Transition period

                                                  
After the Geneva Conference of 1954 Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel and under the Geneva Accords all civilians were to be given the oportunity to move freely between North and South Vietnam for a 300 day period. Elections throughout Vietnam were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government for the country. There was around 1 million northeners, maily minority Catholics that fled south because of the fear of persecution by the communists in North Vietnam, following an American propoganda campaign  that was using slogans like "The Virgin Mary is heading south" and aided by a United States funded $93 million relocation program that included ferrying refugees from the north with the Seventh Fleet. It has been estimated that as many as 2 million more would have left North Vietnam if they had not been stoped by the Viet Minh. The northern mostly Catholic refugees were supposed to give the later Ngô Đình Diệm regime a strong anti communist body of voters. Diệm later went on to fill his administrations key posts with mostly northern and central Catholics, Diệm was also a Catholic himself.

As well as the Catholics flowing south up to 130,000 "Revolutionary Regroupees" went to North Vietnam for "regroupment", they expected to return to South Vietnam within two years. The Viet Minh left about 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in the South as a "politico-military substructure within the object of its irredentism". The last French soldiers were to leave Vietnam in April 1956 and the PRC compleated its withdrawl of soldiers from North Vietnam at around the same time. Around 52,000 vietamese civilians moved from the South to the North.

In the North of Vietnam the Viet Minh ruled as the Democratic Republic of Vietmam, they engaged in a drastic land reform program in wich 100,000 percieved "class enemies" were executed. Some estimates from people range from 200,000 to 900,000 deaths from things like executions, camps, and famine. leaders in Hanoi admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program so they restored a large amount of land to the original owners in 1956.

The South of Vietnam meanwhile constituted the State of Vietnam with Bảo Đại who was the last emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty as Emperor and Ngô Đình Diệm as his Prime Minister. In June 1955, Diem announced that the scheduled 1956 elections would not be held, he claimed that South Vietnam had rejected the Geneva Accords from the start and was therefore not bound by them. He asked  "How can we expect 'free elections' to be held in the Communist North?". United States president Eisenhower agreed with senior U.S. experts when he wrote than in 1954 "80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh over Emperor Bảo Đại".

In 1955 from April to June Diem (against U.S. advice) eliminated any political oposition to him in the south by launching military operations against the religious sect Cao Dai, the Hoa Hao sect of Ba Cut and the Binh Xuyen organised crime group. As broard-based oposition to what people considerd his harsh tactics grew grater, Diem increasingly sought to blame the communists.

On the 23rd of October 1955 there was a referendum on the future of the state of Vietnam, Diem rigged the poll that was supervised by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, he was credited with 98.2% of the vote, this included 133% in Saigon. Three days later on 26th of October 1955 Diem declared South Vietnam to be an independent state known as the Republic of Vietnam (ROV) with himself as president.

Exit of the French, 1950-1954

                      

During January 1950 the communist countries who were led by the People's Republic of China (PRC) recognised the Viet Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam)  based in the city of Hanoi as the rightful government of Vietnam and the non-communist countries recognised the French backed State of Vietnam led by the former Emperor of Vietnam Bảo Đại based in the city of Saigon now called Ho Chi Minh City as the rightful government of Vietnam the following month, because of the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 Washington policy makers were convinced that the war that was currently going on in Indochina was an example of communist expansionism directed by the Kremlin in the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). Military advisor's from the People's Republic of China started assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950, because of the PRC weapons, expertise and labourers the Viet Minh were transformed from a guerilla force into a regular army. And in September that year the United States created a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy and to train Vietnamese soldiers, by 1954 the United States had supplied the French with 300,000 small arms and had spent $1 billion U.S.  in support of the French military effort in Indochina, this was 80% of the cost of the war. There had also been talks between the French and the Americans about the possible use of three tactical nuclear weapons, one version of this plan was called Operation Vulture which envisioned sending 60 Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bombers from the U.S. bases that were in that region, these bombers were to be supported by 150 fighters launched from U.S. Seventh Fleet carriers, the B-29's were to bomb Viet Minh commander Võ Nguyên Giáp's positions, Admiral Arthur William Radford who was the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff gave this nuclear option his backing. During the negotiations U.S. aircraft carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin and reconnaissance flights were conducted over Dien Bien Phu. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made American support contingent on British support, but London was against such a venture. Eventually Eisenhower got convinced that the political risks outweighed the possible benefits of intervening so he decided against it.

The Soviet Union as well as the PRC gave crucial support to the Viet Minh. Support from the PRC in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed suplies from them to come from them into Vietnam, through out the conflict U.S. intelligence estimates remained doubtful of French chances of success. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of France's involvement in Indochina (Vietnam), Vo Nguyen Giap's Viet Minh gave the French a stunning military defeat and on the 7th of May 1954 the French Union garrison surrendered to them. Out of the 12,000 prisoners taken by the Viet Minh only 3,000 survived. The French negotiated a ceasfire agreement with the Viet Minh at the Geneva Conference (1954), and as a result independance from the French Union was granted to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

The Vietnam War

                          
The Vietnam War was a military conflict that started on the 1st of November 1955 and ended on the 30th of April 1975, and on the Anti Communist side was South Vietnam, the United States of America, South Korea, Australia, Philippines, New Zealand, Thailand, the Khmer Republic, the Kingdom of Laos and they were supported by Spain and Taiwan. On the Communist side was North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge, the Pathet Lao and they were supported by the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Czechoslovakia, Cuba and Bulgaria. The United states government saw involvement in the war as a way to stop a communist takeover  of South Vietnam which was democratic and not communist, the government of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong saw it as a colonial war against the French who were backed by the United States and later against South Vietnam which they thought was a puppet state of the U.S. ,  the United States sent military advisor's to what was French Indochina in 1950 and then American troop levels tripled in 1961 and again in 196, then in 1965  U.S. combat units were deployed. Operations during the war were not limited to just North and South Vietnam some spanned international borders with Laos and Cambodia, both countries were heavily bombed. After a peak of American involvement in the Vietnam War in 1968 at the time of the famous Tet Offensive, the American ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a United States government policy known as Vietnamization. Fighting continued despite the fact that all parties had signed the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. As a result of the Case–Church Amendment that was passed by the U.S. Congress U.S. military involvement ended on the 15th of August 1973.The war ended with the Fall of Saigon which is now called Ho Chi Minh City, the following year North and South Vietnam were reunified, it has been estimated by people that fewer than one million to more than three million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died during the war, it has also been estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 Cambodians died, 20,000 to 200,000 Laotians died and about 58,220 U.S. military personnel died along with 303,644 more wounded  during the war

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.

Investigations of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

 
Eventhough the cause of the explosion was not originaly known and with some people suspecting that a main transformer had blown, agents as well as bomb technicians from the ATF, FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and the NYPD (New York City Police Department) all quickly responded to the scene of the explosion. Days after the explosion investigators started serveying the damage and looking for clues about what happened and who did it. A bomb technician found some internal component fragments from the vechicle that had delivered the 590kg (1,310-pound) bomb while combing through the public car park underneath the World Trade center, investigators also found a vechicle identification number (VIN) which was found on a piece of axle from the van, this was the crucial infomation that led them to a Ryder truck rental outlet in Jersey City. It was determind that the vechicle had been rented by Mohammad Salameh who was one of Ramzi Yousef's co-conspirators. The vechicle was reported stolen by Salameh who then returned on the 4th of March 1993 to get his deposit back, this was when he was arrested by the authorities. His arrest led police to the apartment of Abdul Rahman Yasin in Jersey City, New Jersey which Yasin was sharing with his mother, his apartment was in the same building as Ramzi Yousef's. Later Yasin was taken by the FBI to their Newark field office in Newark, New Jersey, he was then released. He flew back to Iraq, via Amman, Jordan. later on Yasin was indicated for the attack and in 2001 he was placed on the initial list of the FBI most wanted terrorists, he still remains on this list even in 2012.It was because of the capture of Salameh and Yasin that authorities found Ramzi Yousefs apartment in which they found bomb-making materials and a business card from Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. Khalifa was arrested on the 14th of December 1994 and was then deported to Jordan by the INS on May 5, 1995. In 2002 it was made public that Yasin who was the only person involving the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 who had never been caught by U.S. authorites, was being held as a prisoner on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq , he had been there since 1994. After being interviewed by Journalest Leslie Stahl for a segment on the TV program 60 minutes on the 23rd of May 2002 Yasin was never heard from again.

The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

    
Ramzi Yousef and his friend Eyad Ismoil from Jordan drove a yellow Ryder van that they had hired into Lower Manhattan and pulled into the public car park beneath the World Trade Center at around noon on February 26th. Yousef and Ismoil got out of the van and then Yousef lit the 20 foot fuse of the bomb and fled. Twelve minutes later at 12:17 pm the bomb exploded in the public car park beneath the World Trade Center, it opened up a 30 meter wide whole through four sublevels of concreate and initial news reports thought that a main transformer had blown. Some of the effects of the explosion was that it cut off the World Trade Centers main electrical power line wich then knocked out the emergency lighting system as well, as a result of the explosion it caused smoke to rise up to the 93rd floors of both the North and South towers of the World Trade Center, this included the stairwells as well because they had not been pressurized when the buildings had been bilt. Hundreds of people got trapped in elevators when the buildings lost power including 17 kindergartners who were on their way down from the South Tower observation deck, they were trapped between the 35th and 36th floors for five hours. All together 1042 people were injured and six people were killed, they were 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. Yousef's plan was to park the van in the right place  so that when the bomb exploded  the North tower would fall on to the South tower collapsing them both, but his plan failed because it only damaged the car park underneath the World Trade Center. It is thought that if Yousef had parked the van closer to the WTC's poured concrete foundations his plan might have succeeded, Ramzi Yousef escaped to Pakistan several hours after the bomb exploded. Yousef's fellow conspirator Mahmud Abouhalima later stated that their original plan was to attack the United Nations headquarters earlier in the morning, Author Simon Reeve theorized that something must have gone wrong such as Yousef encountering to much security so then the target was changed to the World Trade Center.

Planning of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

    
Ramzi Yousef who was born as Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim in Kuwait spent time at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before starting to plan a bombing attack within the United States of America in 1991. His uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed who is now considered the principal architect of the September 11 attacks in 2001 gave him advice and tips about making the bomb over the phone, his uncle also funded him with a $1,400 wire transfer. On September 1st 1992 Ramzi Yousef arrived illegally in the United States with his co conspirator Ahmed Ajaj from Pakistan. Ajaj tried to enter the country with a fake swedish passport but failed because it had been altered and when officials at John F. Kennedy International Airport put Ajaj through secondary inspection  they found bomb making instructions and other materials in his luggage, after that they arrested him. Yousef tried to enter with a fake Iraqi passport and tried to claim political asylum, he was allowed into the United States but was given a hearing date. Yousef set up residence on Nicole Pickett Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey after that he traveled arround New York and New Jersey, then called a a blind Sheikh called Omar Abdel Rahman via cellphone. After being introduced to his fellow conspirators by Abdel Rahman at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn New York hec stated making the 680kg urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced bomb that he would use to attack the North Tower in the hope of nocking over the South Tower killing thousands of people.

Ramzi Yousef's view of the Attack

Steve Coll a journalest said that Ramzi Yousef had mailed letters to various New York newspapers right before his attack on the world trade center, in the letter he said he was a belonged to 'Liberation Army, Fifth Battalion', he made three demands in these letters: an end to all US aid to Israel, an end to US diplomatic relations with Israel, and a pledge by the United States to end interference "with any of the Middle East countries' interior affairs." Yousef said that if his demands were not met the attack on the World Trade Center would just be the first of such attacks, he tried to justifie the attack by saying "the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one."