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WEISS RASOOL (2008)

Fairfax County (VA) Police Sergeant Weiss Rasool tips off terror  suspects, scuttles successful counter-terror training program

When Police Sgt. Weiss Rasool appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Poretz, one top CAIR official had already written the judge pleading for leniency on Rasool’s behalf: “I have always found Sergeant Rasool eager to promote a substantive relationship between the Fairfax County Police Department and the local Muslim community,” CAIR Government Affairs Coordinator Corey Saylor informed the court. What Rasool was truly interested in, however, was promoting the interests of CAIR over the citizens he was charged to protect and serve.

What landed Rasool in Judge Poretz’s courtroom was the culmination of a lengthy investigation by the FBI and Fairfax County Police Department begun in June 2005 when he was caught on a FBI national security wiretap that targeted a terrorism suspect. The suspect, a member of Rasool’s mosque, had provided the officer the license plate numbers of several cars he believed had been following him. In violation of state and federal law, Rasool checked the plates with the Virginia Criminal Information Network and the National Crime Information Center databases, and called his friend back to let him know that the cars were not registered to individuals. Federal prosecutors told the court that when they went to the home of the suspect to arrest him in an early morning raid, his family was already dressed and destroying evidence, leading the investigators to believe that he had been tipped off. The suspect was eventually convicted on immigration charges and deported.

According to court documents, over the next two years Rasool made numerous searches of the national terrorist database checking to see if he or his family members were listed. When he was finally approached by the FBI in October 2007 about the plate searches he had made for the terrorism suspect, he initially denied knowing him. Upon hearing the wiretap recordings, his story changed and some of the truth emerged. He was subsequently charged and pled guilty in January 2008 to illegally searching a federal database. Prosecutors urged as much as a year jail time since they believed that Rasool had not been entirely truthful with investigators. The judge, however, possibly swayed by the pleas of CAIR and other Muslim organizations, sentenced him to two years probation and a $1,000 fine.

Rasool was eventually forced to resign from the Fairfax County police department in August 2008, but the damage caused by his infiltration had already been done. In their book, Muslim Mafia, authors Dave Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, give evidence that Rasool had conspired with CAIR to stymie terrorism investigations in the heavily Muslim populated area. Internal CAIR documents recovered in an undercover investigation showed that Rasool was a regular  visitor at CAIR’s Washington D.C. headquarters. An email sent by Rasool prior to a CAIR meeting with Fairfax County police officials lays out an agenda for their meeting and suggestions for coming “back with more demands later on.” Those demands included CAIR sensitivity training for police officers.

According to the information uncovered by Gaubatz and Sperry, in a meeting arranged by Rasool, CAIR complained of surveillance targeting local mosques—many of which had extensive terror ties. Rasool also submitted complaints of bias to the department about a counter-terror training program that instructed officers in Arabic and Islamic culture, which eventually resulted in the program’s termination in July 2006—surprisingly,  after the FBI and the department had become aware of Rasool’s illegal database searches.

Faixfax County police officials who spoke with the authors believed that Rasool’s actions had disgraced the uniform and were also critical of the length of time before action was taken against the officer. But his work on behalf of CAIR was even more sinister. “He was their plant,” one official told them about Rasool’s relationship with CAIR. “We were convinced he was recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood.” Another department official told them that “he was deeply embedded with CAIR. He was the spokesman to the department for CAIR.”

SOURCES

Tom Jackman, “Fairfax officer admits misusing computers,” Washington Post, February 1, 2008

Steven Emerson, “Fairfax cop who tipped terror suspect helped kill training program,” IPT News, May 9, 2008

Tom Jackman, “Probation for sergeant who misused databases,” Washington Post, April 23, 2008

Tom Jackman, “Cheating admission raises more doubts,” Washington Post, February 13, 2009

P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry, Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America, Chapter Five, “CAIR’s Bad Cop,” (Los Angeles: WND Books, 2009), pp. 69-73