Leading Republican politicians George H.W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani met under tragic circumstances one day after a suicide bomber in a Ryder van exploded a deadly incendiary device in the parking garage under the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC).
The terrorists had worked under tight constraints, understanding that they could not employ the same techniques as the truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut ten years earlier. This target was far more massive, but frustration at Bush's victory in the 1992 election pushed the terrorists to strike with all ferocity available. Only a shipping container packed with high explosives and rammed into the building could bring down the two principle towers of the WTC complex. Instead, due to their precise timing, the detonation occurred at peak crowding when employees were just arriving for work. Consequently, the 1,336 lb (606 kg) urea nitrate-hydrogen gas-enhanced device killed hundreds of Americans and left thousands more injured. In a knee-jerk attempt to "close the stable door after the horse has bolted" military checkpoints were set up in New York City for the first time. This catastrophe occurred just 37 days short of the WTC's thirty-year anniversary.
The timing was also fateful for the two prominent men centre stage. Both Republicans had won narrow victories at the polls but were at the opposite ends of the electoral cycle. Bush had just started his second term (the fourth consecutive office of the Republican presidency), whereas Giuliani would seek re-election in the fall.
The present conversation became dominated by terrorist extremism and blundering intelligence failures. Only two days after the explosion, a rebuffed search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch in Texas turned into a gun battle ending in the Waco massacre. Undaunted, Bush, a former CIA Director, and Giuliani, a feisty prosecutor who had put the Mafia behind bars, believed they were the men of the hour. Instead, it would be General Colin Powell who stepped up to the plate at this terrible moment in the history of the Republic. Meanwhile, hawks privately hoped that this was the day that America threw peace out the window and embraced its new role of sole imperialistic superpower.
A breakthrough occurred in early March when FBI investigators traced the yellow Ford Econoline used in the bombing to a Jersey City rental outlet. This was only possible because the feed from security cameras was stored at the Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) headquarters located miles away. Agents attempted to peacefully arrest Mohammad Salameh as he retrieved his $400 deposit, but the capture turned to disaster with a running gun battle that killed innocent bystanders. Citing this as a similar missed opportunity to seize David Koresh when he was jogging alone in Waco, libertarian elements of the public began to sharply criticize the Federal response.
The reaction to this criticism was predictable; Giuliani's decisions were certainly heavy-handed in law and order. His over-zealousness led to claims of police brutality and fuelling racial fears. He arrogantly considered himself a combination of "Untouchable" Eliot Ness and his own predecessor La Guardia. But one of his fiercest critics was ex-marine David Dinkins, a likely Democrat candidate in the forthcoming mayoral election given that Ed Koch had lost in 1989, accused of vote tampering. Pledging racial healing, and famously referred to New York City's demographic diversity as "not a melting pot, but a gorgeous mosaic," Dinkins was seeking to become the first African American to hold the office.
Surely without the Waco Massacre, American anger might well have been channelled towards massive retaliation overseas. Instead, it was vented at the incompetence of security agencies who were blamed for their uncoordinated handling of terrorist threats. Under pressure, President Bush hurriedly passed a Patriot Act and appointed the hugely popular and competent four-star General Colin Powell, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the new Cabinet position of Secretary of National Security. Vastly experienced, he was due to retire from the US Army in September after a thirty-five-year military career overseeing twenty-eight crises, including the invasion of Panama in 1989 and Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf War against Iraq in 1990-1991. He had also served as Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor from 1987-9. It would take almost eighteen months to integrate this vast security apparatus requiring the kind of tactical response that had long been his hallmark. His vast inter-agency oversight role would encompass both the CIA and the FBI giving him a degree of power unprecedented even under J. Edgar Hoover. In a masterful repetition of his famous Gulf War press conference, Powell pledged, "Our strategy in going after this terrorist threat is very simple. First, we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it."
For his initiatives to "rally 'round the flag," Powell would enjoy a level of public trust that Giuliani could only dream about, but Powell had to get up to speed much more quickly than he did for Operation Desert Storm. In his first notable action in the early days of his tenure, he successfully prevented an assassination attempt upon Bush during a visit to Kuwait to honour his victory in the Persian Gulf War against Iraq. Powell would prove to be highly effective over the course of Bush's second term: terrorist organizations and training camps would be uncovered and shut down while numerous terrorists would be arrested, including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center Bombing as well as the attacks on the Shiite shrine in Mashhad, Iran, and Philippine Airlines Flight 434. The latter led to Yousef's arrest in 1995, the same year a homegrown plot to attack the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was foiled by watchful security.
With the sense of America's invulnerability returning, the economy rebounded and then exploded with the introduction of the World Wide Web. The GOP triumphed in the mid-terms and America headed towards the 53rd quadrennial presidential election with a renewed sense of hope. By a huge margin in opinion polls, Secretary Powell would be the most popular Republican candidate, leading a historic attempt to secure a fifth consecutive term of office for the GOP. In his way would be a determined field of potential Democrat candidates including David Dinkins, Jerry Brown, Al Gore, and even the recently divorced Hillary Clinton. There also came a wild card on the ballot in a Ross Perot and Bernie Sanders independent ticket, endorsed by Jesse Jackson, to oppose Powell's national security state and the new world economic order.
Author's Note:
In reality, the Towers did not collapse because the truck bomb was underpowered for the terrorists' goals, which would be sadly realized eight years later with airplane attacks.
Provine's Addendum:
The Dot Com Bubble bursting in spring of 2000 was the death knell for the Republicans' long hold on the Executive Branch. President Powell's efforts to shore up the economy would not have the timeline to make major improvements, and the Gore-Dinkins ticket won handily in the election that fall. While many felt that it would be a new era rolling back many of the Bush and Powell security requirements, such as the mountain of paperwork to rent a truck, only a few minor changes actually took place. The bureaucracy was well entrenched, and not even cries from the National Rifle Association were able to end more than a handful of surveillance actions on gun-buyers. Courts would test whether gun owners were having their Second Amendment rights violated by "checkups" with local officials, but as the ownership itself wasn't in question so much as perceived mental clarity, most of the laws remained intact. Numerous groups would start as self-proclaimed militias for further protection, giving the FBI, ATF, and other agencies clear cells to watch as the average Americans continued with rigorous inspections through metal detectors, background checks, and loyalty oaths.
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