Emad Salem

Emad A. Salem is an FBI informant, who was a key witness in the trial of Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah, convicted in the World Trade Center bombing of February 26, 1993.

An Egyptian army officer, Salem claimed to have fought as a sniper in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.^[1]

At the request of the FBI, Salem had befriended the group of plotters in 1991, meeting them at El Sayyid Nosair's trial. He had recently worked as a security guard at the Bergdorf Goodman department store, and an engineer at a Best Western hotel in New York.^[1]

During his time as an FBI informant, Salem recorded hours of telephone conversations with his FBI handlers. In tapes made after the bombings, Salem alleged that an unnamed FBI supervisor knew about the bombing plot, but declined to move forward on a plan that would have used a "phony powder" to fool the conspirators into believing that they were working with genuine explosives. Federal authorities denied Salem's view of events and the New York Times concluded that the tapes "do not make clear the extent to which Federal authorities knew that there was a plan to bomb the World Trade Center, merely that they knew that a bombing of some sort was being discussed."^[2]

Bibliography

• "Tapes in Bombing Plot Show Informer and F.B.I. at Odds," Ralph Blumenthal, The New York Times, October 27, 1993, Section A; Page 1; Column 4
• "Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast," Ralph Blumenthal, The New York Times, October 28, 1993, Section A; Page 1; Column 4
• "Paper Says FBI Blocked Plan to Foil N.Y. Blast," Reuters, Los Angeles Times, October 28, 1993, Page 21; Section Part-A; National Desk
• "Bomb Informer's Tapes Give Rare Glimpse of F.B.I. Dealings," Richard Bernstein with Ralph Blumenthal, The New York Times, October 31, 1993
• "FBI's Tipster Said He Built N.Y. Bomb," Chicago Tribune, December 15, 1993, Page 7; Section NEWS
• "Tracing terror's roots: How the first World Trade Center plot sowed the seeds for 9/11," Chitra Ragavan, U.S. News & World Report, February 16, 2003

References