Fred Burton: Hi, I'm Fred Burton and I'm joined today via Skype with my colleague Scott Stewart to discuss the anniversary of the first World Trade Center bombing. Scott, this is a case that you and I know very well having worked the original 1993 attack. What are your recollections of the bombing.

Scott Stewart: Well the bombing itself, I guess one of the things that shocked me was the magnitude of the device. I mean it was a very large device. Some 1300; it caused a massive amount of damage to the basement of the trade center. But despite the size of the device, it only killed six people, and I always thought that that was fairly miraculous.

Fred: And I know as we looked into the case, you have to go back and also think about the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane and the suspect that killed him as it was connected to the World Trade Center attack.

Scott: Yea that was an interesting thing. After you know the suspects were identified things came into focus very quickly for us, including us in a diplomatic security services plus the FBI, because there had already been an investigation into these people. You know we ran a lot of the leads for the Manhattan district attorney's office in the Kahane killing, and of course the FBI was looking at this group as they were supporting Nosair, the Kahane shooter, and they had actually had an informant in the group. So once we got Mohammed Salameh identified as the guy who rented the truck, things kind of closed in pretty quickly, and we pretty much knew who these guys were. At that same time, though, it was really interesting to see how the trade center bombing really fit into the timeline of all those other attacks. You know with the Kahane killing, you had the trade center bombing, and then the follow-on attack, the landmarks plot.

Fred: And I know we traced the weapon used to kill Rabbi Meir Kahane to the Egyptian army, which was a Smith and Weston, if my memory serves me right, which we had actually sold to the Egyptians, which was kind of a fascinating twist. And then the follow-on landmark plots. Why don't you go over that for our viewers, as to some of the attacks that Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Sheikh, and the Ramzi Yousef cell had put together.

Scott: Yea, basically what they were looking at was trying to hit a bunch of targets. They would not have had the ability to hit them all. So they were kind of trying to figure out what they wanted to hit. They were talking about maybe hitting the U.N. headquarters, the Javits federal building, which was where our office was in New York plus the FBI field office. They were also looking at hitting the Holland and Linclon tunnels. But really they were more aspirational in that aspect. They couldn't hit them all. You know they would have selected one or two targets out of that whole list. But it was enough in the plotting to get them convicted on seditious conspiracy charges eventually.

Fred: Without a doubt it really opened our eyes to the level of sophistication at times that these groups go to and certainly caused us to rethink how we go about looking for terrorist pre-operational surveillance. And I know that if you fast forward, the State Department Regional Security Officer in Islamabad, Pakistan and the special agents there would ultimately capture Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind in the first World Trade Center bombing, and we in DS had offered a $2 million reward at the time for his capture so it was very nice to see some degree of closure with that.

Scott: Yea, that was nice to be able to have him captured and brought back to stand trial you know. Having that kind of justice does give a finality to at least that portion of the case. Of course Yasin is… we don't know whatever happened to him. The rumor is that he was killed after the U.S. invaded Iraq so we still have one of the suspects at large as of today. But it's kind of doubtful that he's still alive.

Fred: Well I appreciate you sharing your recollections of the anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing. That’s all we have time for. For those of you interested in more information surrounding that, please feel free to visit www.stratfor.com