Bill ClintonPresidency |
What major terrorist attacks occurred on U.S. soil during Clinton’s presidency? |
In February 1993, a bomb in a car went off in the bottom parking lot of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. It killed six people and injured more than one thousand. Ramzi Yousef—who had received some training from the terrorist group al-Qaeda—and several others planned and implemented the attack. Pakistani authorities captured Yousef in February 1995, and he later received a life sentence from a federal judge in New York. He exclaimed in federal court: “Yes, I am a terrorist, and proud of it as long as it is against the U.S. government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and [are] using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites.”
In April 1995, former U.S. military members and right-wing extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols carried out the Oklahoma City bombing—the bombing of a federal building that led to the death of 168 people and more than 600 injuries. It was the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil until the September 11, 2001, attack in New York City. McVeigh and Nichols had been upset over the U.S. invasion at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993 and the U.S. actions in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where F.B.I. snipers killed some of white separatist’s Randy Weaver’s children. In fact, McVeigh planned to carry out the attack on April 19, 1995, two years to the date of the Waco invasion. McVeigh was convicted and later executed in June 1997, the first execution of a federal prisoner in thirty-eight years. Nichols was sentenced to multiple life sentences and will remain incarcerated for the rest of his life.

During his campaign the future President Clinton raised eyebrows by fostering a hip image as a saxophone player.