December 19, 1992: FBI, Having Fired Key Informant, Misses Opportunity to Uncover WTC Bombing Plot

Mahmud Abouhalima, one of the 1993 WTC bombing plotters, calls Emad Salem. Salem had been an FBI informant on a group close to the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, including Abouhalima, but he had been fired by the FBI some months before (see Early July 1992). Salem is mad at the FBI about being fired and doesn’t bother to tell them about the phone call, and doesn’t call Abouhalima back. It will later be discovered that on that same day other plotters begin calling chemical companies in search of bomb parts and the next day another FBI informant is contacted and asked to help get bomb parts (see Mid-November-December 20, 1992). Salem has bomb making expertise so it is likely Abouhalima was calling him to get help in making the bomb to blow up the WTC. The authors of the 2002 book The Cell will later note, “Had Salem still be working as an informant for [the FBI] at the time of the call, the World Trade center bombing plot might well have been cracked before Salem had hung up the phone.” [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 84-85]