ROCKVILLE, Md. – Montgomery County Police Chief
Charles Moose secretly dispatched a team of undercover
officers to stake out the home of alleged sniper John
Allen Muhammad’s ex-wife a full 24 hours before he
released a physical description of the sniper suspects
to police, WorldNetDaily has learned.
 Chief Charles Moose |
Moose, who is in a
row with police union officials over withholding
sniper information from patrol units, claimed last
week that he did not have any “confirmed suspects” on
Oct. 22, the day he ordered the stake-out.
Detectives here who worked on the sniper
investigation, which was headed by Moose, say his
statement is at odds with the facts.
On Oct. 22, two days before Muhammad and alleged
co-conspirator Lee Boyd Malvo were finally arrested
for the Beltway shootings, four undercover agents led
by Sgt. Kirk Holub of the Montgomery County Police
Special Investigations Division set up a stake-out at
the Clinton, Md., home of Mildred Muhammad, Muhammad’s
ex-wife. She lived with her three children at her
sister’s white townhouse at 9815 Quiet Brook Lane.
They coordinated with the Prince Georges County Police
Department, and were joined by an FBI sharp-shooter,
sources say.
“Our orders were to call the task force if Muhammad
showed up in the area, but if any action had to be
taken, he [the FBI agent] was our sniper guy,” an
officer who went on the stake-out told WorldNetDaily.
He says the team met the FBI agent, who had special
weapons in his car, at a 7-11 on Route 5 near the
townhouse. The stake-out produced no sightings of
Muhammad.
In a secret meeting held earlier that day at
headquarters here, Moose’s deputy Bill O’Toole briefed
the team about the sniper suspects, sources say. He
was joined by George Layton, the FBI’s supervising
agent on the sniper task force.
“They said they had two good suspects and wanted to
send us down to Muhammad’s ex-wife’s house,” said one
of the undercover agents who attended the late-night
meeting. “We were sworn to secrecy.”
According to his notes of the briefing, O’Toole showed
the team photos of both Muhammad and Malvo and
revealed a wealth of background information on the
two, including their alleged involvement in other
murder cases and a description of Muhammad’s Bushmaster rifle.
“They gave us height, weight, physicals and everything
on both of them,” he said.
“When we heard the evidence they had, we all looked at
each other and said, ‘This is them, this is them!'” he
added.
Yet they were “sworn to secrecy,” and Moose didn’t release the be-on-the-look-out for
Muhammad and Malvo for another 24 hours. Two hours
later, they were caught.
Even then, there was hesitation. One investigator says
he was ordered to return a wanted poster on the
suspects that he’d picked up at the joint operations
center here at about 10 p.m. on Oct. 23.
“It was handed to me, and then it was taken back, and
I was told, ‘Moose hasn’t authorized this release
yet,'” the detective said.
Investigators say releasing the look-out sooner on
Muhammad and Malvo could have sped their capture. The
two were arrested Oct. 24.
“I know that they had them as No. 1 suspects early on,
on the 22nd, and possibly as early as the night of the
21st,” said a Montgomery County Police detective who
was closely involved in the investigation.
Moose, who did not respond to written requests for an
interview, said in a statement posted on his website
that he learned of no “confirmed suspects” by the
close of the day on Oct. 22. That morning, bus driver
Conrad Johnson was fatally wounded by the snipers in
Aspen Hill, Md.
Police union officials complain, moreover, that Moose
jeopardized the safety of his own police officers by
withholding the suspect descriptions.
The look-out, when finally released, was posted on the
department’s “web board,” which cannot be accessed
from patrol cars. Moose declined to notify uniformed
patrol officers about Muhammad and Malvo through radio
channels or through their cruiser computers, called
mobile data terminals, or MDTs.
He says he wanted to keep the information off the
police radio because it was monitored by the media, and
he feared media leaks.
But the media got a hold of the information anyway,
and the leaks actually led to the capture of the
sniper suspects, whose car was blocked in by a trucker at a Maryland highway rest stop.
Some detectives charge Moose’s real motives for withholding
the information were political.
“Moose failed to release the look-out for these guys
once he officially had it, because he didn’t want his
officers stopping every black in Montgomery County,”
said a Montgomery County Police detective, who
requested anonymity. “Of course, it was OK to stop
every white in a white box truck.”
Moose came to Maryland vowing to end black criminal
profiling as he had in Portland, Ore. Before taking
the job in 1999, he met with the local NAACP. The next
year, he signed an agreement with the Clinton Justice
Department to ban profiling in the county.
Previous stories:
Cops: Chief Moose withheld look-out on sniper suspects
Moose denies blocking police pay raise
Related column:
Race-conscious Moose may have cost lives
