The World Trade Center was both a great engineering feat and a potent symbol. It was also, according to Peter Caram, a security shambles for almost all of its existence. Mr Caram, until recently a detective sergeant and anti-terrorist officer at the World Trade Center, with experience of airport security, has some harsh criticisms to make of the lapses which allowed the 1993 bombing to take place, a precursor and unheeded warning of the 2001 disaster. Completed before this cataclysmic event, the book gives an insider's personal perspective on Port Authority attitudes and of the mismanagement of security functions at the World Trade Center. No one there, Mr Caram claims, was seriously interested in the resentment of US policy in the Middle East, in the mindset of Islamic fundamentalists, or even in expressed threats from dedicated terrorists. Mr Caram, himself having an Arab-American background, paints an indignant but well-informed picture of the situation prior to the attack in 1993. He gives chilling evidence to show that the terrorists regarded the 1993 bombing as a bungled job which needed completion.

The World Trade Centre was both an engineering feat and a potent power symbol. Caram (former Detective Sergeant at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey) claims it was also a security shambles for almost all of its existence, a fact that allowed the 1993 bombing to take place