Priests Accuse FBI of Plan to Spy on Church

Two activist priests Tuesday accused the FBI of trying to coerce a Salvadoran factory worker into spying on a downtown Los Angeles church that has been a haven for hundreds of illegal immigrants and Central-American refugees.

Father Luis Olivares, pastor of Our Lady Queen of the Angels Roman Catholic Church, said the alleged efforts to spy on members of the church, also known as La Placita, formed part of a longstanding campaign to discredit the parish’s work on behalf of refugees.

Olivares said he has requested FBI files on the church under the Freedom of Information Act, and Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose) has also asked the FBI for an explanation.

FBI Special Agent Fred Reagan, a spokesman for the agency, refused to comment on the allegations.

In a press conference at the church, Olivares and Father Michael Kennedy said that on Oct. 5, an FBI agent approached Alberto Palacios, a 53-year-old Salvadoran refugee who fled his country in 1985 after imprisonment for union activities.

Palacios, who also appeared at the press conference, said the agent interrogated him for nearly two hours and informed him that he was under investigation apparently in connection with a plan that Palacios had devised to raise money for Salvadoran children wounded in that country’s 10-year-old civil war.

Then, Palacios said, the agent told him that “things would go better” for Palacios if he cooperated with federal agents by naming the most politically active organizers at La Placita.

“He told me I should go to see who were the organized,” Palacios said. The agent “gave me his phone number to call him with this information.”

Palacios identified the agent as Thomas S. Caldwell, and presented a card that Palacios said the agent had given him. A Thomas Caldwell works for the FBI’s Los Angeles office, but a reporter’s phone calls to the man were not returned.

“This is one of the situations where we can’t respond,” Reagan said.

Palacios said the agent gave him six months to come up with some information, during which time the Salvadoran struggled to decide whether to seek help. Finally, last month, he went to the Central American Refugee Center, which has taken his case. Linton Joaquin, an attorney for the refugee center, said he has asked the FBI for full disclosure of any investigation involving Palacios.

The allegations of FBI spying are the latest in a series of controversies surrounding Olivares, an outspoken critic of U.S. policies in Central America.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service threatened a criminal investigation into Olivares’ activities after his decision in 1985 to declare La Placita a sanctuary for refugees. And he has received numerous death threats since 1987, some reminiscent of warnings from death squads active in El Salvador.

“Having been declared a public sanctuary, there has always existed a sort of doubt over whether our activities on behalf of refugees are, in fact, religious,” Olivares said.

“The implication has been that our movement was a cover for extreme left political activities, aimed at destabilizing the U.S. government. It has always been seen with suspicion.”

Olivares said that the allegations of FBI surveillance represent another effort to link people working at La Placita and others who work with Central-American refugees to leftist guerrilla groups.

At the start of this decade, the FBI’s anti-terrorism division conducted a wide-ranging, five-year probe into the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, a pro-left organization that opposes U.S. policy in Central America. The investigation failed to prove a link between the solidarity committee and terrorism, and six FBI agents were eventually disciplined for negligence in the investigation.