Bureau Investigating Possible Civil Rights Violations : FBI Broadens Probe of Arab Bombings

The FBI will investigate possible civil rights violations in a series of bombings and suspicious fires at offices of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Santa Ana, Washington and Boston, the Justice Department said Thursday.

The announcement marked a broadening of federal involvement in the incidents, which have resulted in one death and a serious injury.

Previously, the FBI had not been ordered to investigate the bombing last August outside the Boston office of the American-Arab Committee, which seriously injured a policeman, or the apparent arson fire last Friday that damaged the group’s Washington headquarters. The agency had already been investigating as a terrorist incident the Oct. 11 bombing in Santa Ana that killed Alex M. Odeh, West Coast director of the Arab-American group.

The bureau had not previously entered the Washington case, pending determination of whether the fire involved terrorist activity, which comes under the FBI’s purview.

“The civil rights division (of the Justice Department) read about these incidents and decided they were something that should be looked at from the civil rights standpoint,” department spokesman John Wilson said.

The announcement came three days after Arab-American spokesmen, joined by leaders of various minority and civil liberties groups, urged intensified federal probes of the attacks.

James Zogby, director of the Arab-American Institute, said it was “about time” the FBI was called in to investigate the fire here last Friday.

Former Sen. James Abourezk (D-S.D.), chairman of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that a private arson expert had determined that the fire was deliberately set. Local investigators have not disclosed their findings.

Abourezk is scheduled to meet this morning with FBI Director William H. Webster to discuss information that his group has collected on Mordecai Levy, a former member of the Jewish Defense League and now leader of the similarly militant Jewish Defense Organization.

The information, The Times has learned, concerns materials that Levy acknowledges he distributed at meetings in Passaic, N.J., Westbury, N.Y., and Washington, listing persons linked to pro-Palestinian, neo-Nazi or Ku Klux Klan groups as “enemies of the Jewish people.”

Within one or two weeks of each meeting, there were violent attacks directed at persons on the list who resided nearby. A firebomb killed a reputed Nazi at his home in Paterson, N.J., another firebomb narrowly missed another alleged Nazi at his home in Brentwood, N.Y., and the suspicious fire hit the office of Abourezk’s group here.

Odeh’s name also was on the list, which bore the title “Operation Clean Sweep.”

Denies Knowledge

In an interview with The Times Thursday, Levy said that the list was “for legal purposes only” and was not meant to incite violence. He said he did not know who was responsible for the recent series of bombings and fires, and “I don’t want to know who did it.”

“If people decide to use that list for other reasons, that’s not my business,” he said. “It’s possible somebody did.”

Levy formed the Jewish Defense Organization in 1982 when he left the JDL, claiming it “wasn’t militant enough.” JDL leader Irv Rubin said Levy was kicked out of the group because he was “undisciplined.”

An FBI spokesman has attributed the Odeh bombing and the New Jersey and New York bombings to the JDL, although the JDL has denied involvement. Investigators told The Times that all the devices used in the three bombings were similar.

Paul Houston reported from Washington and Dave Palermo reported from Santa Ana.