A truck bomb was denoted below the North tower of the World Trade Center. The urea nitrate-hydrogen gas device was suppose to send the North tower crashing into the South Tower but this failed. Instead six people were killed and more than a thousand people had been injured.
When news reached Washington, President Bill Clinton vowed to bring justice. “The cowards who committed this murderous act must not go unpunished,” he said angrily. “Let me say again: We will pursue this. America takes care of our own. Those who did it must not go unpunished.” The next day, leaving the White House to attend an economic summit in France, Clinton had more tough words for the attackers. “Let me be very clear: We will not resist” — the president corrected himself “we will not rest in our efforts to find who is responsible for this outrage, to pursue them and to punish them" (The Facts About Clinton and Terrorism).
As Clinton spoke, his top political strategist, Dick Morris, was hard at work conducting polls to gauge the public’s reaction to the bombing. “Whenever there was a crisis, I ordered an immediate poll,” Morris recalls. “I was concerned about how Clinton looked in the face of [the attack] and whether people blamed him.” The bombing happened in the midst of the president’s re-election campaign, and even though Clinton enjoyed a substantial lead over Republican Bob Dole, Morris worried that public dissatisfaction with Clinton on the terrorism issue might benefit Dole. Basically he was an ineffective president when it came to terrorism (The Facts About Clinton and Terrorism).
Terrorists: Ramzi Yousef (Operational Commander), Eyad Ismoil (Attacker). Facilitators: Mohammad Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Abdul Rahman Yasin, Mahmud Abouhalima, Ahmad Mohammad Ajaj. Financier: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed