A Case of Dumb Luck

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The odds were heavily against investigators finding anything so decisive so soon. Telltale clues presumably lay at ground zero, the spot where the giant bomb had gone off in the parking garage under Manhattan's World Trade Center towers. And ground zero was buried at the bottom of a seven-story-deep crater, hidden under rubble and surrounded by beams that would have to be strengthened to prevent their collapsing on top of overeager probers.

Still, the search had to start somewhere. So late in the afternoon of , Sunday, Feb. 28 -- a bare two days after the blast that killed at least five people and injured more than 1,000 in the most destructive terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil -- 10 investigators began picking their way down a ramp leading to what had been the garage's second parking level, shining flashlights on the mangled remains of cars and trucks that had been blown to bits. "Hey, look at this," said an agent from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Joseph Hanlin, a bomb expert from ATF, picked up a thin, charred, twisted bit of metal about 18 in. long. "This is something that we need to take."

That piece of metal led investigators across the Hudson River, to a Jersey City mosque of Islamic fundamentalists where a frequent guest was a blind preacher who had long advocated holy war. In a nearby apartment agents found electronics manuals and wiring and other bomb-making material. By week's end authorities had two men in custody. One, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, had dunked his hands into a toilet to foil any testing for traces of explosives, a prosecutor charged at his arraignment. The other, Mohammed A. Salameh, an illegal immigrant from Jordan, had rented the van that apparently carried the bomb into the Trade Center garage. In a scene that no thriller novelist would dare dream up, Salameh was arrested as he tried to get his $400 rental deposit back.

Despite the early break in a case that was expected to take months, if not years, to crack, there were still countless questions. "At this point, we don't know if we're looking for three or four more people, or 15 or 20," says an investigator. Washington authorities feared that some terrorists might have fled to the Middle East or were trying to do so; the Justice Department circulated to airlines the names of three Muslims and told the companies not to let them board flights out of the country.

Investigators were also unsure about the exact motives, identity and whereabouts of the actual bombmaker and the driver or drivers who wheeled the explosive-filled van into the garage. (It is entirely possible that pieces of his or their bodies lie amid the other wreckage at the bottom of the crater.) Even so, the incomplete tale was already the most fascinating real-life detective story in years.

When they started down the ramp, the probers -- eight from ATF, two from the New York City police bomb squad -- knew what they were searching for. The blast had been so tremendous that the explosives necessary to produce it could not have been crammed into an ordinary car. So the investigators were looking for pieces of a van or truck so badly burned and twisted as to indicate that they had come from a vehicle at or near the center of the blast. The piece of metal they found looked just that heavily damaged, and the trained eyes of the probers recognized it as part of the frame of a van.

That find might only have started a months-long forensics process. In order to identify the vehicle, investigators feared that they might have to reconstruct an entire van from pieces scattered not only on the ramp but also at the bottom of the crater. Turning over the piece of metal, though, investigator Hanlin noticed a blackened but decipherable sequence of five numbers. They were part of the vehicle identification number stamped on various parts of vehicles to help police trace one that is stolen or wrecked in an accident. Experienced agents know that the identification numbers are actually codes that indicate the make, model and year of a car.

After extrapolating the full VIN from the fragment, the FBI contacted the Ford Motor Co., which checked its records and found that the vehicle was a yellow Ford Econoline E-350 van that had been sold to the Ryder Truck Rental Co. in Alabama. Ryder officials turned up the license plate XA70668 and reported that the van had been rented out of the company's Jersey City office. By Wednesday, only three days after the piece of metal had been found on the ramp, the FBI was in contact with Ryder officials in Jersey City, who had no difficulty remembering the van and its renter; he had been making a pest of himself.

On Tuesday, Feb. 23, Salameh rented the van for a week, putting down $400 in cash. Three days later -- and less than three hours after the Trade Center bombing -- Salameh showed up again and, presenting the keys as proof, claimed that the van had been stolen from a supermarket parking lot the night before and asked for his $400 back. He was told he would have to report the theft to the police. On Monday, March 1, Salameh came back, again asked for his $400 and once more was told he would have to present a police report of the theft.

The FBI would just as soon have watched Salameh for a while in the hope that he would lead them to other suspects. But news was starting to leak; by Wednesday night the FBI knew that New York Newsday was about to report that a rented van stolen in New Jersey was involved in the blast. James Fox, head of / the New York City FBI office, who coordinated much of the investigation, says his office considered asking Newsday to hold the story but decided not to because other papers and radio and TV stations had pieces of the story and the agency could not stop all of them.

Instead, the fbi decided to mount a sting. Over the phone early Thursday morning, Ryder agent Patrick Galasso told Salameh he could get some money even without a police report of the van's theft. A farcical scene followed. According to some reports, two TV-news trucks showed up before the suspect did; Connie Bello, a Ryder day manager, chased them away by telling them they had the wrong Ryder office. It is known that Salameh had in fact reported the supposed theft of the van to Jersey City police. By some accounts two Jersey cops also showed up at the Ryder office on Thursday morning, of all inconvenient times, to check out the complaint; Galasso had to go outside and warn them away. Finally, Salameh walked in and talked to an FBI agent posing as a Ryder official. The agent offered Salameh $200 in cash; Salameh loudly demanded more but finally took it and walked out. FBI agents followed and arrested him a block and a half away as he prepared to board a bus.

Shortly after the arrest, the world learned that Salameh would be brought into court that night for a "presentment," a proceeding similar to arraignment. The White House had been closely watching the case, and George Stephanopoulos, President Clinton's communications director, had taken the unusual step of confirming that an arrest had been made. He also promised that FBI director William Sessions and acting Attorney General Stuart Gerson would have something to say about the case at a Thursday afternoon news conference. In fact, they annoyed reporters by insisting that they could not make any comment pending the court appearance that night, which only heightened the drama.

About 7:45 p.m. -- two hours late -- Salameh, in handcuffs, was led by marshals into the jammed Manhattan federal district court of Judge Richard Owen. Salameh was a slight, dark-skinned man about 5 ft. 8 in. tall, with close-cropped dark hair and beard, dressed in sneakers and a light gray sweat suit that billowed around him. Federal authorities in Washington later disclosed some basic information about the suspect. He is 25 years old, an Arab who was born on the West Bank but grew up in Jordan. He entered the U.S. in 1987 with a five-year visa and remained in the country illegally. New York police commissioner Raymond Kelly later said that Salameh was "not unknown" to his department, and an FBI official in Washington confirmed that Salameh's name had turned up in a search of the bureau's files on suspected terrorists, though obviously before last week the FBI had not had information enough to make an arrest.

Through his court-appointed attorney, Robert Precht, who had just met his client, Salameh requested an Arabic interpreter. Judge Owen assigned one from the FBI, who leaned close to Salameh's ear as the judge read the charge: the suspect had aided and abetted the Trade Center bombing, and thus helped kill five people, violating a federal antiterrorism statute for which the death penalty could be imposed. The wording of the charge was somewhat general because, says Fox, the FBI does not yet know what Salameh's exact role was -- whether he was the actual bomber, a minor figure in a terrorist plot or something in between.

The accused man requested bail. He said he could line up 10 people who would offer $50,000 cash, enough to secure a $5 million bond -- an odd assertion for a suspect who had been feverishly trying to get $400 back from Ryder. But declaring Salameh a "serious risk," Judge Owen ordered the suspect held without bail for a preliminary hearing March 18. Salameh later told his attorney he was innocent and believed he was being persecuted for his religious beliefs. Precht says his client has requested a copy of the Koran, a watch so he can pray at the proper times and a change in his feeding schedule so that he can observe ritual daytime fasting for Ramadan. Salameh also asked the lawyer to contact his father, who is still in Jordan.

If Salameh is guilty, it still must be determined how to account for what looked like his extraordinary stupidity in renting a van under his own name, presenting a valid New York driver's license with a real and traceable phone number and, instead of disappearing after the bombing, calling attention to himself by repeatedly trying to recover the deposit. Such behavior seemed to indicate that the plot was a wildly amateurish -- though horribly successful -- operation.

There are other opinions, however. Some experts note that sophisticated foreign terrorists sometimes make cynical use of gullible young zealots who are misled as to what they are really doing. Another theory holds that Salameh and/or associates theorized, wrongly but understandably, that the blast would so obliterate all traces of the van that it could never be identified. In that case, leaving a rented van missing and unaccounted for would be the way to arouse suspicion, so that reporting it stolen and demanding the deposit back would be a way of diverting attention. But why rent a van at all, rather than stealing one or buying one for cash and giving a false name?

In any event, Salameh's arrest promptly led to a widening investigation. The complaint read at his court appearance detailed the results of one follow-up. It seems that Salameh had given Ryder a phone number that turned out to be registered to one Josie Hadas at an apartment in Jersey City. Salameh may have been living there, but FBI agents apparently found no proof when they searched the apartment. What they did find, according to the court papers, was a letter addressed to Salameh (contents undisclosed), "tools and wiring, and manuals concerning antennae, circuitry and electromagnetic devices." One expert interpreted these as evidence that a "bombmaker" had been in the apartment -- the more so because "a dog trained in the detection of explosives" sniffed around and "responded positively."

At the same time as the raid on the Jersey City apartment, FBI agents went to an apartment in Brooklyn where Salameh apparently had once lived (its address is on his driver's license). There they found Ibrahim Elgabrowny, a 42-year-old self-employed carpenter, who allegedly tried to punch an investigating agent and was arrested on a charge of obstructing justice. At a court hearing Friday, Judge Owen mysteriously remarked that Elgabrowny might be involved "up to his eyeballs" in the Trade Center bombing.

On Friday federal authorities raided Space Station, a storage facility about a mile from the apartment where Salameh once lived. Witnesses saw three trucks emerge, hauling away what were thought to be containers of sulfuric acid, nitric acid and urea, chemicals that could be used to make explosives. Jersey City police would say only that they "found a lot of stuff that may be linked to Salameh" and took it to an undisclosed destination for examination.

From there the trail grows tenuous and circumstantial. The mailbox on the Brooklyn apartment bears the names of both Elgabrowny and his cousin El Sayyid Nosair, who is serving a prison term on weapons-possession charges related to the 1990 slaying of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a Zionist zealot. Salameh is known to have worshipped at a Jersey City mosque -- actually a bare room under a leaky roof -- where he would have heard the fiery sermons of Sheik Omar Abdel- Rahman, a blind cleric from Egypt whom the U.S. government is trying to deport. The sheik vocally advocates overthrow of the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak, a U.S. ally, and some merchants in the Little Egypt section of Jersey City speak of the mosque and its communicants with fear.

The obvious suspicion is that the Trade Center bombing was carried out by a group of Muslim fundamentalist fanatics who regard all moderate Arab leaders as traitors to Islam, and the U.S. as their prime support. Whether these somewhat nebulous suspicions can ever be pinned down, let alone proved, is another matter. Sheik Omar has denounced the Trade Center bombing and claims not even to know Salameh.

One of the loosest loose ends is that investigators are not yet sure even what kind of explosive went off in the van. Early reports had them concluding from traces of nitrates found at the blast scene that dynamite had been used. But James Ronay, explosives-unit chief at the FBI laboratory in Washington, says the presence of nitrates in the rubble was "meaningless"; nitrates are contained in exhaust fumes, paint, cleaning materials, foodstuffs and many other substances. Nonetheless, his best guess is that the explosive was in fact dynamite or something similar; the pattern of blast damage is more consistent with dynamite than with the plastic explosives often favored by terrorists. Fox also believes that "the velocity of the blast indicates that ((the explosive)) is in the dynamite family, which includes TNT and the so- called witches' brew of fertilizer and fuel oil. Most of our guys who have been around a while seem to think that's what it will turn out to be -- witches' brew."

One theory is that an unstable explosive was used that went off prematurely -- perhaps when the van was going over a speed bump -- and blew up the bombers along with their bomb. The blast seems to have occurred either on the ramp or at the bottom of it -- not ordinarily a spot where bombers would park, get out of the van and take an elevator up to the street. A foul odor in the crater could point to the presence of bodies in the wreckage, but it could have other causes as well.

Even after investigators get down into the crater to check out "the real hot stuff" and run down all the leads stemming from Salameh, Fox warns, it ! may be years before the probers can piece together a full picture of the bombing conspiracy. But then, investigators were saying much the same thing about the possibility of developing leads at all even as they were closing in on Salameh. Perhaps they will get lucky again.

With reporting by Edward Barnes/Jersey City, Sophfronia Scott Gregory/New York and Elaine Shannon/Washington