World Trade Center Bombing In February example essay topic
453 words
The World Trade Center bombing in February, 1993, became a landmark in the new wave of terrorism, with civilians involved into the tragedy. The World Trade Center served as the target of the bombing. As a result of the terrorist act, six people were killed and more than thousand were injured. But taking into account the fact, that there used to be about 20,000 people usually working at the Center simultaneously, and more than 80,000 people visited or traveled along the complex, the consequences could have been much more serious. (U.S. Senate, 1998) The WTC was the intentional choice of terrorists, because it has always served as the symbol of the American financial power. But the choice was not based only on this fact. The thing is that terrorists believed they could explode the whole building, through getting beneath it, into a large underground garage, which are common to the most of New York buildings. The preparation of the act started right in 1992. The terrorists needed about two months to find the chemicals necessary for preparing the bomb. They also needed to transport it to the site. The whole work was accomplished by Ramzi Yousef and Sheik Omar. The first made up the part dealing with explosive, and the latter was occupied with chemistry. (Dwyer, 1994, p. 62) On the 26th of February, 1993, a yellow Ford Econoline was driven to the underground garage of the WTC, and the timer for detonation was set by the terrorists.
The massive blast created a cavernous crater 200 feet by 100 feet wide and seven stories deep, and caused an acrid smoke to rise to the 46th floor. (Mylroie, 1995, p. 3) As a result, the damage caused by the explosion, equaled $300 million. There are the suspicions, that there was also planned another smaller attack with the use of some toxic chemical, as there have been discovered the contacts of terrorists with chemical suppliers. The main forensic aspect of this case investigation concerns forensic chemistry, and the question is, if there had been any cyanide in the bomb? Forensics is presented by the wide range of different subdivisions, starting from ontology, to trace evidence. In our case we speak about forensic chemistry, which deals with the analysis of the bomb fragments in particular.
To speak in general, the objects of the trace evidence analysis are the fragments of explosives, and the main tasks of this procedure are to define the kind and the type of explosive, relating the device to the explosive type and defining the means of explosive constructing. (Kopp l, 2005, p. 26).
