“The American Freedom Law Center is without a doubt the leading public interest law firm fighting civilization jihad in America. Yerushalmi and Muise are a formidable legal team without peer in this battle space. I am glad these guys are on our side.”
Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute (NRI), a contributing editor at National Review, and the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad(Encounter Books 2008), and most recently, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America (Encounter Books 2010).  He is one of the Nation’s most prominent voices on legal and national security issues.
For 18 years, Mr. McCarthy was an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York.  From 1993 through 1995, he led the prosecution against the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel Rahman and his jihadist cell for waging a terrorist war against the U.S. – a war that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks.  During the last five years of his tenure, he was the chief assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the Southern District’s satellite in White Plains.  During that time, he was also heavily involved in the investigation of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.  Following the 9/11 attacks, he supervised the Justice Department’s Command Post near Ground Zero in New York City.  In 2004, he served at the Pentagon as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
Mr. McCarthy began his law-enforcement career in 1979, serving as a Deputy United States Marshal in the federal Witness Protection Program while he attended Columbia College.  He later graduated with honors from New York Law School, which he attended in the evenings while working days as an intern at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.  He has been an Adjunct Professor at both New York Law School and Fordham University’s School of Law, teaching trial advocacy and a constitutional law course focused on criminal justice issues.
Mr. McCarthy is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Justice Department’s highest honors: the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award (in 1996, for the Abdel Rahman terrorism prosecution) and the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award (in 1988, for the historic “Pizza Connection” mafia prosecution).
In addition to being featured regularly in National Review (including a twice-weekly column on National Review Online and daily posts on NRO’s blog The Corner), Mr. McCarthy’s articles have also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Criterion, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, USA Today, and many other publications. He is frequently featured as a commentator on television and nationally syndicated radio broadcasts, and has testified before Congress on various national security issues.