ACLU Assails FBI Interviews on Terrorism : Discrimination: Agency’s efforts have focused on Arab-Americans. Group says refusing ‘voluntary’ meetings may bring future consequences.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday sharply challenged the FBI’s assertion that Arab-American business leaders will suffer no consequences if they refuse to be interviewed about potential terrorism.

In attacking the FBI’s insistence that the interviews are purely voluntary and can be shut off at any time, the ACLU contended that a refusal to be questioned could be a black mark in the uncooperative individual’s file. Such a notation could hamper an individual’s ability to get a security clearance or land a government job.

“To say the interviews are voluntary is to confuse formalism with reality,” said Morton H. Halperin, director of the ACLU’s Washington office, at a press conference to condemn what the ACLU sees as increased civil liberties violations resulting from the Persian Gulf War.

In a television interview last Friday, FBI Director William S. Sessions defended the interviews and said an individual who does not want to be questioned should say: “ ‘I prefer not to, thank you.’ And that is the end of it.”

An FBI spokesman said Monday that anyone contacted in the interview effort “would be referenced (in FBI files) for administrative purposes so that he would not be contacted again,” but that a separate file would not be created for the individual.

The reference would be retained probably only for the duration of the Mideast crisis, the FBI spokesman said.

Halperin also challenged the FBI’s other rationale for conducting the controversial interviews--alerting Arab-Americans to the FBI’s responsibility for investigating any discrimination against them that develops as a backlash from the gulf conflict.

“If the sole purpose of the interviews is to offer protection, that would have been different,” Halperin said, noting that FBI agents reportedly asked questions in the interviews on individuals’ views of the war and assessment of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Such questioning by the government leads to “improper activities” by private entities, Halperin said, citing as a “most outrageous” example Pan American World Airways’ purported decision not to carry Iraqi nationals on any of its flights.

A spokeswoman at the airline’s New York headquarters declined to comment on the policy of turning away all passengers with Iraqi passports. A suspected terrorist bomb brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 270 people.

A Department of Transportation spokesman sidestepped the question of whether the federal government will permit such blanket rejections of passengers, saying the issue “is going to take some time” to examine.

Halperin said the ACLU is deciding whether to challenge Pan Am’s policy in court.

The FBI’s questioning of Arab-Americans “sends a signal to the head of Pan American,” Halperin said. “It sends a signal to a racist in the street--’Yes, it’s true all Arab-Americans are suspect.’ ”

Halperin said the FBI had been “extraordinarily successful” in preventing terrorism in the United States. He said much of the success can be attributed to the FBI’s “refocusing its efforts away from studying people it thought were communists” to pursue those engaged in “violent activities or the threat of violent activities.”

But he contended that the questioning of Arab-Americans is an example of “occasional lapses” in the FBI focus.

In a related development, Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton) told members of the Arab American Institute meeting here this weekend that he planned to introduce a congressional resolution today calling upon the FBI and other government agencies to cease any investigations “that threaten the civil liberties of persons of Arab descent who legally reside in the United States” and demanding that the FBI protect such citizens from violence and harassment.

“As we face this crisis here, it bothers me as much as it bothers you,” Dymally told the group. “Singling out Arab-Americans is frightening and ought not to be taken lightly.”

Times staff writer Marlene Cimons contributed to this article.