It is a great privilege to have led a terrorism prosecution of historical significance in the early-to-mid ’90s. I think our prosecution of the Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel Rahman) and other members of his jihadist cell laid bare in a way nothing else in the pre-9/11 era did the sharia-supremacist ideology that fuels our enemies. It showed the jihadists’ determination to hit us catastrophically in our homeland. And it powerfully illustrated the folly of making prosecution in the criminal justice system our government’s main strategy for quelling what is essentially a military challenge, most of whose operatives plot from overseas — where our courts and law enforcement agencies lack jurisdiction and influence.
I’m very proud of what the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York achieved in the case. Because of my position, I’m also very fortunate to get the credit for the very hard work on behalf of the nation by hundreds of investigators and support personnel.
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