Andrew C. McCarthy: When Jihad first came to America
[Andrew C. McCarthy directs the center for law and counterterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In somewhat different form, this article will appear in his book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, soon to be released by Encounter Books. Copyright 2008 by Andrew C. McCarthy.]
On May 2 and 3, 1990, the U.S. embassy in Cairo alerted its counterpart in Khartoum that Egypt’s “leading radical,” Omar Abdel Rahman, was on his way to Sudan. Warning that his ultimate plan might be to seek exile in the United States, the Cairo embassy asked its colleagues to pass along any information they might learn about his activities on Sudanese soil.
What did U.S. officials already know about Abdel Rahman in 1990? As the 9/11 Commission would later determine, they knew that he
"had been arrested repeatedly in Egypt between 1985 and 1989 for attempting to take over mosques, inciting violence, attacking police officers, and demonstrating illegally, and that he had been imprisoned and placed under house arrest until he left Egypt for Sudan."
And yet when, immediately upon arriving in Sudan, Abdel Rahman made application at the American embassy for a multiple-entry visa to the United States, the document was issued to him within a week.
Visa in hand, Abdel Rahman—then fifty-two years old and sightless from a case of childhood diabetes, which had led to his being dubbed the “blind sheikh”—relocated to the United States on July 18, 1990. He first took up residence in a house in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, then settled in an apartment across the Hudson in Jersey City, New Jersey. In December 1990, fully six months after first learning that it had issued the visa in error, the State Department revoked it. By then, however, Abdel Rahman had exited and re-entered the United States on three occasions—one of them six days after the visa’s revocation, when he avoided detection by employing a slight variation on the spelling of his name.
At the start of 1991, the New York office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began an investigation to determine whether grounds existed to deport Abdel Rahman for fraud in the acquisition of his visa. At almost exactly the same moment, he officially sought permanent resident-alien status as a “Special Immigrant, Religious Teacher.” Incredibly, the INS responded by granting his request and issuing him a coveted “green card” on April 8. It seems that, unbeknownst to the INS office in New York where he was being investigated, Abdel Rahman had applied for this upgrade in status in Newark, New Jersey. By the time he once again sought to re-enter the United States in July 1991, the authorities could detain him only briefly before letting him back in. After all, he was now a permanent resident.
As is well known, the blind sheikh would be the motive force behind the first effort to bring down the World Trade Center buildings, the bombing that killed six adults, one of them a woman well along in pregnancy, and wounded hundreds more in February 1993. I led the team of prosecutors who in 1995 successfully convicted him and nine others for that conspiracy.
But this was not the first terrorist act on American soil for which he bore some responsibility. It was preceded, only months after his arrival, by the assassination of the radical Jewish activist Meir Kahane. Had American authorities understood the significance of this murder, connected it to what they already knew about Abdel Rahman’s burgeoning activities in America, and worked to mine the reams of evidence left by Kahane’s assassin in his car and home, they would have gathered the information necessary to break up a terrorist ring in its relative infancy and thereby prevent the 1993 bombing—and, perhaps, much else that was to follow.
That is not what happened....
Read entire article at Commentary
On May 2 and 3, 1990, the U.S. embassy in Cairo alerted its counterpart in Khartoum that Egypt’s “leading radical,” Omar Abdel Rahman, was on his way to Sudan. Warning that his ultimate plan might be to seek exile in the United States, the Cairo embassy asked its colleagues to pass along any information they might learn about his activities on Sudanese soil.
What did U.S. officials already know about Abdel Rahman in 1990? As the 9/11 Commission would later determine, they knew that he
"had been arrested repeatedly in Egypt between 1985 and 1989 for attempting to take over mosques, inciting violence, attacking police officers, and demonstrating illegally, and that he had been imprisoned and placed under house arrest until he left Egypt for Sudan."
And yet when, immediately upon arriving in Sudan, Abdel Rahman made application at the American embassy for a multiple-entry visa to the United States, the document was issued to him within a week.
Visa in hand, Abdel Rahman—then fifty-two years old and sightless from a case of childhood diabetes, which had led to his being dubbed the “blind sheikh”—relocated to the United States on July 18, 1990. He first took up residence in a house in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, then settled in an apartment across the Hudson in Jersey City, New Jersey. In December 1990, fully six months after first learning that it had issued the visa in error, the State Department revoked it. By then, however, Abdel Rahman had exited and re-entered the United States on three occasions—one of them six days after the visa’s revocation, when he avoided detection by employing a slight variation on the spelling of his name.
At the start of 1991, the New York office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began an investigation to determine whether grounds existed to deport Abdel Rahman for fraud in the acquisition of his visa. At almost exactly the same moment, he officially sought permanent resident-alien status as a “Special Immigrant, Religious Teacher.” Incredibly, the INS responded by granting his request and issuing him a coveted “green card” on April 8. It seems that, unbeknownst to the INS office in New York where he was being investigated, Abdel Rahman had applied for this upgrade in status in Newark, New Jersey. By the time he once again sought to re-enter the United States in July 1991, the authorities could detain him only briefly before letting him back in. After all, he was now a permanent resident.
As is well known, the blind sheikh would be the motive force behind the first effort to bring down the World Trade Center buildings, the bombing that killed six adults, one of them a woman well along in pregnancy, and wounded hundreds more in February 1993. I led the team of prosecutors who in 1995 successfully convicted him and nine others for that conspiracy.
But this was not the first terrorist act on American soil for which he bore some responsibility. It was preceded, only months after his arrival, by the assassination of the radical Jewish activist Meir Kahane. Had American authorities understood the significance of this murder, connected it to what they already knew about Abdel Rahman’s burgeoning activities in America, and worked to mine the reams of evidence left by Kahane’s assassin in his car and home, they would have gathered the information necessary to break up a terrorist ring in its relative infancy and thereby prevent the 1993 bombing—and, perhaps, much else that was to follow.
That is not what happened....