Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad

by Andrew C. Mccarthy

Overview

Long before the devastation of September 11, 2001, the war on terror raged. The problem was that only one side, radical Islam, was fighting it as a war. For the United States, the frontline was the courtroom. So while a diffident American government prosecuted a relative handful of “defendants,” committed militants waged a campaign of jihad—holy war—boldly targeting America’s greatest city, and American society itself, for annihilation. The jihad continues to this day. But now, fifteen years after radical Islam first declared
war by detonating a complex chemical bomb in the heart of the global financial system, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy provides a unique insider’s perspective on America’s first response.

McCarthy led the historic prosecution against the jihad organization that carried out the World Trade Center attack: the “battalions of Islam” inspired by Omar Abdel Rahman,the notorious “Blind Sheikh.” In Willful Blindness, he unfolds the troubled history of modern American counterterrorism. It is a portrait of stark contrast: a zealous international network of warriors dead certain, despite long odds, that history and Allah are on their side,
pitted against the world’s lone superpower, unsure of what it knows, of what it fights, and of whether it has the will to win.

It is the story of a nation and its government consciously avoiding Islam’s animating role in Islamic terror. From the start, it led top U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to underestimate, ignore, and even abet zealots determined to massacre Americans. Even today, after thousands of innocent lives have been lost, the United States averts its eyes from
this harsh reality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594034480
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	03/29/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	360
File size:	468 KB

About the Author

Andrew C. McCarthy is a former federal prosecuter and a contributor to National Review and Commentary, among other publications. Mr. McCarthy is the recipient of numerous award, including the Justice Department’s highest honor: the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award (1996). He has served as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Table of Contents

"Imagine the Liability!"     1
Battalions and Illusions     14
"We Are Terrorists!"     24
The Blind Sheikh Emerges     41
Afghanistan? Who Needs to Know?     51
Feeding the Beast     59
Jihad in America     72
The Real Deal... Under Our Nose     91
Upheaval     112
Conspiracy? What Conspiracy?     125
The Informant     137
The Jihadist Way: Victory and Vengeance     154
Divorce     162
No Indication?     176
Aftermath     190
Spy Games     201
Siddig Ali Takes Center Stage     213
Recruited for the Jihad     220
The Landmarks Plot     231
Planning the End Game     245
"The Projects Are a Duty!"     255
Don't Deport Him, Indict Him     265
The Salem Tapes     278
Trial and Error     294
None So Blind...     307
Notes     319

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly: In this annotated retrospective, the prosecutor responsible for leading the investigation of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing dissects the miscues between federal agencies that led to that event while laying bare the challenges facing the war on terror today. The pre-1993 comedy of errors begins with the CIA's decision to funnel arms and money to Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan war and continues with inexplicable lapses of communication between the State Department and immigration officials (despite having been placed on a State Department terror watchlist, the sheikh travels freely to the United States). The most enduring oversight, however, at least from McCarthy's perspective, is the refusal among academics and political leaders to confront fundamentalist Islamic tenets, the 800-pound gorilla that is somehow always in the middle of the room when terror strikes. The jihadist philosophy that guided the Blind Sheikh is traced through generations of Islamic thinkers to the Prophet Mohammed himself. Though McCarthy's language is at times cumbersome, his firsthand account of jihad's rise and the sheikh's trial of the century is an important contribution (and in some instances, counterpoint) to existing literature on the attack that foreshadowed disaster to come. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


“Finally, from the legal front line, a devastating account of the peril we put our country in when we treat terrorist atrocities as if they were mere crimes. Andy McCarthy was there when the jihad began. Read this book and you’ll understand why this war is a war, and why we have no choice but to fight it and win it.” - Rush Limbaugh


“Willful Blindness is the best book I have ever read about terrorism, bar none. It is arguably the most stirring, brilliantly written, and devastatingly honest book on terrorism that has ever been published. Written by one of our nation’s greatest prosecutors, who understood early on from his successful prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center plotters what our country was up against, Andy McCarthy tells the shocking story of our nation’s refusal to acknowledge the deadly adversary we are facing. His mesmerizing analysis of the nature of radical jihad’s war against the West will change the way you look at our future. Brutally candid and eloquent, this book is one that you MUST read. You simply have no choice. I have been writing about or working in national security for the past nearly 30 years, and from the moment I opened this book, I could not put it down until I finished the last page. I sat in stunned silence, but also eternally grateful that one of our top public servants finally had the guts to tell it like it is: a worldwide jihadist movement has operated in plain sight in our country, where policymakers were, and are, too politically correct to recognize it.” - Steven Emerson Author of the bestseller American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Amongst Us Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism


“In any intellectual street fight or battle, I want Andy McCarthy on my side—he is a smart and forceful intellectual ally. In a time of war, this is all the more so, and America is lucky to have him on hers.” - William J. Bennett Host, Bill Bennett’s Mor

From the Publisher