Eight years before terrorists parked a truck containing the equivalent of 1,500 pounds of dynamite in the parking garage of New York City's World Trade Center, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey received two confidential reports warning that WTC's underground facility was an easy target for car- or truck-bomb attacks.
The 1985 reports – one internal and the other produced by an outside security expert – came to light Friday in proceedings of a negligence suit brought by victims of the Feb. 26, 1993, blast that killed six and injured 1,000.
Charles Maikish, then-trade center director, testified he never saw the reports prior to the fatal blast. When asked if he had ever requested to see them, he answered, "I didn’t know they existed. How would I ask for them?"
The plaintiffs in the case include not only the injured but surrounding businesses damaged or destroyed by the terror attack. They argue precautions and recommendations outlined in the 1985 reports – such as closing the garage to public parking or searching vehicle – were sufficient for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to have prevented the blast.
Maikish, who held the director's position from 1990 to 1997, was not only ignorant of information that proved to be prophetic, he labored under new recommendations, made in a 1991 report commissioned by the Port Authority in the wake of the Gulf War, that focused security on threats from small bombs in crowded areas. This report dramatically downgraded the threat posed by vehicle bombs in the underground garage, giving that scenario a "vulnerability factor" of 7 compared to 350 for the crowded concourse where people shopped and walked to work.
Maikish testified his superior, Stanley Brezenoff, executive director of the Port Authority, was also unaware of the 1985 internal report until after the 1993 terror attack. He later learned only five copies of the report had been printed for a specific group of recipients.
Neither of the two 1985 reports were included in the briefing book that distilled thousands of earlier reports Maikish received when he was hired, he ttold plaintiffs' attorneys.