
the rubble and wondered about those not so lucky.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 6 (41:45):
My wife, she was in the building.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
It was obviously there had been an explosion.
Speaker 7 (41:49):
That had fallen three floors.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Was buried under about ten feet of brubble, upside down,
still in my desk chair.
Speaker 10 (41:56):
Reports say the FBI is putting together pieces of a
truck they think carried the bomb.
Speaker 9 (42:00):
Some parts were found two blocks away.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
I walked into the YMCA and I could see blood
spatter from four feet down.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
Start screaming, we have a live one.
Speaker 9 (42:10):
We have a live one.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
He said, we can't see. We have to follow the
sound of your voice.
Speaker 7 (42:14):
Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is the 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
(42:42):
Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk.
This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazi. Our
researchers are Luke Stantz and Carolyn Tolmage. Editing and sound
designed by Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Original music by
(43:03):
John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post with additional music
by Steve Moore and additional voice over by me Steve Zernkelton.
Special thanks to Fox five in New York for providing
archival material for the show. For more podcasts from My
Heart in Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(43:26):
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):
In the shadows beneath the World Trade Center, the attackers
pulled into the underground garage and stepped out with quiet precision.
They moved quickly, without drawing attention. Their device was already assembled.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Haledda'side is the primary explosive, very sensitive, used in a
detonator to begin that process, functioning magnesium. There were putting
some metal in with their explosives to make it a hotter, faster,
more energetic material.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
The mechanism was crude but carefully built. It didn't need
electronics or circuitry. It only needed to buy them a
head start and delay what was coming just long enough.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
The timing mechanism was a burning link of green hobby fuse.
They kind you'd find on an me eight firecracker that
would burn about twenty seconds per foot inside of a
tigon tubing. It's like clear garden hose, so people wouldn't
see smoke inside of that van if they walked by
the window.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
There was no turning back. The van sacked quietly in
the garage, disguised as ordinary, hiding everything inside. The men
turned and walked away.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
They dropped that van off, and they actually had another
vehicle in there with them that would pick up the
driver and take them out.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
They were almost free, the plan unfolding exactly as they rehearsed,
until they.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Got halfway up the ramp and there was a car
stalled in front of them.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
For a moment, they were trapped. The exit was in sight,
but the path was blocked. Every second felt heavier than
the last.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
They looked at their watches and they figured they didn't
have a lot more time to get out of there.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
The fuse was burning and there was no time to hesitate.
When the stalled car finally moved, they didn't wait. They
hit the gaps.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
They just cleared the ramp when the detonation occurred.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
I got a call get out to the Guardia Airport.
There's been a bombing.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
There was a thirty two foot crater in front of
what was left of the building.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I was trying to figure out, am I dead? Am
I alive?
Speaker 5 (03:01):
Where am I?
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I'm Anisega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
That's why terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
From Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. This is law and
order criminal justice system. On a cold Friday afternoon in
nineteen ninety three, a cargo van packed with explosives tore
through the foundations of the World Trade Center. Terrorists didn't
(03:31):
bring the towers down, but they came close. Six people
were killed, among them a woman and her unborn child.
She was just about to go on maternity leave. More
than a thousand were wounded in the aftermath. There was
pandemonium and grief, but there was also resolve to rebuild
(03:54):
and for accountability, starting with identifying and then tracking down
the responsible for the destruction one by one across oceans,
safe houses and bomb stained garages. Investigators read fragments like fingerprints.
They chased shadows through phone calls and chemical residue. While
(04:17):
smoke was still pouring from the base of the World
Trade Center. A young federal prosecutor at the US Attorney's
office in Lower Manhattan, Gil Childers got a knock on his.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
Door February six, ninety three, the day that bombing took
place at the World Trade Center. Roger came into my office.
He said, you heard about something going on over the
Trade Center. I said, yeah, I heard some sort of
transformer fire or explosion or something. He said, yeah, maybe
the Bureau thinks it might be something else, but whatever
(04:48):
it is, it's yours. So I called over to the Bureau,
made contact and said, look, I'm the guy if you
need anything.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Roger, one of Gill's supervisors at the time, was bringing
him in early. And as you might recall from season one,
Gil was one of the cool headed prosecutors who helped
take down the mob with the Commission case, and now
a few years later, his career path was about to
take another sharp turn.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
That evening, I got a call, said, all right, I'll
come into your office tomorrow morning. Went over to twenty
six Federal Plaza where the FBI was. They said, clearly
was not transformed. There's nothing anywhere near where the explosion
took place that could explode or should explode, and we
think it was a car bomb. All of a sudden,
things got very active.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
But even then Gil had no idea what he was
in for.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
Quite honestly, my thoughts were, Okay, fine, this is my case,
but what are the odds of it ever becoming a
prosecution as opposed to a twenty year investigation and never
getting a body to prosecute. So I thought, it'll just
be something that'll be in the back burner of my
career for however long i'm a prosecutor, but never really
(06:02):
do anything.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Come Monday morning, barely two days later, it was no
longer just a crime. It was a case.
Speaker 5 (06:12):
I spent the next two nights in the FBI sleeping
on a couch, and we ultimately figured out at least
one suspect, and within a few days had search warrants
being executed and an arrest, and within a couple of
days I'm in court doing an arraignment. So it all
(06:32):
happened extremely quickly, which is really the subtext for this
entire case.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And this type of case hadn't exactly been in Gill's wheelhouse.
So at this point, how many cases involving terrorism had
you ever handled?
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Let me think that would be zero.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
I knew that answer a massive bombing was now speeding
toward trial and gil. While an experience, Marian's prosecutor had
never handled a case like this before, yet he was
the one in charge of the case that would redefine
how America responded to terrorism. Just six days after the bombing,
(07:15):
investigators were already hot on the trail of those responsible
for the attack. And it all began with a fragment
of steel pulled from the wreckage. Seventeen characters that would
change everything. A bin number etched into the cargo van
that carried the bomb.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
They traced the van to Ford. Who'd you sell it to?
We saw to the writer rental company, the contact writer.
Where was this truck? It was last rented out of
Jersey City just a few days before the bombing, and
this is the guy who rented the van.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
The name on the contract was listed as Mohammed Salome
and due to a stroke of pure luck, the FBI
didn't have to go far to find him.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
We were looking at Solomon and tracing him and then
we get a call from the writer agency in Jersey
City that says, Hey, the guy that rented that truck
just called and he wants to come back and get
his deposit.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
A sting operation was quickly set in motion.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
They put an FBI agent working the counter so when
he came in, the FBI agent could ask him questions.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Former FBI agent Jim Maxwell remembers what happened next.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
He physically came by the store to pick up his
four hundred dollars deposit and was quickly arrested.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
As a result, it gave investigators exactly what they needed Once.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
We had him arrested. That moved the investigation outward and
gave us more information about exactly who he had been
associating with.
Speaker 6 (08:51):
That one piece of evidence really broke the whole case open.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
By then, the FBI was already analyzing phone records and
surveillance leads. One call was traced to someone within a
major tech company.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
That was Nadal Ayod, who was a chemical engineer for
Allied Signal. Allied Signal it's a huge, huge company, a
big time government defense contractor.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Nidal Ayod was just twenty five years old and had
the resume of a success story.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Iod hardly fits the standard description of someone both deranged
and determined. He graduated with honors from Rutgers in ninety
one with a degree in chemical engineering.
Speaker 5 (09:37):
He was sort of living in the American dream. He
was from Jordan At County, United States. He married a
Jordanian woman that came here. He had just had a
baby and he got mixed up in this.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Agents confirmed his identity, mapped his movements, and planned the
takedown in Maplewood.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Neighbors said they didn't know him, but that Iodd's apartment
was a revolving door faceless people.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
The next week we made the second arrest.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Iad was apprehended in his bedroom. Jim was outside.
Speaker 6 (10:10):
My job was to secure the back door of the
residence and not to let anyone exit. We deployed using
two vans, and the first van was the team that
was going to breach the front door.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Five to seven people perteen each with a task the
objective take ayot alive.
Speaker 6 (10:31):
I made my way down the side of the house.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Once Jim was halfway down the side of the house,
something caught his eye.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
I looked at my right and there was a panel
truck parked in the backyard.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
His heart began to pound.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Going through my mind, I said, well, we're working in
an investigation that has to do with a bomb that
was placed inside a panel truck my running by another
bomb here, but luckily it turned out to be empty,
and one of the male relatives of Vyad was trying
to exit out of the back door, and we took
him temporarily into custody.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
At that moment, with Salome and iodding custody, investigators began
mapping the structure of the broader network film logs, rental records,
and surveillance photos.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
And this started dovetailing into a spider web of individuals
to look at. We started writing search warrants on apartments
pretty much all of which happened to be in Jersey City,
and we started tracing where Salome had lived over the
course of the last year or so. The joint Toewsian
(11:43):
Task Force was then going through all of their surveillance
notes trying to find and he mentioned of Salome and
who he was with or whenever he was seen.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Then came the lead that brought them to the heart
of the operation.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
It was a garage apartment behind a building in Jersey
City where the construction of the bomb actually took place.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
The address was a forty Pamrapo Avenue, a standalone building
turned bomb factory, where agents Jim Maxwell and Dave Williams
found chemical burns on the ceiling, scorched walls, and leftover ingredients,
namely uria nitrate.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Which was in fact the main charge in the explosive device.
Speaker 6 (12:27):
If viviben around that it has a very caustic, nauseous
type smell.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
No one was commercially producing urea nitrate, so this is
one of the.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
First Initially, no one could explain how they got their
hands on it, but investigators soon got their answer.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Followed by the name of Abu Nidal was a chemist
at a place in New Jersey that came from Afghanistan,
was placed in Rutgers University and upon graduation he got
this job at this chemical plant. He ordered the chemicals
that they needed.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Then came the cooks.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Ramsey Yosis had the recipe on how to do it,
and then you had the humps Mohammed Salomi and Mahunabulima,
who were actually doing the mixing.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Inside the apartment, agents saw clear signs of crude chemistry,
stained walls, yellowed newspapers and buckets used for mixing.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
They used newspaper to filter it, and as the nitric
acid filtered through the newspaper turns the newsprint yellow doing
a neighborhood around that Pamerapo address, we find neighbors had
seen this large, red haired fella carrying five gallon pails
of yellowed newspaper out to his taxicab.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
They weren't just making one explosive. They were experimenting for
others too, and getting more savvy by the day.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
They were actually manufacturing their own nitrichlists. In that storage area,
we found one two court glass bottle that was about
half full of liquid nitroglycerine, which the New Jersey State
Police bomb squad took in a total containment vessel to
Liberty Park where they detonated it inside of their containment
(14:19):
vessel and it subsequently cracked their containment vessel, so it
was very energetic.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
They also recovered all the components needed to make a
timed detonation system. The safehouse at Pamrapo Avenue had given
up its secrets, but it was who had been seen
at the apartment that truly strengthened the.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Case, identifying through photographs Ramsey Josef had been in there.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Ramsey Usaf.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
He left that night the evening of the twenty sixth.
Matter of fact, the flight that he left from JFK
was delayed because of the bombing.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
But eventually got off the ground. Within hours of the blast,
Yusuf was in the air on a flight bound for Karachi.
Speaker 7 (15:07):
Ramsey Ahmed Yusef is the focus of an international manhunt.
Investigators described the twenty five year old Iraqi born taxi
driver as a major player in the world traits that
are bombing, and they believe he's left the country.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
We didn't know where he was.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
As investigators scrambled to track Yusuf's movements, another person was
also soon identified as part of the attack. He too
had fled the country.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
We had identified Makmud Abohalima, and he was in Egypt.
He was an Egyptian citizen.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
He proved easier to return.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
We send some feelers out. The Egyptians say we have him.
He gets sent back to the US and he gets arraigned.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
While prosecutors focused on building cases against the men already
in custody, investigators kept pulling threads. That's when they discovered
something that had been sitting under their noses for months,
but no one knew it because it sat in an
evidence locker.
Speaker 5 (16:10):
Akhmud Ajaj, who entered the United States with Ramsey Yusef
in September before the bombing, was detained for a counterfeit
visa from September of ninety two until May of ninety three,
when we decided to arrest him and were looking at
(16:31):
a number of materials that he brought in with him
that included bomb manuals, videos about had a blow up buildings,
all sorts of stuff like this that had been sitting
in i ins custody. But then once the connection was
made that all those materials were looked at and we decided, yeah,
even though he was in custody the entire time, he
(16:53):
was part of the conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Ajaj hadn't taken part in the bombing itself, but the
materials he carried into the country suggested something else. Preparation,
training and intent, and also a connection to usup months
before their van ever builed into Manhattan, the blueprint for
the World Trade Center bomb was now fully mapped.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
At that point we knew those were the folks we
would go to trial with.
Speaker 7 (17:22):
They've all entered not guilty please, and they all remained
in jail, held without.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Bond while federal prosecutors prepped their case Downtown. The World
Trade Center's CEO, Charlie Makish was also executing his own strategy.
His objective wasn't conviction, it was resurrection, and he was
on a tight deadline.
Speaker 8 (17:46):
We had transformers reconstructed that would have taken months, if
not a year. We had that done in three weeks
so that we could power the trade center. We had
a temporary refrigeration plan built within that period of time
and interconnected with pressure fittings with the existing refrigeration system
in the trade center.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Everyone worked on overdrive. Two hundred elevator technicians worked around
the clock rebuilding one hundred elevators and because smoke had
permeated through every square inch of the towers, achieving the
cleanup needed would be nothing short of miraculous. Ten million
square feet of office space had to be scrubbed.
Speaker 8 (18:25):
We used a sponge that later became the miracle sponge.
Mister Clean puts out the dry sponge. The restoration company
used the dry sponge to get the certain smoke off
the walls, and they basically put people in front of
a wall and they told them this is your section
of wall that has to be cleaned tonight. They were remarkable.
They cleaned everything in the trade center.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
The pace was extraordinary.
Speaker 8 (18:51):
Work around the clock. We started at six o'clock in
the morning at a coordination meeting as to what had
been done the night before, decided on what we were going
to focus on for that day to get done, and
then we met again at six o'clock at night to
go over what with the progress was and what the
night shifts were going to do. And then we had
engineering meetings after that to figure out how we were
(19:11):
going to put back the fire alarm communication systems, what
we were going to do in terms of temporary security.
All of those meetings we had between the hours of
eight and midnight, and then you went back to the hotel,
got four to five hours sleeping, came back, and you
did this for three weeks.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
And on March eighteenth, nineteen ninety three, just three weeks
after the blast, the South Tower officially reopened, followed by
the North tower on April first. They'd rebuilt the World
Trade Center with remarkable speed, but even then it was
clear that things would never be the same.
Speaker 8 (19:49):
We actually built a memorial and it was built right
above where the bomb went off. Ellen Zimmerman was the
architect for the memorial, in which the inscription on it
was that below this spot in nineteen ninety three, February
twenty sixth, international terrorism detonated a sixteen hundred pound bomb
which killed seven people, injured thousands, and made victims of
(20:10):
us all.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
And when the reconstruction was complete, there was one more
act of remembrance.
Speaker 8 (20:18):
The Tibetan monks came over. There were four of them,
and they created what was called the sand Mendela, and
it was a beautiful, beautiful picture that they did in sand.
The idea was that that would capture all of the
negative energy in the building. And after they spent months
and months meticulously creating this mandela, they swept it up
(20:40):
into a pile, put it in a container, and they
paraded over to the Hudson River and they deposited in
the Hudson River. And the whole idea was at that
point the negative energy in the Trade Center had been.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Removed, the towers were open again, and just across the river,
justice would have it turn. As the World Trade Center
(21:15):
got back to business, prosecutors were busy getting ready to
take four of the men responsible for the attack to trial.
Mahmud Abu Halima, who helped manufacture the bomb, Mohammed Salome,
the one who rented the rider, Van Nidal Ayad, a
chemical engineer with corporate access to key suppliers, and Ahmed Ajaj,
(21:38):
who entered the country with a suit case full of
bomb manuals. The evidence was powerful, but law enforcement was
still knee deep in prep The case needed more time,
but the trial judge saw things differently.
Speaker 5 (21:53):
The case was in front of Kevin Thomas Duffy in
the Southern District of New York, and the defense to
turn these very wisely said we very much want to
demand a speedy trial, knowing that we were still really
in early stages of doing the investigation that you would
need where you could actually bring a trial.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
The move forced prosecutors to accelerate their timeline. The judge
made it clear delays weren't an option.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
They said, government, talk to your investigators and tell me
what's the absolute earliest you think this case could go
to trial. I want a real number, because if it's inflaated,
I'm just going to cut it in half. By the
end of May, we had decided that the lab work
would probably be back by July, so maybe we could
(22:45):
think of a trial sometime in the fall, and Duffy said, great,
we'll start September, eighth day after Labor Day. I was
hoping more like November maybe, but he said the trial
date never changed.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Just over three months for any felony trial. That's fast,
and for a case of this magnitude, nearly unheard of,
and that meant there would be no downtime for the prosecutors.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
Literally from maybe the second day that I worked on
this in late February until the day of the verdict,
there were two days Thanksgiving and Christmas that we weren't
in the office in that year. And that's it. Sixteen
hour days every day. I lived in New Jersey, I
had an hour commute each way, and I would be
(23:32):
getting home after midnight every night, but I had to
be out of the door by six thirty every morning,
and I had a wife and kid, and I wanted
to try and see a little bit once in a while.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Even with round the clock work, Gil still wasn't sure
exactly what he'd be able to present at trial.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
The day before I delivered the opening statement, I went
through moot a practice of my opening and had had
the leadership of the office listen to it get feedback.
One of the executive assistants in the office said, Gil,
I think it was good, but my general comment is
there's a lack of specificity. I think you need to
(24:14):
go into what your evidence is going to be on
certain things, And I said, I would love to do that,
but I don't know what the evidence is yet.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It was the reality of building a massive federal case
on a wildly compressed timeline.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
It was ludicrous, truthfully.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
But off to trial they went.
Speaker 5 (24:35):
Took about two and a half weeks to pick a
jury and then we opened. Ultimately there'd be two hundred
and seven witnesses called for the government. When I did
that opening, we had spoken to less than half of
the witnesses that we would eventually put on the stand.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
And from personal experience, I'll tell you this, it's nerve
racking for a trial attorney to put a witness on
the stand without knowing what they're going to say. Advance
prep is invaluable when you can get it. It gives
you the roadmap, the strengths, weak spots, when to press forward,
and when to illicit explanation. But when you're forced to
(25:12):
go in cold like Gil was, that's when thinking on
your feet is everything. When Gil stood up to deliver
the opening statement, it was more than the obligatory preview
of the government's case. He also wanted to prepare the
jury for the types of evidence he had and how
many puzzle pieces it would be.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
It was going to be almost an exclusively circumstantial case.
There were going to be thousands of little pieces of
evidence that seemingly didn't do anything on their own, only
when they're tied together, and that's not going to happen
until summation. So I had to prepare the jury for
the fact that you're going to be bored stiff for
(25:55):
weeks at a time as we're putting in little bits
of evidence. I can assure you are important, but you
won't know it when we're putting them.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Then the strategy was to keep their expectations grounded and
to ask them to trust that the many fragments would
eventually reveal its shape. Another hurdle. This attack was unprecedented
and the laws hadn't yet caught up.
Speaker 5 (26:21):
There were no terrorism statutes at the time. The defendants
from ninety three bombing were tried for destruction of a
building used in international commerce by means of explosive.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
The first Major Terrorism Statue didn't enter the law until
nineteen ninety four. After this bombing, Gill and his colleagues
had to use a patchwork of existing laws and repurpose statutes,
statutes that couldn't capture the full scope of the devastation,
but using every law they had at their disposal. The
US government, with Gill at the helm, walked into court
(26:56):
and the trial began, and for the next six months,
the prosecution mapped out the web of connections between the
four defendant standing trial plus the two still at large.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
It was the story of these six individuals working together.
Through a lot of telephone records, were able to demonstrate
that they were calling chemical companies. We didn't know what
the conversations were because these weren't wiretafs. They were calling
around and obviously we could argue looking for places to
buy certain things, and then at the bomb factory we
(27:29):
were able to find packaging and bomb components that would
bear the name of the manufacturer or the place where
they were purchased. They used several pressurized gas canisters as
part of the bomb from a compressed gas supplier called AGL.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Those calls to the gas supplier were made from none
other than the desk of needle iod.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
We also had phone calls to rental car places, including
the writer place in Jersey City, so phone records were
very important as sort of the glue that helped us
piece all this stuff together.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
The case against each defendant wasn't always straightforward.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
The other real challenge was that the case and the
evidence against each of the four defendants was very different.
There were two of the defendants that were never at
the bomb factory the garage apartment where the bombs were made.
They were never there, ever, and these people weren't under
surveillance beforehand.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
The analogy we prosecutors often uses that of a wheel.
Each player is more like the spoke of the wheel.
They are all necessary parts of making the wheel turn.
And besides the obvious significance of this crime, even the
type of case was different than what federal prosecutors most
often work with.
Speaker 5 (28:50):
This was an entirely reactive prosecution, much more like a
typical state case than a federal case, where you do
an investigation, build a case, and bring it down. This
obviously happened with a bomb, and everything else was piecing
it together afterwards.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
And as the evidence came in so did the motive.
Speaker 5 (29:10):
There was a claim of responsibility that was mailed to
the New York Times in a letter saying that the
bombing was carried out because of the US support for
Israel and their policy with respect to Palestine. We were
able to get DNA off the flap of the envelope
and the stamp. One of them came back as a
(29:31):
DNA match to Ayad.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
The case against Abu Halima focused on a detail left behind.
Speaker 5 (29:39):
When we did in search of his apartment in New Jersey,
we found a pair of shoes that had acid burns
and some other chemical residue on one of his shoes.
So between the settings of the car and that shoe,
we were able to tie him to the bomb factory.
There were well over a thousand exhibits, and if you
broke them down component wise, it'd probably three or four
(30:02):
thousand exhibits.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Each was a piece of the puzzle. Placed together, the
full picture came into view. But behind all the exhibits
and evidence tags, at its center, this was a case
about real people.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
So in terms of witnesses that were affected or injured,
we had witnesses who were in the garage. Matter of fact,
two of Our witnesses were Secret Service agents who were
in the garage who were injured, so they were two firs.
They could give a little bit of law enforcement perspective
as well as being actual victims. And we had people
(30:41):
that had come down the stairs. We had people who
were affected not immediately by the blast as opposed to
debris falling from the blast. But most of the testimony
about injuries really came in through first responders.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
The government also called experts like FBI explosive specialist Dave Williams.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
When I started testifying about where and what and how
things were placed, they had the wide open mouth look
the defendants did, how was he watching us do this?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Charlie Makish, the World Trade Center CEO, testify too.
Speaker 8 (31:20):
My role in the trial was to describe the Trade
Center what it stood for, because he had to establish
federal jurisdiction. The fact that it was a center for
international trade and commerce established that federal jurisdiction. And then
I had to describe what the Trade Center was, and
then I had to describe the events of that day
and the bomb.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
As he cited facts about what had happened that day,
the deep toll, it had taken was also clear.
Speaker 8 (31:48):
I told him not to ask me how it affected
me emotionally, and he did and I broke down on
the stand. Afterwards, I said, Gill, you only you weren't
going to do that, and he said, well, Charlie, I
wanted the jury to see it.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
After months of trial, closing arguments and then the court's instruction,
the case was finally given to the jury to deliberate.
It was out of the prosecution's hands and they were
left to wait and wonder what the jury would do.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
Trial lasted just over six months. The verdict came in
actually on the one year anniversary of the first arrest
of Mohammed Salome. The jury was deliberating on the addiversary
of the bombing, just again a reminder of the speed
with which all this happened, and the verdict was all
four defendants on each count, so it was a clean sweep.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
After the convictions were in the court next turned to sentencing.
Speaker 5 (32:42):
Definitely was not available to us for these individuals at
that time. The judge was not allowed to give them life,
so it was important that he actually give a number of.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Years, and the judge found a rather unique way to
quantify what had been lost Judge Duffy.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
He took the six individuals who were killed and looked
at actuarial tables relevant to the six individuals and added
up the years that the tables told them the individuals
would still live, and that total was the number of
years that he gave each of the defendants.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Two hundred and forty years in prison for each defendant.
The sentence was a stark reminder of the two hundred
and forty years taken from the people who'd been killed.
At sentencing, the courtroom heard from the victims' loved ones.
Among them was Ed Smith, who lost his pregnant wife, Monica,
in the blast.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Ed was strong, he was obviously tremendously affected. Not only
lose his wife, but he lost was would have been
his firstborn. It was a boy that had already named him.
He was going to be Eddie Junior. So it was
doubly painful.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
The verdict was a major win. That their work wasn't over.
There were two suspects still out there and investigators were
zeroing in fast. At the nineteen ninety three World Trade
(34:22):
Center trial, four men were convicted, two others were still
at large, Abdul Rama Yacine and the mastermind Ramsey Yusef.
Yusuf slipped out of the country just hours after the blast.
For two years, he stayed one step ahead, vanishing into
the sprawl of Karachi, slipping in and out of Afghanistan.
(34:45):
Then came a break in the Philippines. After a chemical
fire in a Manila apartment, authorities uncovered a laptop belonging
to Yusef, filled with blueprints, airline routes and a plan
to detonate bombs mid air across the Pacific. The plan
was called Ojinka, and buried within its files was another
(35:06):
concept hijacked planes crashed them into American landmarks. Yusuf's name
was now tied not just to New York, but to
a global conspiracy. February seventh, nineteen ninety five, a tip
came in. US officials and Pakistani police converged on a
(35:26):
modest guesthouse. Inside they found forged passports, explosive residue, blueprints
for bombs, and Ramsey Yusuf asleep. The apprehension was swift,
and within hours he was in US custody on a
one way flight back to New York, delivered to the
(35:47):
very city he had tried to destroy.
Speaker 5 (35:50):
The plane some multary aircraft that landed up the Newburgh
at the air base at the time, and then he
was brought by helicopter to Manhattan and they circled the
Trade Center with it. And when the agency's rhythm said,
see they're still standing, and he said they wouldn't have
been if I had more money.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
That chilling remark was more than bravado. It was a
glimpse into Yusuf's intent and it would follow him into court.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
We learned from Ramsey Yusef that his intention was by
putting the bomb next to the south wall of the
North Tower, they were hoping that for that tower to
fall and then take the South tower down with it.
Luckily they didn't know this, but those buildings were built
to a standing awful lot.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And as soon as the flight touched down in Manhattan,
Yusuf officially became a defendant in one of the first
major foreign terrorism trials on US oil. He was tried
more than once. His first trial was about Bojinka. Yusuf
represented himself, called the attacks retain alliation, showed no remorse.
(37:03):
He was convicted. Then came the World Trade Center trial.
Prosecutors laid out the ryder Van rental, the fingerprint evidence,
the bomb chemistry, the plan to kill tens of thousands.
Use have never wavered in his defense, but the jury
saw through it and brought back a thunderous conviction. He
(37:24):
is now serving life without parole plus two hundred and
forty years.
Speaker 8 (37:30):
When he was sentenced, the judge let him go on
for hours. When Ramsey use have said, if it takes
us a thousand years, those evil towers of capitalism will
come down, and that put a chill through me. He said,
they're not going to stop, and they didn't. He was
part of the team of terrorists that formulated the concept
of flying the planes in and presented that to Osama
(37:52):
bin Laden.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
But not everyone was caught. Because in that Manila apartment
investigators did just stop a terror plot. They uncovered the
blueprint for something even worse and what would soon materialize.
With that, they found a name Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who
was Ramsey Yusuf's uncle. Mohammad was listed in FBI reports
(38:18):
and discussed in intelligent cables circulated among agencies, and eight
years after that rider truck detonated in the trade center garage,
Mohammed and another group of men took a more direct approach.
They used boarding passes and box cutters and flight simulators.
Speaker 9 (38:38):
Early reports are just coming in now from the wire
service as a small commuter plane apparently hitting the side
of the World Trade Center happened, oh, just a few
minutes ago. But you can see the smoke. The smoke
tower is growing. There is quite a bit of flame
inside the building. The two towers are fur home at
(39:01):
least during the day to upwards of fifty thousand workers.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
This wasn't a new conflict. It was the same one
escalated and this time the towers were brought down.
Speaker 9 (39:15):
It sounds unbelievable to speak the words, but the World
Trade Center is essentially gone, struck by two airplanes, apparently
both of them them hijacked. This is the second plane
that struck the World Trade Center shortly after nine o'clock
Eastern time this morning. An earlier plane left the tower
of smoke in the upper stories of the building on
(39:37):
the right there. So both towers hit by planes. They
burned for a while, and then one at a time
they both collapsed.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
This podcast isn't focused on nine to eleven, and we
won't be covering it in depth, not out of disregard,
but because it's been examined thoroughly and powerfully elsewhere. Still
for this story important for context. We all know how
the story ends. We all remember where we were when
it happened. September eleventh is etched into global memory not
(40:12):
just as a day of unparalleled loss, but as a
hinge point in history. When the towers fell, the skyline changed,
and with it, so did everything else. What followed was
the most aggressive reorientation of US law enforcement priorities in
modern history. That morning reshaped America's response to terrorism. What
(40:37):
began with manhunts and Manila folders in the nineteen nineties
became something far more expansive, a permanent infrastructure, a new doctrine,
and a machine built to stop the next attack before
it starts. But before all that was put in motion,
there was a time when the threat we feared most
(40:59):
wasn't farn at all. It was already here.
Speaker 10 (41:03):
A federal office building in Oklahoma City lies in ruins tonight,
and here's the very latest. At least twenty six people
were killed. That includes twelve children trapped inside a daycare center,
but the death toll is expected to swell because there
were still three hundred people unaccounted for. Rescue teams were
on the scene within minutes, and they were shocked by
what they found. The entire front of the building was
(41:26):
blown away. Victims told harrowing tales of their escape from
the rubble and wondered about those not so lucky.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Next time on Law and Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 6 (41:45):
My wife, she was in the building.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
It was obviously there had been an explosion.
Speaker 7 (41:49):
That had fallen three floors.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Was buried under about ten feet of brubble, upside down,
still in my desk chair.
Speaker 10 (41:56):
Reports say the FBI is putting together pieces of a
truck they think carried the bomb.
Speaker 9 (42:00):
Some parts were found two blocks away.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
I walked into the YMCA and I could see blood
spatter from four feet down.
Speaker 7 (42:08):
Start screaming, we have a live one.
Speaker 9 (42:10):
We have a live one.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
He said, we can't see. We have to follow the
sound of your voice.
Speaker 7 (42:14):
Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is the 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
(42:42):
Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk.
This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazi. Our
researchers are Luke Stantz and Carolyn Tolmage. Editing and sound
designed by Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Original music by
(43:03):
John O'Hara, original theme by Mike Post with additional music
by Steve Moore and additional voice over by me Steve Zernkelton.
Special thanks to Fox five in New York for providing
archival material for the show. For more podcasts from My
Heart in Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(43:26):
or wherever you get your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
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