The vignette was charged with drama. A government informant had wheedled his way into radical Islam’s inner sanctum: the Jersey City apartment that served as home and haven for “the emir of jihad,” the honorific by which Omar Abdel Rahman, the infamous “Blind Sheikh,” was known to his worldwide following. Here, he conducted meetings, issued directives for his Egyptian terrorist organization, and was briefed by the jihadist cell he had established in the United States, the operatives of which required his edict—or fatwa—before they could execute attacks.

The informant was there to outline a plot then underway: simultaneous strikes against the United Nations complex, the FBI’s lower Manhattan headquarters, and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels. It was May 1993, and New York City was already reeling from the same terror cell’s bombing of the World Trade Center just three months before. The Blind Sheikh listened, then made his ruling: The attack on the United Nations was permissible, though tactically unwise. “Find a plan,” he countered in a haunting whisper, “to inflict damage on the American army itself.”

The informant had been daring. He’d lured the cleric into a small kitchen, away from other jihadists milling about the apartment. Lest the slightest creak arouse suspicion, he’d ever so carefully inched his briefcase, equipped with a tape recorder, near the blind man’s mouth. The device worked perfectly. The United States now had an ironclad conspiracy case against one of the world’s most influential terrorists.

At least