Laurie Mylroie - Mylroie-McCarthy Debate

Mylroie-McCarthy Debate

In 2008, Laurie Mylroie reviewed Willful Blindness by Andrew C. McCarthy, who had prosecuted Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman after the 1993 bombing. Mylroie denied that Rahman had ordered the bombing of the World Trade Center and claimed that other elements of the plot had been organized by Sudan. She accused McCarthy of understating "the degree to which the extremists were penetrated by the intelligence agencies of several states."

Replying on National Review Online, McCarthy accused Mylroie of misunderstanding "the difference between intrigue and evidence, between history and prosecution." Calling Rahman "the central figure in the overarching conspiracy," he wrote: "At trial, we proved that Sheikh Abdel Rahman had close ties to Hassan al-Turabi, leader in the early 1990s of Sudan’s de facto government, the National Islamic Front." At this point her former ally Daniel Pipes wrote a blog entry attacking "Laurie Mylroie's Shoddy, Loopy, Zany Theories." Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard added: "no one I know took her arguments very seriously."

Mylroie responded to McCarthy, arguing that the case against Rahman was "weak" and "different acts of violence, including the WTC bombing, were somewhat artificially linked" to strengthen the charges against him. She emphasized McCarthy's comment that Rahman was never charged with the "substantive crime" of bombing the World Trade Center. The debate continued in the New York Sun.