By Scott Longman
Here are two truths: One, unlike the popular perception that most terrorists are masterminds, they are often blithering morons. Two, at least some special agents in the FBI actually have a wicked sense of humor. Those two notions came together in are-you-kidding-me comic fashion in the aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center truck bombing.
As a short refresher: eight years before 9/11, a brutal terrorist named Ramzi Yousef mounted an attack at one of the twin towers. He had one of his ultra-low-watt minions, a Palestinian named Mohammed Salameh, rent a Ford Econoline from a Ryder agency in Jersey City, which he did, giving both his true name and true address. They made him the driver even though he had failed his driving test four times, had recently put Yousef in the hospital by driving off the road, and then got into another wreck with his rental car.
Yousef had been trained in Pakistan in IED making. Based on what chemicals he could get his hands on stateside, he opted for a main charge of Urea Nitrate Fuel Oil [UNFO]—not to be confused with ANFO—which he boosted with four tanks of pressurized hydrogen. To get the reaction going, he chose unstable liquid nitroglycerin to be set off with some blasting caps, despite the reality that you can get that stuff to go by simply glaring at it. The device had a yield equivalent of about 800 pounds of TNT, which at the time would be the largest IED ever detonated in the U.S.
They parked the van in the WTC’s parking garage B2 level in the north tower, with the intent of making it fall into the south tower. The IED blew horrifically. The blast punched through four stories of heavily reinforced concrete, with a hole 200 feet long and 125 feet wide. Tragically, it killed six and injured more than 1,000. Had Yousef been competent in the positioning of the van, he just might have taken down the tower.
The number of other truly moronic moments leading up to the bombing are too extensive to address here. But the real pièce de résistance came after the bombing.
Ridiculous but true, not all the terrorists had enough money to get out of the country. A few did, but others were stuck in the US, including Salameh—not planning for escape defies comprehension. Well, Salameh didn’t think of, say, going to ground and offering his busboy services to some restaurants for cash until he had scrounged a few hundred bucks for a plane ticket.
Nope. Instead, he hit upon the simply capital idea that … he would go back and get the deposit for the Ryder truck they had used in the bombing—without the actual truck.
In one adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel, a character opined: “Your plan? It is foolhardy, redolent of danger, and doomed to failure. Other than that, I can find no fault with it.”
Salameh was apparently not a Dickens guy.
Along about then, at the WTC, a couple of enterprising NYPD officers made a decision. Normally, a major crime scene would be meticulously documented and processed, but that takes a lot of time. They spotted a twisted piece of metal in the crater, which upon examination, had a Confidential Vehicle Identification Number on it. It’s like a VIN, but encoded. They ran the numbers, which led them to the Ryder outfit, and they immediately learned that Salameh had rented the van. Ultra-clever fellow that Salameh was, he’d also reported it stolen.
When Salameh called the rental agency about returning his deposit, the Bureau devised a plan. They had hidden, heavily armed agents in numbers sufficient to influence the next congressional redistricting. That included everyone behind the rental counter, now dressed as Ryder employees, with very nice ties.
The lead contact was Special Agent Bill Atkinson. We have to give the man this: he had a sense of humor. In a sheer “how-often-in-a-lifetime-will-I-have-this-chance” bit of thinking, he didn’t just hand Salameh his deposit and let him get wrapped up outside by the equivalent of the Fourth Infantry Division.
Nope. Instead, he pulled the ultimate troll. He negotiated.
Hilariously, Salameh was indignant. The audio shows that he uttered, among a great many other quotes:
To a lowball offer: “This is not justice.”
Better yet: “I’m, ah, honest.”
Too long to detail here, but Atkinson trolled him for every dollar.
In his pinnacle Kabuki moment, he granted Salameh an extra $15 for the fictional gas he’d put in the non-existent truck.
The massive force waiting outside got so annoyed by all this that they actually called the phone at the rental counter. Response? “Oh, we’ll be right out.”
As Salameh left, it suddenly looked like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, except the birds all had raid jackets and were packing submachineguns.
Dumbass terrorist meets troll special agent.
Perfect.
