Aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

  
Memorial

The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing claimed the following victims: Monica Smith age 35, Robert (Bob) Kirkpatrick, age 61, Bill Macko, age 47, Stephen Knapp, age 48, John DiGiovanni, age 45 and Wilfredo Mercado, age 37. A granite memorial fountain was set up honoring the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, it was designed by Elyn Zimmerman and it was dedicated in 1995 on Austin J. Tobin Plaza, this was directly above the site of the explosion in 1993, it had on it the six names of the victims as well as an inscription that read "On February 26, 1993, a bomb set by terrorists exploded below this site. This horrible act of violence killed innocent people, injured thousands, and made victims of us all." unfortunately the fountain was destroyed  with the rest of the World Trade Center during the September 11 2001 attacks eight years later, they did recover a fragment of the fountain which said "John D", this was John DiGiovanni, it was later incorperated into a temporary memorial that was designed by architect Jacqueline Hanley from the Port Authority erected on the Liberty Street side of the site following the September 11 2001 attacks. This memorial was visible across a fence barrier but was not open to the public. The six victims of the bombing in 1993 were later memorialized on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 2001 attacks at the North Pool, on Panel N-73 of the National 9/11 Memorial.

FBI Involvement
During the trial for the attacks it was revealed by the FBI that they had an informant who was a former Egyptian Army officer called Emad Salem. Salem claims that he had informed the FBI of the plot as early as the 6th of February, 1992. He initially believed that it was going to be a sting operation and claimed that the FBI's original plan was for him to to supply Ramzi Yousef and his fellow conspirators with a harmless powder instead of actual explosive to build their bomb, but that the FBI decided to use him for other purposes instead. Salem also secretly recorded hundreds of hours of phone conversations with his FBI handelers.

U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) involvement

Diplomatic Security Service special agents actually found and arrested Ramzi Yousef eventhough the FBI received all the credit for it. Special agents Bill Miller and Jeff Riner were given a tip by one of Yousef's associates about his location. They arrested Yousef in coordination with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). As a result of this happening the New York Port Authority was to govern as the main security for the World Trade Center buildings, all packages were to be scanned at the various checkpoints and then sent up to the proper address. After Ramzi Yousef got arrested it is alleged that he said to investigators "this is only the beginning."

Allegations of Iraqi involvement

In October 2001 in a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) interview,former CIA Director James Woolsey claimed that Ramzi Yousef had been working for Iraqi intelligence, he also suggested that the grand jury investigation had turned up evidence that pointed to Iraq that the Justice department just brushed aside. Neil Herman who had headed the FBI investigation noted that and said "The one glaring connection that can't be overlooked is Yasin. We pursued that on every level, traced him to a relative and a location, and we made overtures to get him back." however he also said that Abdul Rahman Yasin's presence in Baghdad  did not mean that Iraq had sponsored the attack, Herman said "We looked at that rather extensively. There were no ties to the Iraqi government." Peter L. Bergen a CNN terrorism analyst wrote "In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack."

Claims of direct Iraqi involvement also came from Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute, these claims were rejected by other exsperts. Peter Bergen has called her a "crackpot"  who also claimed that "Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself." Daniel Benjamin who was a a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that "The most knowledgeable analysts and investigators at the CIA and at the FBI believe that their work conclusively disproves Mylroie's claims." Dr. Robert Leiken from the Nixon Center commented on the lack of evidence that was in her work, he said "Laurie has discovered Saddam's hand in every major attack on US interests since the Persian Gulf War, including U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and even the federal building in Oklahoma City. These allegations have all been definitively refuted by the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and other investigatory bodies...."

In March 2008 the Pentagon released its study of 600,000 documents that were captured in Iraq  after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Pentagons study found no direct connection between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda Mylroie denied that this was proof of Saddam not being involved, she claimed that "one common purpose of such meetings was to develop cover stories for whatever Iraq sought to conceal."

Improved security

Since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the chaotic evacuation which followed it, the World Trade Center and many of the companies inside revamped their emergency procedures, especially with regard to the evacuation of the North and South Towers of the WTC, these policies helped play a role in the evacuation of the buildings during the September 11 2001 attacks which destroyed bothe the North and South towers of the World Trade Center. Also a new Siemens MXL fire alarm system was installed to replace the old outdated one.