On April 23, The New York Sun published a review by Laurie Mylroie of “Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad” by Andrew McCarthy. As a U.S. attorney, Mr. McCarthy had led the 1995 prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, and his memoir, published by Encounter Books, recounts that experience.

In her review, Ms. Mylroie wrote that Mr. McCarthy “does not emphasize sufficiently the degree to which the extremists were penetrated by the intelligence agencies of several states,” and argued that the prosecutorial focus on convicting terrorists blinded American officials — and the American public — to the threat of state-supported terrorist activity. Writing on National Review Online, where he is a contributor, Mr. McCarthy objected to Ms. Mylroie’s characterization of his book and his work as a prosecutor. We invited the two writers to continue their debate in these pages.

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The Sun tasked Laurie Mylroie to review my new book, “Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.” She produced not a review but a regurgitation of the same half-baked theories she’s posited for 15 years.

These drive her to distort the evidence against jihadists such as Omar Abdel Rahman, the notorious “blind sheik” and the force behind radical Islam’s declaration of war against America in the 1990s. Best captured by her preposterous claim that the case against Abdel Rahman (which I prosecuted) was “weak,” these distortions are compounded by a mulish refusal to understand the indictment.

Ms. Mylroie tells readers that Judge Michael Mukasey, now the attorney general, stated that Abdel Rahman was “not charged with committing the World Trade Center bombing,” which she takes to mean he was not involved. But Judge Mukasey was merely making a legal distinction between the uncharged substantive crime of bombing and two conspiracy crimes that were charged: seditious conspiracy to levy war against America and bombing conspiracy. Both alleged that Abdel Rahman and some other defendants were behind the bombing. Not only were they convicted; Judge Mukasey specifically found at sentencing that they had been complicit in the attack, which is why their sentences were so severe. That conclusion was emphatically affirmed on appeal.

Far from weak, the case against Abdel Rahman was overwhelming. He was on tape ordering a plan to bomb American military installations and exhorting underlings to emulate Hezbollah’s 1983 murder of 241 U.S. Marines. The evidence on charges that he conspired to murder, and solicited the murder of, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, was so irrefutable that his lawyers were reduced to arguing for jury nullification, conceding that the sheik wanted Mr. Mubarak ousted “by any means necessary.”

Finally, Ms. Mylroie’s claim that I sought to obscure evidence of Sudanese terror sponsorship is absurd. The participation of Sudanese diplomats in the spring 1993 plot to bomb New York City landmarks was elaborately proved at trial. We cited two diplomats (who were expelled) and the Sudanese U.N. mission itself as potential unindicted co-conspirators. We showed Sudanese involvement in not only the landmarks plot but a plan to murder Mr. Mubarak. And I later wrote a feature article for the Weekly Standard, “The Sudan Connection — The Missing Link in U.S. Terrorism Policy,” which contended that President Clinton’s much-criticized 1998 cruise-missile attack against Sudan following the American embassy bombings was justified — chiding the Clinton administration for failing to defend itself by recounting the rich record of Sudanese terror complicity we had proved at trial.

Ms. Mylroie addresses none of this. She misrepresents my work, which urges both my long-held view that criminal prosecution is an inadequate response to jihadism and that state sponsorship is a significant concern. Hers is not a review of my book but a rehash of her own dubious musings.

Andrew C. McCarthy

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Andrew McCarthy’s book “Willful Blindness” demonstrates little understanding of the terrorist threat beyond the narrow perspective he held as a Clinton-era prosecutor. Perhaps, in view of his protests, writing the book involved a regression to that time. The book says little about state involvement in terrorism — defining the threat as Islam itself — and assaults even Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has been helpful in Iraq.

The case against Sheik Omar was indeed weak. That initial weakness was overcome by linking different “crimes” into one conspiracy, built around one man, Sheik Omar. (“It would be a challenge to find charges that would both fit our evidence and overcome inevitable First Amendment protests,” Mr. McCarthy writes in his book.) Mr. McCarthy’s focus on Sheik Omar limits our understanding of the role of states in plots associated with him. For example, Mr. McCarthy appears so fixed on his defendants that he fails to recognize that the evidence he presented at trial suggests that Sudanese intelligence was significantly more involved in the landmarks plot than Sheik Omar. This key point is less clear in “Willful Blindness” than elsewhere.

Mr. McCarthy’s clarification of his charges is welcome — he supports me on an essential point: His defendants were not charged with the “substantive crime” of bombing the World Trade Center. By any ordinary understanding, in fact, they were not involved. (Federal conspiracy law is so broad that limited associations can produce a conspiracy conviction, as experienced lawyers know.) Indeed, as Judge Mukasey stated, there was “no evidence” any defendant knew Ramzi Yousef, the plot’s mastermind, let alone joined him in bombing the building. Many Americans mistakenly think Mr. McCarthy prosecuted the men who bombed the Trade Center. He did not.

During the trial, Judge Mukasey, accommodating the prosecution, ruled that whether or not Ramzi Yousef was a foreign intelligence agent was irrelevant. For the purposes of the trial, I can understand overlooking the point. But for America’s defense, whether terrorists have the support of states is a crucial national security question, particularly as American authorities have identified the September 11, 2001, mastermind as Yousef’s uncle.

Our Middle Eastern allies repeatedly tell us that hostile states are deeply involved in supporting radical Islamic networks. When it comes to the Shiites, we recognize Iran’s role, but we refuse to consider that Sunni extremists might also receive crucial assistance from states.

This constitutes a self-inflicted vulnerability, because any party can work covertly with terrorists to attack us. It reflects our continued adherence to the Clinton-era concept that a new kind of non-state terrorism emerged in 1993 with the New York bombing plots. President Bush rejected that in January 2002, with his declaration against “the axis of evil.” But we have since slid back into the Clinton viewpoint, largely because our bureaucracies strongly resist the notion that their neglect of state involvement in terrorism may have left us vulnerable on September 11, 2001.

Mr. McCarthy could have performed a useful service had he explained that his job was merely to convict individuals. Others, he might have told us, were responsible for determining state sponsorship, and they failed. Unfortunately, “Willful Blindness” inflates Sheik Omar’s trial, presenting its conclusion as the definitive national security finding on the 1993 bombing plots — rather than the result of a prosecutor cleverly constructing charges, and presenting facts, to ensure each defendant’s conviction and maximal sentencing.

Laurie Mylroie