Message #229611

[Kristin Moore]

(Page 2 of 2)

For one thing, they said, the enclosed structure of a garage would multiply any explosive's impact, preventing its energy from escaping except at the weakest point, either the walls or the ceiling. Mr. Jenkins of Kroll & Associates said the underground structure would guarantee perhaps more than any other setting that "the explosive force would be more greatly exaggerated."

Perhaps more important, the vehicular access provided to the World Trade Center complex may have provided an opportunity for what other experts said they believed was an attack staged for its impact upon a highly visible American target.

"A car bomb in a street in New York doubtlessly would have killed more people," said Mr. Hoffman of the Rand Corporation, who is the author of several surveys of terrorism in the United States. "But the World Trade Center is a symbol of Wall Street and the Manhattan skyline and the United States itself, and I think that is very important.

"Putting a bomb in a car is not sophisticated," he said. "What's sophisticated about this operation, I would argue, is the planning and calculations that went into it to extract the maximum publicity possible."

After the blast, Federal and local authorities in Washington tightened security around Government buildings and other possible targets in what they described as a precaution against a further attacks. Among Federal officials specializing in explosives, the explosion elicited a sense of awe.

"This is a tremendous blast doing huge amounts of structural damage to steel and concrete," said Jack Killorin, a spokesman in Washington for the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "I can't overstate this: What went down there was big." AT A GLANCE -- New York as Victim: Other Bombings