If terrorism can make Americans afraid of each other, they’ve advanced their agenda both by bring divisive, and also by diverting attention from real threats. From Dina Temple-Raston, NPR national security correspondent, on NPR’s Morning Edition. Audio available later today.  Excerpted from NPR’s Terrorism Training Casts Pall Over Muslim Employee

In the first of two stories on counterterrorism training, NPR reports on one training session that turned a state employee into a suspect.

The man at the center of this story is a 59-year-old Jordanian-American named Omar al-Omari. He looks very much like the college professor that he is — all tweed jacket, button-down shirt, thick round glasses, drinking coffee. We met at a coffee shop near downtown Columbus, Ohio, where he laid out a series of events that ended with him being accused of having links to terrorism.

“Actually I was out of town, out of state, attending a conference and on my way back to Columbus,” Omari said, “and I received a call from one of the attendees of this conference in which I was told my name was used repeatedly during the training. Apparently I was labeled as a suspect. They personalized the attacks. There was a promise to dig into my background and basically as an Arab-Muslim American — they thought I’m a suspect.”

via Terrorism Training Casts Pall Over Muslim Employee : NPR.

Unfortunately, there’s no happy ending. And Professor Omari had been a leading consultant to the Bureau and other law enforcement agencies in communicating with American Muslims.