1993 World Trade Center Bombing

"We sit [here] and assume we are safe, that the floor will not fall out from under us. I know otherwise. It can." These words come from Tim Lang, a stock trader who was in the parking garage of the second tower of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993 when a bomb equal to 800 lbs. of TNT detonated, killing six and wounding some 1,000 others. In the opening episode of A&E's Minute By Minute series, contemporary interviews with survivors are intercut with archival footage of unfolding events, while overlaid present-tense narration and regularly flashed time cues (the bomb exploded at 12:18) lend a you-are-there atmosphere of suspense to the story. Even though the incident, an eerie prelude to the catastrophic attack on September 11, 2001, is true, the program suffers from a combination of reality TV techniques (at a time when we have had far too much of reality TV) and a selection of interviewees/dramatic narrative threads that a fiction writer would have dismissed as too mawkish and melodramatic (the man stuck in the elevator, the woman in the wheelchair on an upper floor, the teacher with her class of kindergarten students on the roof). More interesting than these faux knuckle-biting sequences is the story of how investigators found amidst the wreckage a 45 lb. scrap of metal with a VIN (vehicle identification number) that eventually was traced to a Ryder van reported stolen by a man who later turned out to be one of the international terrorists who planned and carried out the terrorist attack. In a sad coda to the documentary, viewers learn where the 1993 bombing principals interviewed here were on Sept 11, 2001--while all of the interviewees survived, Tim Lang's sister and nephew were both killed in the attacks. While not a great documentary, current interest makes this worth considering. Optional. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)