9/11 museum marks anniversary of 1993 World Trade Center bombing

LOWER MANHATTAN (WABC) -- Eight years before 9/11, the World Trade Center was a target of terrorism, leaving six dead and many injured.

22 years later, on its anniversary Thursday, the memory is alive in a moving exhibit at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.

"9/11 is part of a larger story that started before 9/11," said Joe Daniels, president of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, who says the exhibit is dedicated to that idea.

"Are there a lot of artifacts"? we asked. "It's not a tremendous amount, but the ones we have are very special," said Daniels.

Like a part of the truck that carried the homemade bomb which ripped open a crater several stories deep in the sub levels and 150 feet across.

"It shows the incredible force that was brought to bear on that attack, and then again a reminder that we faced it on a much larger scale eight years later," said Daniels.

New on the 9/11 memorial's website, there is an interactive timeline of the 1993 bombing.

There are the stories of the six victims killed in the blast. Also included are dramatic pictures of the tremendous damage and many of the items on display.

At the exhibit visitors silently read the moving stories, like that of Walter Travers, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee, depicting the shirt he was wearing on that February day.

"It took him five hours to get out of the building. It's incredible. You can see it's smoke stained and he in fact was killed on 9/11," said Daniels. "it really does help make the connection between '93 and 2001".

There is also a deeper understanding of Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the bombing, and the tentacles of terrorism found on his laptop computer.

"He fled the United States the night after the attack in '93. He was eventually arrested in the Phillipines, but he is the nephew of KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11", said Daniels.

The exhibit will be open for the first time on the anniversary.

"In the context of 9/11, those names are on this very special memorial, and we are here to make sure the country doesn't forget them," said Daniels.