“Mukasey, widely viewed as one of the country’s top trial judges, presided over important trials including the 1995 New York City terror trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven co-defendants, who were convicted and received lengthy jail terms. In an unusual statement, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, upon reviewing and upholding the judge’s work, noted that Mukasey had ‘presided with extraordinary skill and patience, assuring fairness to the prosecution and to each defendant and helpfulness to the jury. His was an outstanding achievement in the face of challenges far beyond those normally endured by a trial judge.’”
When questioning a Freeper from the Midwest in the Amerithrax case, the Postal Inspectors were startled when she out of the blue mentioned a guy named Nosair. (He was the blind sheik’s bodyguard) They knew all about him. The three postal inspectors had flown and then driven a long way to talk with her.
Judge Mukasy is exactly who the Department of Justice would want when the Amerithrax indictment is unveiled — given that the conspirators were all motivated in part to retaliate for the detention of the blind sheik and other leaders who have been detained or rendered.
On July 4, 1993, United States Postal employee Ahmed Abdel Sattar spoke to the press about Abdel Rahman’s arrest and said “we haven’t decided the time or place, but our Muslim community will demonstrate its outrage at the arrest of the Sheik.” In the indictment of the Staten Island Post Office employee who worshipped in Brooklyn, the United States government alleged: that following his arrest, Abdel Rahman, in a message to his followers recorded while he was in prison, urged: “Oh Muslims! Oh Muslims! ... It is a duty upon all the Muslims around the world to free the Sheikh, and to rescue him from his jail.” Referring to the United States, he implored, “Muslims everywhere, dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their planes, kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.” His list is a pretty concise summary of the terrorist actions taken over the next decade.
The tactic of lethal letters delivered by the US Post Office — although not mentioned in this list by Abdel-Rahman - - was not merely the modus operandi of the militant islamists inspired by Abdel-Rahman, it was their signature. The islamists sent letter bombs in late December 1996 from Alexandria, Egypt to newspaper offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. and people in symbolic positions. Musical Christmas cards apparently postmarked in Alexandria, Egypt on December 21, 1996 contained improvised explosive devices. The bombs were mailed on the Night of Decree. The letters were sent in connection with the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center and the imprisonment of the blind sheik, Sheik Abdel Rahman. The former leader of the Egyptian Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya (”Islamic Group”), Abdel-Rahman was also a spiritual leader of Al Qaeda.
The letter bombs were sent in connection with the treatment of the Egyptian islamists imprisoned for the earlier attack on the WTC and a related plot. The purpose of the letter bombs — which resulted in minimal casualty — was to send a message. (There initially was an outstanding $2 million reward — under the rewards for justice program, the reward now is up to $5 million.) There was no claim of responsibility. There was no explanation. Once one had been received, the next ten, mailed on two separate dates, were easily collected. Sound familiar? Two bombs were also sent to Leavenworth, where a key WTC 1993 defendant was imprisoned, addressed to “Parole Officer.” (The position does not exist).
Abdel-Rahman’s friend, Ayman Zawahiri, was head of Al Qaeda’s biochemical program and the blind sheik’s son. Mohammed was on Al Qaeda’s three- member WMD committee. Ayman named his biochem program Zabadi or “Curdled Milk.” The CIA has known of Zawahiri’s plans to use anthrax since July 1998, when the CIA seized a disc from Ayman Zawahiri’s right-hand, Ahmed Mabruk during his arrest outside a restaurant by the CIA in Baku, Azerbaijan.
In late 1998, the Egyptian government told the US that Al Qaeda was going to attack and that the man behind the planning was the brother of Sadat’s assassin, Mohammed Islambouli.
The “Presidential Daily Brief” on December 4, 1998 to President Clinton, titled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks,” states: “1. Reporting [COUNTRY THAT WAS SOURCE OF REPORTING REDACTED ] suggests Bin Ladin and his allies are preparing for attacks in the US, including an aircraft hijacking to obtain the release of Shaykh Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, Ramzi Yousef, and Muhammad Sidiq ‘Awda “ ‘Awda was al-Hawali’s fellow radical Saudi sheik who was detained from 1994 through 1998. US Sheik Al-Timimi drafted letter for al-Hawali and had it hand-delivered to members of Congress on first anniversary of anthrax letters to Senators. Sheik Abdel-Rahman, Awda and al-Hawali were all expressly the subject of Bin Laden’s 1996 declaration of war against the US. The December 1998 PDB continued: “One source quoted a senior member of Gama’ at al-Islamiyya (IG) saying that, as of October, the IG had completed planning an operation in the US on behalf of bin Ladin, but that the operation was on hold. A senior Bin Ladin operative from Saudi Arabia was to visit IG counterparts in the US soon thereafter to discuss options — perhaps including an aircraft hijacking.”
The December 4, 1998 PDB stated: “IG leader Islambouli in late September was planning to hijack a US airliner during the “next couple of weeks” to free ‘Abd al-Rahman and the other prisoners, according to what may be a different source.”
That very day, on December 4, 1998, CIA’s George Tenet issued a directive to several CIA officials: “We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the Community.”
In his introduction on an August 2006 tape, Al-Zawahiri said the Egyptian group was led by this same Mohammed al-Islambouli, the younger brother of Khaled al-Islambouli, the militant who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981.
The Al Qaeda spymaster Al-Hakayma, who had written about the Amerithrax investigation, appeared on the tape. Al-Hakayma said former members had decided to revive the group and rejected the imprisoned leaders’ adherence to a truce. He vowed loyalty to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. This was a controversial announcement because the shura members of the group had all announced violence against innocents and dissolved their military wing. Gertz in his book has explained that Islambouli was in a cell with KSM in planning the attacks. Perhaps KSM is taking just a little too much credit in his confession at Gitmo this year.
It was notable that the person making the announcement, Al-Hakayma, was the Al Qaeda spymaster, an Egyptian Islamic Group member himself, who had summarized the Amerithrax investigation in a 2002 treatise on US intelligence apparatus. Al-Hakayma says in the interview that a group of hardliners from Al Jamaa Al Islamiya had joined Al Qaeda, “to help our great scholar, His Eminence the unshakeable Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, languishing in the dungeons of the American prisons, and to repel the attacking enemy which is occupying the countries of the Muslims.”
Who is more well-suited to overseeing the prosecution of the supporters of Abdel-Rahman than the judge who heard the trial of Abdel-Rahman in the first place?
Without knowing much about the man, my sense is it is a great choice.
I hope you're right. In defense of Bush, he doesn't have months to waste on political wrangling over an AG who may serve for just months. If Mukasey fills the bill then why not?
Based on what I know of him, that is my reaction too.
Still, Ted Olson would have been my first choice.