Suit Demands U.S. Halt Its Phone Taps of Eight Aliens

Civil rights attorneys filed suit Wednesday demanding that the federal government cease tapping telephone conversations between eight Los Angeles-area aliens arrested on subversion charges and their lawyers.

The suit accuses the FBI, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Atty. Gen. Richard Thornburgh and the Executive Office for Immigration Review of interfering with the privileged communications between the attorneys and their clients--seven Palestinians and a Kenyan--arrested in January, 1987.

None of the eight aliens--originally accused of belonging to a Marxist faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization--have been charged with criminal activity. Some still could be deported.

Unrelated Cases

At a press conference at the American Civil Liberties Union’s office in Los Angeles, ACLU Executive Director Ramona Ripston expressed fears that government officials have tapped telephone conversations in her office involving unrelated cases as well. She estimated that 200 pending ACLU court cases could be jeopardized.

“The government admitted wiretapping these plaintiffs and overhearing conversations between these plaintiffs and their lawyers,” Ripston said of the aliens’ cases. “We here in the ACLU are enormously concerned that our telephones may have been tapped.”

Evidence of the electronic surveillance surfaced in March in court documents related to immigration proceedings against the so-called “Los Angeles 8.” In the documents, U.S. Department of Justice Counsel Michael Lindemann noted that a single conversation was overheard in the case against the aliens.

In connection with this, Lindemann has told Immigration Judge Ingrid Hrycenko, who has been conducting the deportation proceedings against the aliens, that he and his co-counsels have not been given the surveillance tapes.

Justice Department officials in Washington, where the suit was filed in federal court, declined comment.

Unanswered Questions

Peter Shey of the National Center for Immigrant Rights said that, while Lindemann insisted the conversation did not involve attorney-client privilege, “the government has not stated who made that determination, the standards used to make that determination, or when that determination was made.”

Moreover, Shey said, “despite our inquiries to the government, they have refused to confirm or deny that communications between attorneys and clients at this time are no longer the subject of surveillance.”

Government officials contend that electronic surveillance is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when individuals are believed to have engaged in criminal acts deemed a threat to national security.

But the aliens’ attorneys insist that the surveillance is illegal because their clients have never been employed by a foreign power, or committed any illegal acts.

Meanwhile, the National Center for Immigrant Rights Inc. of Los Angeles filed a separate claim with the U.S. attorney general’s office in Washington seeking $250,000 for seven plaintiffs whose right to privacy and freedom of expression were allegedly violated by the surveillance, Shey said.

The basis of the government’s subversion charges against the aliens, who were accused of being national security risks, was the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, which subjects them to deportation. Since 1987, the INS has dropped noncriminal charges against six of the eight, accusing the six of visa violations. Still accused of subversion are Khader Hamide, 35, of Los Angeles and Michel Shehadeh, 33, of Long Beach.

Times staff writer Ronald L. Soble contributed to this story.