Muslim Mafia (10 page)

Law enforcement officials involved with the warrant are still steamed about the missed opportunity to wrap Aulaqi up and leverage him for information regarding the 9/11 operations and possible future plots and sleeper cells still secreted inside America.

According to a federal investigator with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego—where Aulaqi originally met with the Pentagon hijackers behind closed doors before they followed him to Washington—the warrant for his arrest was based on passport fraud charges. Aulaqi, who grew up in Yemen, also allegedly made false statements on an application for U.S. State Department grant money to attend engineering classes at Colorado State University (he received some $20,000 per year).

“Everyone was excited about the prospect of hooking this guy up,” the federal investigator says. “The FBI was ecstatic that we were able to get the warrant and that we had a charge on him.”

He added: “Everybody wanted to get this guy in a chair under a charge—under the cloud of potential prosecution—to motivate some conversation with him regarding his relationship with the hijackers.”
³⁵

When investigators heard the warrant had been pulled back, they were stunned.

“We got the word that they wanted to rescind the warrant,” the JTTF investigator recalled, “and everybody’s, like, What the f*** do you want to do that for?”
³⁶

He says that for some reason federal prosecutors got cold feet. “It was odd,” he says, offering that he wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with Aulaqi’s Saudi connections. The Saudi embassy booked him to lecture at its Islamic institute in Washington and sponsored him to take American Muslims on pilgrimages to Saudi’s two great mosques.

Aulaqi ended up fleeing to Yemen, his family’s ancestral home bordering Saudi Arabia. After the 9/11 Commission scolded the FBI for not investigating Aulaqi more thoroughly, he suddenly became a high-value U.S. target. And in 2006, U.S. authorities asked Yemen to detain Aulaqi, but the country released him before the FBI could build an airtight case against him.

Not that CAIR cares, but U.S. officials now believe that the thirty-nine-year-old Aulaqi has been involved in other serious terrorist activities since leaving the U.S., including plotting new attacks against America and its allies. For one, Aulaqi preached jihad and praised suicide bombers at London-area mosques before the 2005 attacks on the London subway.

And three of the New Jersey Muslims recently convicted of plotting to attack the Fort Dix Army base were inspired by one of Aulaqi’s Internet sermons, as were some of the young Somali-American men who recently left Minneapolis to join al-Qaida’s widening jihad in West Africa. Court testimony revealed the Fort Dix terrorists watched his “Constants of Jihad” lecture the day before they finalized their plot, convinced that the cleric had given a
fatwah
, or blessing, to strike military targets on American soil.

A senior Homeland Security official warns that Aulaqi—whom he describes as “an al-Qaida supporter”—is actively targeting “U.S. Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen.”
³⁷

CAIR AND THE 9/11 IMAM

Aulaqi also was involved briefly with the Virginia Jihad Network, led by a CAIR official. Before fleeing the country, Aulaqi met with the spiritual advisor to the Virginia jihadists, whose ringleader, Royer, worked out of CAIR’s national headquarters.

Federal court records show Aulaqi met with Royer’s mentor, Ali al-Timimi, the
imam
of a small storefront mosque a few miles from Dar al-Hijrah. The two spiritual leaders discussed recruitment of young Muslim men for jihad. Members of Royer’s cell drove Aulaqi to al-Timimi’s home for the meeting, and at least one had Aulaqi’s phone number stored on his cell phone. Al-Timimi was later convicted of soliciting jihad and treason against the U.S.
³⁸

There’s more to the Aulaqi-CAIR connection.

Al-Timimi’s storefront mosque was located in the same Falls Church office building as a Muslim-run travel agency that booked trips to Saudi Arabia for the
hajj
, or Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Copies of its travel itinerary show Aulaqi acted as a tour guide for the trips. Listed directly under him was a trip advisor named Mohammad el-Mezain, who happens to be the CAIR fundraiser recently convicted of providing material support to terrorists in the Holy Land Foundation trial. El-Mezain co-founded the Hamas charitable front with CAIR director Elashi.

El-Mezain and Aulaqi, both hardcore Muslim Brothers, knew each other from San Diego. Before his arrest, el-Mezain headed Holy Land’s San Diego office and, like Aulaqi, served as a leader in local mosques there.

But that’s not all. The pair once lived in the same small Colorado apartment complex together.

According to federal investigators, el-Mezain likely met Aulaqi in Fort Collins, Colorado, around 1990, when the two were neighbors and attended the same local mosque. Authorities have traced el-Mezain’s address at the time to 500 West Prospect Road in Fort Collins. Aulaqi also listed an address then at 500 West Prospect Road. El-Mezain occupied Apartment 19C, while Aulaqi occupied Apartment 23L.
³⁹

Investigators say that although Aulaqi has not been known to carry out the acts of violence he encourages, he is many times more dangerous than the terrorists who do. By getting dozens, perhaps hundreds, of young Muslim men jacked up for jihad with his radical sermons, he’s a force multiplier for the enemy.

If anybody knows the identity of al-Qaida terrorists here inside America, investigators say, it’s the American Aulaqi. He may even know about terror plots in the pipeline. If ever there were a candidate for waterboarding, they say, it’s him.

Yet CAIR looks up to this 9/11
imam
as a guru.
⁴⁰

For its part, CAIR argues that just because it consorts with or defends terrorists and terrorist groups doesn’t mean it necessarily agrees with their activities. Like a defense attorney, it is merely standing up for their right to fair representation.

“Do we defend unpopular issues? Yes,” says Corey P. Saylor, CAIR’s national legislative director.

If that makes CAIR unpopular with critics, he argues, so be it—the organization is in good company.

“Before he became president, John Adams acted as legal representation to British soldiers accused of perpetrating the Boston Massacre,” Saylor points out. “This act did not make him popular with his peers.”
⁴¹

But Omar Ahmad is no John Adams. Nor is Nihad Awad. And neither of them are lawyers. They are co-conspirators who share the violent and subversive agenda of the massacrers they support.

And unlike a criminal defense attorney, whose job begins and ends with making sure the state proves its case, CAIR keeps on defending terrorists even when juries return unanimous and overwhelming verdicts of guilt, as one did in 2008’s Holy Land case—guilty on all 108 counts.

Moreover, CAIR’s internal documents betray Saylor’s explanation. They make it plain that his attempt to compare CAIR’s motives to those of a Founding Father is just more patriotic eyewash designed to conceal from the public CAIR’s true seditious agenda.

Privately, CAIR believes that it doesn’t matter if terrorist suspects are guilty as charged. If they are Muslims accused by non-Muslims they are automatically innocent—and must always be defended and supported.

Witness a talking points memo found among Awad’s files, and written in 2004—as the cases of Ismail Royer and his terrorist co-conspirator Masaud Khan were going to trial. It discusses the duty of Muslim leaders to do all they can to release imprisoned fellow Muslims.

“Give this talk as if it were your last before meeting Allah,” the document says. “Discuss verses from the Quran and
ahadith
regarding the degree previous Muslim leaders went through to release fellow Muslim prisoners.”
⁴²

The memo, which cites the Royer and Khan cases by name, goes on to praise Muslims who don’t plea bargain and refuse to rat out other Muslims.

“Relate the difference between the brothers that have turned on their brothers by pleading guilty,” it says, “and why we should come to the aid of those who are standing firm because of their conviction and
iman
,” or faith.
⁴³

The memo ends by noting that CAIR is “working to build a legal fund for the purpose of providing high quality legal representation for current and future litigation against our brothers and sisters.”

“Our community is under direct attack,” it warns, “and we must join hands to defend ourselves in this time of uncertainty.”
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U.S. AND ISRAELI ‘TERRORISM’

CAIR also believes the only real terrorism is committed by Israel and the United States—in response to Muslim terrorism, ironically enough.

In fact, one of CAIR’s in-house lawyers fired off a memo to top CAIR executives proposing the organization file a lawsuit against the U.S. and Israel “for conspiring to commit murder, kidnapping, property damage, and acts of terrorism.”
⁴⁵

The alleged crime? Israel’s counteroffensive against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon who in 2006 launched unprovoked and relentless rocket attacks against Israel.

“Defendants would include the United States and certain officials in the Bush administration and Israel and certain officials in its administration,” wrote CAIR’s Omar T. Mohammedi in an August 2006 memo to Awad and then-CAIR Chairman Parvez Ahmed.
⁴⁶
And the plaintiffs, he suggested, would include Muslims harmed by Israel’s military counterstrikes against Hezbollah positions, ostensibly including the terrorists themselves.

More galling, Mohammedi proposed filing the claim under the same federal racketeering and corruption statute, known as RICO, that the FBI and U.S. attorneys have considered using to prosecute CAIR and other fronts in the Muslim mafia.

With the revelation of such a brash legal stroke on behalf of Hezbollah, it should come as little surprise that CAIR also refuses to condemn Hezbollah as a terrorist group. Hamas, al-Qaida, Hezbollah…to CAIR, they’re all victims—martyrs for “justice”—and we’re the terrorists.

The only thing worse than supporting all these bad guys is supporting bad cops who spy for them. CAIR’s done that, too, as we document next.

“The Muslim is the brother of the Muslim. He does not betray him, lie to him, or hang back from coming to his aid.”

—Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law

“Employment by a non-Muslim government of a Muslim investigator to investigate other Muslims places the investigator in the position of violating the tenets of his beliefs and may force his recourse to deception, lying, and/or the giving of misleading impressions.”

—Declassified Pentagon counterintelligence briefing
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F
ORMER POLICE SERGEANT
Mohammad Weiss Rasool took an oath to protect this country several years ago when he joined the Fairfax County Police Department, which is the largest force in Virginia and a key partner with the FBI in investigating major terrorism cases in the Washington area, including the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon.

But Rasool, an Afghan immigrant, got wrapped up with CAIR and put his religion ahead of his adopted country. In fact, he betrayed it.

A devout Sunni Muslim, he worshipped at an area mosque with at least one fellow Muslim who found himself under surveillance in a major terrorism investigation and approached his pal Rasool with concerns about unmarked cars that had been following him. Rasool agreed to help him by searching a classified federal police database. After confirming that FBI agents were tailing him, the sergeant tipped his Muslim brother off in a phone call.

When agents one morning went to arrest the terrorist target in a predawn raid, they found him and his family already dressed and destroying evidence. They knew they had a mole and worked back through the system to find Rasool.

That’s when agents discovered the Muslim police officer had breached their database at least fifteen times to look up names of other Muslim contacts, including relatives, to see if they showed up on the terrorist watch list. And he learned that indeed some were on it.
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(Thanks to post-9/11 data sharing, local police now have access to classified FBI files on terror suspects maintained within the NCIC, or National Crime Information Center system.)

Prosecutors say Rasool’s unauthorized searches “damaged the integrity of the NCIC system and jeopardized at least one federal investigation,” according to papers filed in federal court.
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“The defendant’s actions could have placed federal agents in danger,” prosecutors argued. “The FBI has had to undo the harm caused by the defendant.”

Rasool, 32, at first denied knowing the terrorist target. He confessed only after hearing an intercepted recording of his message for the suspect, a cleric in his local Taliban-sympathizing mosque. Rasool finally pleaded guilty to illegally searching a federal database.
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“He’s a habitual liar and a traitor,” a senior FCPD official says. “He disgraced the uniform.”
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CAIR’S ‘PLANT’

Despite confessing to a serious security breach, Rasool will do no jail time. He was sentenced instead to two years of probation.

And he continued to collect a paycheck from taxpayers several months after his conviction. Fairfax County left him on the force pending the outcome of an internal investigation. He wasn’t forced to resign until the summer of 2008.
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“It took them a very long time to finally do the right thing, but it got done,” says a veteran FCPD detective. “It was embarrassing.”
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The leniency afforded Rasool was unprecedented, given how he copped to the crime—and not just any crime, but one that betrayed his fellow officers and country.

Rasool, however, had a powerful patron in Washington—the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which lobbied on his behalf during his prosecution.

“I have always found Sergeant Rasool eager to promote a substantive relationship between the Fairfax County Police Department and the local Muslim community,” wrote CAIR Governmental Affairs Coordinator Corey Saylor in a letter to the federal judge, who ended up denying prosecutors the jail time they requested for Rasool.

“His efforts played a significant role in improving trust in a time when mutual misunderstanding could easily severe [
sic
] all positive ties between these two groups,” Saylor added.
⁸

But if there was a “substantive relationship,” it was between Rasool and CAIR.

“He was deeply embedded with CAIR,” the department official says. “He was the spokesman to the department for CAIR.”
⁹

As CAIR’s representative on the police force, Rasool actually took direction from CAIR’s headquarters, even traveling into the District of Columbia to meet with CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, according to copies of the visitors register CAIR kept at its front desk at the time. Rasool, in fact, had several meetings at CAIR’s headquarters between 2005 and 2008.
¹⁰

He also arranged meetings between CAIR and Fairfax County’s police chief to complain about surveillance of mosques and demand Muslim sensitivity training of officers, reveal emails obtained from CAIR’s executive files.

“Our topics of discussion will be: Educational programs for the officers on the department about Islam and Muslims; presence of officers at the holy Muslim holidays for recruitment into the police departments; inmate assistance program with their respective mosque
imam
; youth group tours of police facilities; and a few other ideas and focal points,” Rasool wrote in a 2006 email to Awad and other CAIR officials outlining the agenda of a forthcoming meeting at police headquarters.
¹¹

He reminded them to appear “friendly” and to avoid creating too much tension, so they can come back with more demands later on. “This will not end here,” he assured them.

Rasool also told CAIR that he would give the police chief a copy of a report advocating kid-glove treatment of Arabs and Muslims by law enforcement.

“He was their plant,” the official says. “We were convinced he was recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood.”
¹²

RED FLAGS

Veterans of the police force are scandalized by the security breach. They call Rasool an Islamic “spy” who committed treason for the enemy in the middle of a war on Islamic terrorists.

“He’s a spy. I don’t know how he qualified to be hired in the first place,” says retired FCPD officer Vernon Zick, a thirty-four-year veteran of the department. “The feds should revoke his citizenship for his treasonous activity, and send him and his family back to Afghanistan.”
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The department official says there were red flags raised during Rasool’s application process, but they were overlooked as the department sought to diversify its work force and better reflect the county’s burgeoning Muslim population. He also had a friend – a Muslim brother in blue – inside the department, who vouched for his loyalty…an officer who’s not only still on the force, but closely collaborating with CAIR (more on him later).

Rasool in his seven years on the force managed to do other damage besides spying for terrorists.

He and other Muslim officers also worked with CAIR to kill a successful counterterror-training program within the department—a program that was designed in part to help police ferret out moles like Rasool.

The action casts further doubt on claims by CAIR and other Muslim groups that they seek cooperation with law enforcement to help apprehend terrorists. As we’ll see next, their claim of cooperation is actually one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the American public since 9/11.