FBI Downplays Its Arab-American Contacts : Terrorism: Agent heading the Los Angeles office calls ‘paranoia’ unwarranted. Some people interviewed have charged harassment.

The head of the FBI in Los Angeles says his agents have made only brief contacts with a small number of Arab-Americans, and he is concerned about what he sees as a spreading “paranoia” in the Arab-American community that federal agents are harassing them.

Lawrence G. Lawler, special agent in charge of the FBI regional office, responded this week to criticism that federal agents, in their anti-terrorism program of contacting certain Arab-Americans, were violating civil rights and casting suspicion that those interviewed may have knowledge of terrorist activity.

In a wide-ranging interview Thursday, Lawler said that just the opposite is true. He noted that his agents merely “contacted” eight Arab-American leaders in the seven-county region, told them that the FBI would help them in case of public threats against them, and asked for their help if they heard about any terrorist plans.

“I’m confused and I’m a little irritated frankly,” Lawler said. “It concerns me a lot, because I don’t want that level of paranoia to be out there over FBI interviews of eight people. It’s not deserved, it shouldn’t be there, and it concerns me that it continues to be there.”

Lawler said that the eight contacts his agents had with the Arab-American leaders were finished Jan. 9, a week before war erupted in the Persian Gulf. He said he has no plans to make similar contacts in the future. About 200 interviews were conducted nationwide.

Those contacts are separate from ongoing efforts to local Iraqi nationals illegally in this country.

Lawler said he gained a “heightened sensitivity” to the concerns of Arab-Americans after meeting with three of their community leaders Jan. 14 in his office.

He noted that there has been speculation in the press, quoting Arab-American leaders, that the FBI contacts could be a prelude to wartime internments, such as happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II. He termed that theory “so ridiculous it’s irresponsible.”

“There’s a level of paranoia that’s being raised out there amongst the Arab-American community that their civil rights are going to be trampled on, that they are going to be placed in concentration camps and all of that, and I don’t know where that comes from,” Lawler said.

“It doesn’t come from the FBI,” he said, noting that the agency had agreed to drop all political questions from conversations at homes or businesses of those contacted. He said the FBI visits lasted an average of 15 minutes.

Lawler said the contacts were designed, first, to convey to Arab-American community leaders that the FBI took its civil rights duties seriously and would act on any reports they had to make about an anti-Arab backlash. Second, they asked them to relay to the FBI any information they might obtain about terrorist threats.

The FBI official indicated he regrets that the agency agreed to drop a question about Arab-American sentiments on events in the Middle East and on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“I think it’s probably a very good question to ask in terms of threat assessment,” he asserted. “If we find out that the entire community is 100% behind Saddam Hussein, we probably have a little higher threat than if we find out the community here is 100% against him. Then the threat level lowers a little bit. . . . We haven’t found one way or another, because we stopped asking political questions.”

Asked to comment on Lawler’s remarks, Don Bustany, president of the regional branch of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, said Friday that he disagrees with what he termed the FBI official’s “very questionable assumption that because there is a disagreement here with policy, that that person who disagrees represents a danger to society.”

As for the “paranoia” perceived by the FBI official, Bustany said it is not paranoia to be concerned about hate crimes against Arab-Americans, or to be worried about an “overall hostile attitude toward Arab-Americans in general” because of the FBI contacts.

In his interview, Lawler also said:

In cooperation with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI’s Los Angeles office has located about 100 of 200 Iraqi nationals who allegedly had overstayed their visas in this area. He said only one arrest has been made. Many of the Iraqis had obtained legal residence status, and some had become American citizens, he said.

The FBI was worried that if there were going to be a terrorist attack here, “the first 48 hours of hostilities might be a very dangerous time.” There was no significant activity during that time and today, “We see the risk as relatively low.”

If a terrorist does strike, “probably the most dangerous person, the one we worry about the most, is the individual zealot.” The FBI also is concerned about people sympathetic to or members of terrorist organizations.

Since the war began Jan. 16, the interagency Crisis Management Center, established in Los Angeles under the auspices of the FBI, has handled or assessed about 500 calls in the region that includes Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and a small part of Kern County.

Lawler said the calls have included bomb threats and hoaxes, other kinds of threats, and reports of suspicious activity. He said no bombs have been found, but there have been scattered instances of bomb hoax devices. He said a briefcase was found in one place with a note attached reading: “This is a bomb.”

“Our people have been extremely busy chasing down these leads . . . on the chance that they do indicate that a terrorist act is about to take place,” he said. “There are a number of cases that continue under investigation. . . . We’re keeping our ears close to the ground and trying to . . . determine if the risk is getting heightened. Thus far, we haven’t seen anything to indicate it.”

In Washington, FBI Director William S. Sessions said there had been 73 confirmed terrorist acts worldwide since the war began, with 34 or 35 of them directed against American interests overseas. Sessions said he believed that pro-Iraqi terrorists had not mounted an assault in the United States “probably because we are well prepared.”

Sessions, in a television interview broadcast by CNN, said there had been 33 civil rights violations against Arab-Americans since Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2. Of those, 20 had occurred since the U.S.-led coalition launched Operation Desert Storm on Jan. 16. Sessions said the FBI is conducting full-scale investigations of all incidents.

Times staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow, in Washington, contributed to this report.