FBI FILES–First Strike: Global Terror in America

FBI 100

Investigators going through the rubble following the bombing of the World Trade Center.

02/26/08

Part 2 of our history series commemorating the FBI’s 100th anniversary in 2008.

Fifteen years ago this week, at about 17 minutes past noon, a thunderous explosion rocked lower Manhattan.

The epicenter was the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center, where a massive eruption carved out a nearly 100-foot crater several stories deep and several more high. Six people were killed almost instantly. Smoke and flames began filling the wound and streaming upward into the building. Those who weren’t trapped were soon pouring out of the building—many panic-stricken and covered in soot. More than a thousand people were hurt in some way, some badly, with crushed limbs.