A Case of Dumb Luck

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.