Reporter Patrick Poole has broken an outrageous story about how a current Internal Revenue Service (IRS) analyst was convicted for illegally assisting an Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist. The IRS plays an important role in terrorism investigations.
The exposed individual is Weiss Rasool, who now goes by the name of Weiss Russell. Poole reveals that he currently works in the IRS Deputy Chief Financial Officer’s Office as a financial management analyst.
The story begins in June 2005 when the FBI began keeping tabs on a suspected terrorist in Virginia named Abdullah Alnoshan that had ties to Anwar al-Awlaki, the American who was leading a branch of Al-Qaeda at the time. Alnoshan headed the Virginia office of the Muslim World League, a Saudi-backed group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
One of Alnoshan’s friends was Fairfax County Police Sergeant Weiss Rasool. When the suspect became aware of three vehicles conducting surveillance on him, he asked Rasool to run their license plates.
Rasool left the suspect a phone message where he said that the vehicles did not have the same owner. The FBI believes the information undermined its investigation. When the authorities arrested him in November 2005, he was already in the process of destroying evidence. He was convicted on immigration fraud charges and deported to Saudi Arabia.
The authorities noticed that Rasool searched Alnoshan’s name in the National Crime Information System 17 times in 18 months. When Rasool was questioned in 2007, he denied even knowing the Alnoshan.
During the period between Alnoshan’s deportation and Rasool’s own arrest, Rasool worked to eliminate training that could facilitate his exposure and the Islamist movement as a whole.
Rasool persuaded his police department to immediately sever ties to the Higgins Center, a non-profit organization that produces law-enforcement training materials. He said that the Center promoted negative sentiment towards Islam, but the Center says its position is not anti-Muslim or even anti-Islam.
According to its president, Peter Leitner, the training materials included instructions on “fifth column activities and penetrating agents” and the “international revolutionary Islamist movement.” No wonder Rasool wanted to end the teaching.
Rasool was one of six officers to demand that the Center’s relationship with the police department come to an end. It turns out that that one is a supporter of the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami and another said he worked for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.
Poole writes that he was indicted in January 2008, pled guilty two months later and was sentenced to two years of probation on April 22 of that year. According to reports, he was given the choice to resign or be fired. He chose to resign in August 2008.
And now, he is working as a financial management analyst for IRS Deputy Chief Financial Officer, even though such a position requires a background check.
An anonymous IRS official told Poole:
“There’s no way anyone with his conviction for abusing access to a government database and damaging a terror investigation could have been vetted and approved without outside intervention. Changing his name shouldn’t have mattered. I’ve never even heard of a case like this.”
The Clarion Project has written time and time again about how individuals with documented radical backgrounds are getting access to public officials, schools, prisons, etc. By now, it is clear that the vetting system is broken.
