NYPD Risks Access to Tips by Spying on Muslims The tip was a surprise when it arrived on the desk of Ted Wasky. Had it not come, the former FBI agent fears five Muslim men in northwest Ohio might have pulled off a plot to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The source of the tip? A fellow group of Muslims living in Toledo. "They were talking about Jihad and wanting to defend their ... brothers in the Middle East against American aggression," Wasky said. The community understood the freedoms they enjoyed in the U.S., were concerned, and they reported it to the joint task force. The tipsters trusted the police enough to help the FBI infiltrate the group with an informant, and Wasky said that relationship was the "best thing that ever happened" to the local joint terrorism task force when he was the special agent in charge of the FBI's Cleveland office. That's what police investigators, prosecutors and mayors in cities nationwide say the New York Police Department is putting at risk by conducting clandestine surveillance of Muslims in the city and across the Northeast. All cite their experience in serving communities that are home to large Muslim communities and other minority populations that have become isolated by events. "It only takes one perceived mistake, whether it's a mistake or not, where the confidence of the community will be temporarily shattered or damaged," Wasky said. Imam Hajj Talib Abdur Rashid, fourth from left, of the Mosque of the Islamic Brotherhood of New York, speaks for a group of Muslim leaders excluded from a meeting with New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, during a press conference following the meeting on Friday, March 9, 2012 at police headquarters in New York. Imam Abdur Rashid accused Kelly of "only meeting with isolated individuals" who are his supporters and not his critics. Imam Shamsi Ali, third from right top, who was among Muslim leaders attending the meeting on the police surveillance of Muslim communities across the Northeast, spoke separately to reporters nearby. Others said the NYPD's secret spying, and the voraciously defense against suggestions it might be a mistake, is a misguided approach that will hinder the department's efforts to uncover potential attacks for years, if not decades. That critique has been forcefully rejected by the NYPD and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has praised the department's tactics as ones that have kept the city safe in the decade since the Sept. The department's spokesman this week said the NYPD retains "strong ongoing relations in the Muslim community" and pointed to successful anti-terror arrests he said have resulted from its intelligence operations. For months, the surveillance of Muslims by the NYPD, detailed in a series of stories by The Associated Press, has been harshly criticized by some Muslim, civic and university leaders as an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. But the most striking criticism came Wednesday from the head of the FBI's office in Newark, N.J., where the NYPD photographed mosques and eavesdropped on Muslim businesses in 2007. While taking care to say he did not want to "pile on," Special Agent in Charge Michael Ward said the spying program had already started to erode communication between the Joint Terrorism Task Force and Muslims in northern New Jersey and had created additional risks. People are concerned that they're being followed. They're concerned that they can't trust law enforcement, and it's having a negative impact," Ward said. No matter what kind of operation you do, nothing is going to compare to your ability to have the confidence of the public and go out and sit down and conduct interviews and get their assistance. Ward's boss, FBI Director Robert Mueller, has declined to comment on whether the NYPD's surveillance activities were legal, proper or effective, and earlier this week he praised New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly for doing "a remarkable job of protecting New York." However, Mueller did not interfere with or object to Ward's remarkable public and pointed criticisms of the NYPD's spying programs.