Customer Reviews

1993 Wld Trade Ctr Bombing(gd) (Great Disasters: Reforms and Ramifications)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book minimizes the role of Emad Salem, the FBI's 'informant', really their agent provacateur.

Google "Emad Salem, bomb, World Trade Center, Kunstler" to find the New York Times article of 28 October, 1993. Front page, written by Ralph Blumenthal. There were articles describing follow-up investigative reporting in the Boston Globe and Denver Post. These included interviews with Salem's FBI handlers, who didn't have a good explanation for events.

Emad Salem, being a well-trained Middle-Eastern conspirator, not only recorded his conversations with his co-conspirators, he recorded also his conversations with his FBI handlers. Kunstler found out about these transcripts, forced them into the trial record.

These transcripts have Salem saying things like "I spend all of the money on the bomb". (He always wanted more money.) And "I can use an inert powder so it won't explode". (The FBI didn't want that.)

I read (from memory here) that the FBI paid Salem $1M before the bombing, kept him in "protective custody" before and during the trial, and paid him another large sum after the trial.

The "the FBI found the VIN number and followed the trail" story is entirely bogus. The story that Shields repeats that the FBI cut off contact with Salem before WTC bomb plot is entirely bogus.

This was an FBI operation from the beginning to the end. They knew every detail of the conspirator's plans, allowed the bomb to explode. Immediately thereafter, Congress passed a bill which increased the FBI's power and budget.

Anyone who follows the FBI knows that it is a very top-down-controlled organization. I read later that the head of the NY office was promoted to a post in DC, so the organization thinks he did fine.

Charles J. Schields publishes a lot of books. Can't comment on the quality of the others, but his research here was very poor. More likely, he loaned his name to someone in the federal government. There are sections of the book that read like they were written by a bureaucrat, not a writer.

BTW: There is less evidence. because German intelligence majors aren't as good at conspiracy and so don't record conversations with gov handlers, but the OKC story is much the same. The agent provacateur there was Andy Strassmeier. The FBI had numerous informants inside the group at Elohim City, including the head of the group. The ATF had at least one. The ATF's agent told them that Strassmeier was leading McVeigh on recons of federal buildings. Lots of evidence that that bomb wasn't a surprise to the government.

Also, it is significant that nobody knows about that front-page article in the NYTimes. It has disappeared from public consciousness. Makes you wonder about our 'free press'.