StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

Sound strange? Maybe…but this is about the first attack in February 1993. This isn’t about the "trial lawyer" thing. To me, this is one of those times when "dots are connected" after the fact…its a lesson learned (too late).

The articles are here for the reading. To me, the fact that the plaintiffs have won their case is final judgement for them and the families of those who died that day in February 1993…but what is more important is the fact that it was judged that there had been warning in an earlier report to take steps to prevent attacks just like what happened.

Key to the discussion, I believe: "…During the four weeks of the trial, which began on Sept. 26, the plaintiffs…succeeded in turning…a 1985 report commissioned by Peter Goldmark, then the executive director of the Port Authority, into the heart of the case.

The report was eerily prescient. It said that car bombs were "fast becoming the weapon of choice for European terrorists," and that the public parking area in the trade center was "a definite security risk" because a vehicle filled with explosives could easily enter and park there.
The report, by the Office of Special Planning, an antiterrorist task force created by Mr. Goldmark, recommended closing the public parking area of the garage, and it also suggested providing guards at entrances, restricting pedestrian entry and conducting random searches of vehicles…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/nyregion/26wtc.html
Imagine a world in which 9/11 never happened…9/11 was the elephant in the courtroom…

That was the strange, almost surreal world of a courtroom in Manhattan yesterday, as lawyers gave their summations in a case that took almost 12 years to reach a jury…

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aeZpspNgv87g&refer=top_world_news …plaintiffs argued the Port Authority bore primary responsibility for the death and destruction by ignoring five reports that said the underground parking garage was a prime target for a terrorist attack…

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-wtc1027,0,4687556.story?coll=ny-top-headlines … The trial focused on a 1985 report commissioned by the Port Authority that called the World Trade Center a “most attractive terrorist target.’

The report’s author, Edward O’Sullivan, a former Port Authority mechanical engineer, testified that executives of the authority rejected his recommendations including closing the parking garage. O’Sullivan said the former Port Authority executive director, Stephen Berger, told him the recommendations wouldn’t be implemented and another study would be done by a different group…

Do not forget that the even first installment of the Hart-Rudman Report was remarkably prescient in its predictions and recommendations, and yet, "…at the time of its release, it garnered very little attention and sadly, nothing was done to implement any of its recommendations…"

http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/nssg/Reports/reports.htm,

It was also written that: "The combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistance of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homelaned to catastrophic attack. A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century."

- Executive Summary, the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, January 31, 2001

So, in a 1985 report commissioned by the Port Authority made recommendations that might have prevented the first WTC bombing, and was ignored…in fact, it was squelched. The counter-arguement, that the terrorists might have found a different way of attacking the WTC is, in my opinion, irrelevant and a deflection of an administrative blunder (I’m being nice here) that led to the first attack on U.S. soil in this long standing War on Terrorism…in fact, the trial finding that the Port Authority may only going to become a subject of discussion if someone wishes to argue against the "evils of trial lawyers."

The war on Islamic fundamentalism or Islamofascists may well have begun at the Munich Olympics…we simply weren’t listening. Did we listen, or even understand, to what was happening when Islamic terrorists dumped Leon Klinghoffer overboard? Its easy to blame one person or another for failures of inaction. IMO, the reality is that the American Mindset is/was as guilty as anything else or anyone else in looking back on the first WTC attack in 1993, as well as the atatcks of Sept. 11th.