Asian Organized Crime Problem Growing, Study Says : Inquiry: Senate probers say Chinese gangs have shoved Mafia aside in heroin trafficking. Hearings on escalating lawlessness open today.

Despite red flags raised five years ago by a presidential commission, Asian organized crime has escalated into a major source of lawlessness in the United States and too little is being done to fight it, Senate investigators have concluded.

Chinese criminal gangs already have shoved aside the Mafia in U.S. heroin trafficking, and the problem is expected to grow worse when China regains sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, according to a senate subcommittee study. Hong Kong is the traditional headquarters for Chinese organized crime.

With the Senate Governmental Affairs permanent investigations subcommittee opening hearings on the problem today, Sen. William V. Roth (R-Del.), the ranking minority member, cited unequalled sophistication and raw violence as two elements of Asian organized crime that make it difficult to counter.

Roth emphasized that “the vast majority of Asian-Americans and particularly Chinese-Americans are law-abiding,” but he noted a branching out by Asian gangs from the longstanding crime problems of protection rackets, gambling and prostitution. Their newer activities range from money laundering, armed robbery and “home invasions” to illegal alien and narcotics smuggling.

In a “home invasion,” the occupants are often tied up and beaten and otherwise brutalized as the invaders press them for cash and other hidden valuables.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the subcommittee chairman, likened the task of combatting Asian organized crime to what law enforcers faced with the Mafia in the 1940s and 1950s. “Codes of silence and strong cultural and familial ties create intensely secretive environments among these groups, effectively impeding infiltration by law enforcement,” he said.

FBI Director William S. Sessions, scheduled to testify at the opening hearing, is expected to tell the panel that the bureau is applying the same “enterprise” approach to investigating Asian syndicates that it has used successfully against the Mafia.

Under the approach--using electronic surveillance and undercover operations to enforce the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute--criminal enterprises are investigated as an entity rather than in separate inquiries of its members.

Subcommittee investigators are likely to question Sessions closely on how many agents are being devoted to the effort. Fewer than 50 of the FBI’s 125 to 150 Asian agents are fluent in any Chinese dialect, one subcommittee source said.

Sessions has made no secret of the FBI’s desire to boost its capability in this area, because much of the criminal activity of Asian gangs is carried out in a native tongue--partly to discourage attempted surveillance.

The language problem will be apparent at today’s hearing when Police Detective Doug Zwemke of San Jose, Calif., plays a videotape that recorded a group of suspected Vietnamese home invaders planning their operations in a session with an undercover informant.