It was a surreal moment — here I was, an FBI agent on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, standing on a street corner in Jersey City, going jaw to jaw with the infamous spiritual leader of the Islamic Group, the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman. An Egyptian cleric marinated in ideological hatred by the Muslim Brotherhood, the man who issued the “fatwa” to assassinate Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, now spewed forth vitriol toward me and the United States government. I knew this hatred intimately, having once dodged an irate mob of Saudi Arabian villagers who took serious offense to a cross necklace I was wearing.
I stared down the ‘Blind Sheikh’ for the FBI. What’s happening today is far more dangerous
