FBI Man Lived Next to Arab Case Figure

An FBI agent conducted covert surveillance of a key figure in the government’s case against six Arab immigrants suspected of subversive activities by secretly renting a Glendale apartment next door to the defendant and his wife for several months, a defense attorney told reporters Tuesday.

Attorney Leonard Weinglass said he knew only the agent’s last name--”Patton”--and that “he watched (his client’s) moves for months.”

The FBI declined comment. But the individual referred to by Weinglass is apparently Robert Patton, considered a top member of the counterespionage and counterterrorist units for the FBI’s Los Angeles office where he has been assigned for more than 10 years. Patton was a member of the Soviet counterespionage squad for most of that time but is now assigned to the international terrorism unit, according to government sources.

Weinglass said that when his client, Khader Musa Hamide, was arrested last week by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, Hamide recognized Patton as a next-door neighbor and asked, “Don’t I know you?”

“I’ve been living next to you,” Patton replied, according to Weinglass’ account based on an interview with his client.

Patton was a key agent in a 1984 top-secret FBI case, in which it conducted surveillance of Soviet diplomatic facilities nationwide, leading to the espionage conviction of a Northrop Corp. engineer for offering stealth bomber technology to the Soviet Union.

Patton was also involved in the investigation of convicted Soviet spy Svetlana Ogorodnikova who became involved with FBI agent Richard W. Miller, himself convicted of espionage last year.

When asked about Weinglass’ comments, Patton told The Times: “I can’t make any comment one way or the other.”

Weinglass mentioned the FBI agent’s name almost as an afterthought at a news conference in Los Angeles. The news conference was called by a newly organized group calling itself the Committee for Justice, consisting of Arab and American civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization.

Hamide, 32, and his wife, Julie Nyangugi Mungai of Kenya, 28, live in a second-floor apartment, No. 8, at Chateau Louise, a beige, two-story 14-unit complex at the corner of Louise and Doran streets in a middle-class Glendale neighborhood.

Dawn Moreno, an office manager for Stevenson Property Management Co., which administers the property, said Julie Mungai rented the unit in August, 1982.

According to building management records, the individual in apartment No. 9, which shares a common wall with No. 8, has lived there since last April and listed his profession on his rental application as “sales” for a Los Angeles firm called “Select Enterprises.”

Telephone directory information shows no such firm.

Name Scratched Off

Moreno declined to identify the tenant who rents No. 9, and the name on that apartment’s mailbox had been scratched off.

Hamide is alleged by the U.S. Justice Department to have participated in activities of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization that has a long history of terrorist acts, primarily in the Middle East. Officials have described Hamide as a leader of the Popular Front in Southern California.

Hamide, his wife and seven others were arrested during an early morning sweep Jan. 26 and cited under a little-used provision of the 35-year-old Immigration and Nationality Act with writing or circulating material advocating world communism. The government is seeking their deportation, and most of them will appear at bond and deportation hearings on Feb. 17.

Noting that this provision of the law has hardly been used, Weinglass branded the government’s action as “a new assault, a new offensive . . . a new threat to the immigrant community in the U.S.”

Weinglass said the attorneys will argue that none of the defendants belonged to the Popular Front and that any literature they may have had in their possession or distributed was nationalistic and did not advocate worldwide communism.

Jordanian Passports

Hamide, a permanent U.S. resident, and five other defendants, all traveling on Jordanian passports, are incarcerated at Terminal Island Federal Prison. Hamide’s wife, facing lesser charges of overstaying her visa, faces a deportation hearing Tuesday.

Two others picked up during the sweep, Ghadah Hawwari, 24, and her brother, Haitham Hawwari, 19, both of Glendale, posted bond of $5,000 and $3,000, respectively, and face a Feb. 25 deportation hearing. A knowledgeable government source said Tuesday that their cases have been severed from those of the other seven.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Denise Hamilton and William Overend.