World Trade Center leaders apologize
After 25 years, ‘precursor to 9/11 still haunts New York memories
The apology came on the 25th anniversary of the bombing, for which they were unprepared.
NEW YORK — The World Trade Center’s operators apologized Monday to relatives of people killed in the 1993 bombing there, saying the country was unprepared for a terror attack that foreshadowed 9/11. The families urged people to understand its legacy.
Victims’ families, survivors, first responders and others marked the bombing’s 25th anniversary on what is now the Sept. 11 memorial plaza. They observed a silent moment, read victims’ names, laid roses on the memorial and reflected on an explosion that became a telling signal of terrorists’ aims.
“We were not ready for what visited us that day. Americans were not ready for what visited them that day,” said Kevin O’Toole, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the trade center. “And for that, I say: I’m sorry. And we are sorry.”
The anniversary ceremony and a memorial Mass at a nearby church have been held year after year, but the quarter-century mark brought renewed attention. It’s “long overdue” to Judy Shirtz, sister-in-law of victim Stephen Knapp. She feels the loss of families like hers has largely been forgotten amid the far greater toll of 9/11.
“It happened to us first. It shouldn’t have happened again, and it did,” she said.
In a room in the 9/11 museum, there are a police captain’s poignant notes and a flashlight that illuminated the way to safety. Nearby, a letter from a trapped man tells his family, “I love you very much. Do wonderful things in your life.”
The artifacts are reminders of a terror attack that foreshadowed the deadly World Trade Center bombing.
That shadow fell personally on Lolita Jackson. As a young finance worker, she picked her way down 72 flights of blacked-out stairs on Feb. 26, 1993, and fled the trade center’s south tower again in 2001.
The bombing “tends to be forgotten because 9/11 was such a cataclysmic event,” she says, but the blast has its own place in the lives and memories of an estimated 50,000 people who were in the twin towers that snowy afternoon.
The explosion killed six people, injured more than 1,000, manifested the growing terror threat from Islamic extremism and led to safety improvements credited with helping some people survive Sept. 11.
It “was, in many respects, a precursor to 9/11,” says museum President Alice Greenwald.
A bomb rented van exploded in a in a basement parking garage shortly after noon, causing a crater several stories deep and a boom felt many floors above.
The blast killed visitor John DiGiovanni and five people who worked at the trade center — Robert Kirkpatrick, Stephen Knapp, William Macko, Wilfredo Mercado and Monica Rodriguez Smith. Smith was pregnant.
Power was knocked out and pipes were severed, flooding backup generators. Elevators got stuck. A group of kindergartners was stranded for hours on an observation deck. Other people were trapped in the debris-filled garage. Police helicopters plucked nearly two dozen people, some disabled, from rooftops.
Some office workers broke out windows to try to clear smoke while awaiting help. Others made their way down, emerging coated in soot.
Jackson didn’t feel fearful at first. What was terrifying was the 2 trek down the pitch-dark, crowded, smoky stairs, wondering what she would see at the bottom.
“You didn’t know what was going to happen,” recalls Jackson, who now works in city government.
Within days, a fragment of the rented van began leading investigators to Muslim extremists who sought to punish the United States for its Middle East policies, especially its aid to Israel, according to prosecutors.
Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White “saw red lights blinking everywhere about how serious I thought this threat was from international terrorists,” she told an audience Thursday at the museum.
Indeed, a letter found on an accused bombing conspirator’s laptop made it chillingly clear the threat wasn’t over.
“Unfortunately, our calculations were not very accurate this time. However, we promise you that next time it will be very precise and the World Trade Center will continue to be one of our targets,” it said.
Six bombing suspects were convicted and sentenced. A seventh suspect, Abdul Rahman Yasin, remains at large and is on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists.