2/26/1993

“On February 26, 1993, a rented Ford Econoline van entered the World Trade Center’s massive basement parking garage. Inside the truck was [terrorist] Ramzi Yousef. It is unclear if bin Laden sent him, but he was a product of an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, where he had learned his bomb-craft. He had come to America to oversee the construction of what the FBI later determined was the largest improvised explosive device the bureau had ever encountered. …[Yousef] was motivated mainly by his devotion to the Palestinian cause and his hatred of Jews–but he was the first Islamic terrorist to attack the American homeland. …By placing the bomb in the southern corner of the garage, Yousef intended to topple one tower onto the other, bringing the entire complex down and killing what he hoped would be 250,000 people.”

 – Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, Pages 201-202