Daily Times, A.2
4 March 1993.
Caller knew garage level of blast before it was announced to public
NEW YORK (AP) — Investigators in the World Trade Center bombing are said to be focusing on the first claim of responsibility received: a call from a Serbian group that knew the site of the blast before the public did.
“That’s the most likely direction and that’s the first place they’re looking,” said an FBI official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The caller, who said he was a member of a previously unknown group called the Serbian Liberation Front, was the first of dozens to claim responsibility for the blast that rocked the twin towers and killed at least five people.
The caller was credible because he “seemed to have information that hadn’t been out there,” including the garage level where the bomb went off Friday, the FBI official said Wednesday.
But at a news conference Wednesday, James Fox, head of the FBI’s New York office, said of the call: “There was no unique information in it. The only thing the guy said was, ‘This is no accident.’”
No calls warning of the blast were received, investigators have said.
Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnian Serbs and a delegate to U.N. talks in New York aimed at bringing peace to the former Yugoslavia, has denied that his people were involved.
However, in an “open letter” to Americans, he said U.S. intervention in the conflict [Bosnian war] could result in the United States being targeted by terrorists, The New York times reported.
“The tragic and deplorable terrorist incident at the World Trade Center is fresh testimony to the extraordinary volatility and immediate dangers of direct involvement,” the Times quoted Karadzic as saying.
That comment was not included in versions of the letter carried by Serbian media in Belgrade, which said the U.S. airdrops of relief supplies to Muslims [Bosniaks] that began Monday could “cause the spreading of the local conflict into a Balkan or even another World War.”
New York Newsday reported that investigators have turned up fragments of a rental van stolen the day before the blast that could have carried the bomb.
The charred pieces were scattered around the perimeter of the blast site, indications that the van might have held the explosives, unidentified sources told Newsday.
