http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/nimmo02112005/
"Considering the history lesson below, the New York Post should have written: Lynne Stewart convicted of passing messages to the CIA.
If we know anything about Omar Abdel-Rahman, it is that he was heavily involved with the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service in Afghanistan. “He became famous traveling all over the world for five years recruiting new mujaheddin,” explains Wikipedia. “But he never hid his prime goals, which were to overthrow the governments of the US and Egypt.”
In other words, the CIA and the U.S. government had a good idea what this guy was all about but used him anyway. “One of the big problems here is that many suspects in the World Trade Center bombing were associated with the Mujahadeen,” investigator Jack Blum told a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee. “And there are components of our government that are absolutely disinterested in following that path because it leads back to people we supported in the Afghan war.”
See The CIA’s “Operation Cyclone”—Stirring the Hornet’s Nest of Islamic Unrest.
So important was Abdel-Rahman, the CIA made sure he was issued a visa and entered the United States in 1990, the country he supposedly hated. Abdel-Rahman went on to head the al-Salaam Mosque in Jersey City. Consider the following quote from The Covert Cowboys (see the Jack Blum link above and page citation):
During a conversation between a 20-year veteran FBI agent and one of his top undercover operatives, the operative asked:
“Why aren’t we going after the Sheik [Adbel Rahman]?” demanded the undercover man.
“It’s hands off,” answered the agent.
“Why?” asked the operative.
“It was no accident that the Sheik got a visa and that he’s still in the country,” replied the agent, visibly upset. “He’s here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA.”
The agent pointed out that the Sheik had been granted a tourist visa, and later a green card, despite the fact that he was on a State Department terrorist watch-list that should have barred him from the country. He’s an untouchable, concluded the agent.?
An Egyptian by the name El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader of the Jewish Defense League, was connected to Adbel-Rahman and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. “At his trial, Mr. Nosair claimed that the reason he had military manuals was that he was being trained by the US, not because he was intent on terrorism,” Andrew Marshall wrote for the Independent on November 1, 1998.
It is said Nosair was trained by a former Egyptian soldier named Ali Mohamed, allegedly with connections to al-Qaeda. “Yet Mr. Mohamed, it is clear from his record, was working for the US government at the time he provided the training: he was a Green Beret, part of America’s Special Forces. ... [Mohamed’s recruits, under the auspices of Operation Cyclone] received brief paramilitary training and weapons instruction in the New York area, according to evidence in earlier trials, before being sent to fight with [Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar [a major CIA asset in Afghanistan]. Even Sheikh Abdel-Rahman had, apparently, entered the US with the full knowledge of the CIA in 1990.” (For more on Hekmatyar, see Gary Leupp’s Meet Mr. Blowback: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, CIA Operative and Homicidal Thug.)
As for the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the FBI knew about the plot and allowed it to happen."