2 - Terrorist financing in the twentieth century

Summary

The 11 September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City was not the first attempt to bring the skyscrapers crashing to the ground. On 26 February 1993, Ramzi Yousef drove a Ryder Econoline (rental) van loaded with explosives into the parking garage of the World Trade Center. The deton¬ation of over 1,000 pounds of fertilizer supplemented by hydrogen cylinders left a blast crater of 130 feet by 150 feet with damage to seven levels of the building, killing six people and injuring a further 1,042 people (United States Fire Administration 1993: 1). There is a brief description of attempts to identify and track down those responsible for the attack on the website of the US State Department Diplomatic Security Service. The emphasis of this online article is to highlight the role of the Diplomatic Security Service in the identification and apprehension of Ramzi Yousef, and it contains this interesting statement: “This event was the first indication for the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) that terrorism was evolving from a regional phenomenon outside of the United States to a transnational phenomenon” (Bureau of Diplomatic Security 2019: n.p.). The statement, to some extent, may be self-reflective, given that the page is dated 21 February 2019. At the same time, however, it reinforces widely held perceptions of terrorism in the twentieth century as fundamentally a local problem.

The case of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center is often used to emphasize the importance of money in terrorist groups achieving their object¬ives (Raphaeli 2003: 60; Biersteker & Eckert 2008: 1). The driver of the van soon made his way to Pakistan, where he was later arrested with the assistance of the Diplomatic Security Service and extradited to the US to stand trial. Meanwhile, soon after the bombing, another member of the group returned to the van rental company hoping to get back the $400 deposit. In testimony before a US Senate subcommittee in 1999, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stated that the attempt made to recover the deposit was because the group had very little funding. It was a mistake that led to the arrest of this terrorist along with other members of the group.