FBI Accused of Terror Overreaction

The knock on the door came about 7:20 a.m. Dec. 30. It was so loud and insistent that neighbors in a Hawthorne apartment building poked their heads out of their doors to hear FBI agents rouse Naji Hamdan and ask the auto parts dealer: “Do you know Osama bin Laden?”

Carol Brunetti got a knock on the door that day too--as did at least 16 of her friends in Southern California. The Anaheim fund-raiser for an Islamic charitable organization says that two FBI agents, in dark suits and red ties, asked her if she knew anyone with ties to Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian man arrested near Seattle on Dec. 14 for allegedly trying to enter the United States with explosives in his car.

The questions shocked and annoyed Hamdan and Brunetti, who say they know no terrorists and wonder why they were selected for questioning. “Who do they think we are?” asked Brunetti, who converted to Islam 10 years ago. “That we Muslims have a terrorist in every family? Sometimes it just gets ridiculous.”

The episode--and similar ones like it, played out several dozen times recently across the nation--revealed the aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics the FBI employed to head off the threat of a millennial terrorist attack.

The FBI won’t say why it questioned Hamdan and others. But agents in Los Angeles acknowledged last week that their interviews turned up no evidence linking anyone in the area to terrorist activity or Bin Laden, the Saudi exile suspected of masterminding the bombing against two U.S. embassies in East Africa. Two Algerians arrested in Boston as part of the recent terrorism-related roundup, meanwhile, were cleared of all links to violence.

FBI supporters credit the government’s aggressive posture with averting any much-feared millennial attacks, and argue that the extraordinary threats of the last few weeks required extraordinary measures. Beginning the day before New Year’s Eve, FBI agents in at least seven states interviewed about 70 people across the country in connection with Ressam’s arrest.

Although FBI officials refuse to discuss details of their investigation, they insist that they had reason to believe that each person they contacted might have information about the case--suspicions that were based in part, they say, on telephone logs seized in the case.

“We’d be doing ourselves a disservice if we didn’t follow every possible lead,” said Los Angeles-based FBI Agent Ramiro Escudero. Defending the line of questioning about Bin Laden, he added: “He’s a terrorist, so I think it’s a pertinent subject to ask, even if it’s a dead end.”

But critics say that the FBI went too far. “I think they probably overreacted,” said Amy Baron-Evans, a federal public defender who represented one of the Algerian men cleared in Boston of terrorism-related allegations last week. “I think they made mistakes and they went to wrong doors and they just charged ahead.”

For the main targets of the millennial terrorism probes--the American Muslim and Arab communities--the FBI visits renewed their decade-long struggle to ensure that legitimate actions to safeguard national security don’t trample on their civil rights. Over the years, the same issues have repeatedly surfaced among Irish, Italians, Sikhs, Central Americans and other targets of counter-terrorism probes.

But the 1990s thrust Arabs and Muslims into the spotlight with the Persian Gulf War, the World Trade Center explosion in New York, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa and the most recent millennial threats.

Muslims today, however, are responding in ways that few would have dared even a few years ago. Buoyed by a discernible new confidence and feeling of political empowerment, they are speaking out about the FBI visits. They also are talking about other ways in which they assert that national counter-terrorism efforts are unfairly targeting their community and provoking a backlash of resentment among Muslims.

From the use of secret evidence in immigration cases to airport security checks to increased scrutiny of Islamic fund-raising here, American Muslims and Arabs are protesting a host of counter-terrorism tools they say have been selectively used against them. Their allegations are backed by such civil rights attorneys as David Cole of Georgetown University, who helped win recent victories against secret evidence laws and co-wrote the 1999 book “Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security.”

In October, a federal district judge in New Jersey ruled unconstitutional the detention of Palestinian immigrant Hany Kiareldeen. It was based on secret evidence purporting to link him to terrorism--evidence that his lawyers say appears to consist largely of allegations by a disgruntled ex-wife. So far, a coalition to abolish the laws--which permit authorities to use evidence that neither the defendants nor their lawyers have the right to see--has enlisted the support of 63 members of Congress.

Media Coverage Seen as Highly Biased

Muslims have also aggressively fought to restrain the public from bias in treating issues of terrorism and Islam. Late last month, the quick protests of Muslim leaders led the State Department to stop linking potential terrorist attacks with the holy season of Ramadan in its millennial warning alerts.

And in a new report, the Council on American-Islamic Relations documented the enormous difference between U.S. media coverage of the Algerian scare--which generated 129 stories by the day after Ressam’s arrest, including 21 on front pages--and similar millennium-related incidents involving non-Muslims. The arrest of two suspected militia members for allegedly plotting to blow up two propane tanks outside Sacramento, for instance, produced just one front page story nationwide.

“We Muslims are fed up with being used as punching bags,” said Shukri Abu Baker, who heads the Dallas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the nation’s largest American Muslim charity. “We have become empowered.”

U.S. law enforcement officials stress that their efforts to protect Americans from terrorism do not target any group of people or focus on protected 1st Amendment activities, such as attending rallies or criticizing U.S. policies.

“Probably one of the more frustrating elements of the backlash are charges that we target groups based on race, religion, etc.,” said Mike Rolince, chief of the FBI international terrorism operations section. “We investigate based on allegations or instances of violations of U.S. law. Law-abiding Muslims and Arab Americans have nothing to fear from the FBI.”

Those assurances don’t assuage everyone, however. The relentless focus on Islamic-related terrorism over the past decade, many Muslims say, has created a climate of intimidation that has chilled even legal political and humanitarian activity.

Some mosque leaders say that they will no longer give a forum to speakers who use “vitriolic rhetoric”--in criticizing, for instance, U.S. policy against Iraq. Controversial speech has not disappeared, however. A Northern California Islamic conference last year featured speakers who invoked a hadith, or narrative attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, that some Jews interpret as calling on Muslims to kill them.

In some cases, Muslims have canceled humanitarian projects to nations out of favor with the United States, such as a book drive for Sudan. Other Muslims say their applications for green cards and citizenship are being held up, and wonder if the delays are linked to their political activity.

Muslim charitable activity has emerged as one of the most controversial topics in the counter-terrorism debate. A 1996 counter-terrorism law criminalized donations to designated terrorist organizations for the first time.

The Washington Post has reported that the FBI targeted 20 Islamic organizations to see if any were covertly funneling donations to support terrorist activities. Rolince said only that none of those being investigated have been shut down--and that it was “immaterial” whether they were Islamic or not.

The focus on fund-raising has produced at least two effects. Some communities find it harder to raise money now. Southern California Muslims, for instance, could raise only $300,000 for Kosovars last year compared to nearly $1 million for Bosnians in 1994--a drop that Minaret Magazine editor Aslam Abdullah attributes in part to more wariness about charitable giving.

Other charities report increased contributions as Muslims become more savvy about direct mail and other fund-raising techniques--but more caution in how donors give. Brunetti, for instance, said people now tend to request tax identification numbers, give cash, shun receipts and avoid leaving a paper trail in supporting her organization, which is affiliated with the United Nations and raises about $2.5 million a year to supply food and medicine to the needy in Iraq.

Future Bin Laden Ally Raised Money in U.S.

The charges that radical Islamists may be using subterfuges to raise money among law-abiding Muslims for devious purposes are not entirely groundless, however. In a case that created an uproar last year, a respected Northern California Muslim leader was extensively questioned by the FBI, then subpoenaed to testify before a New York grand jury after helping the U.S. fund-raising efforts of a man who turned out to be a top ally of Bin Laden.

The Muslim leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the bearded, soft-spoken man called himself Dr. Abdel Muez and came to him in 1991, claiming to be raising money for Afghan widows, orphans and other refugees displaced in the long war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Because the U.S. government supported the Islamic fighters at the time, including Bin Laden, the American Muslim says he thought nothing of taking the man around to three mosques in Northern California.

But the doctor turned out to be Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who was indicted last year by a New York federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to bomb two American embassies in East Africa.

Al-Zawahiri, thought to be in Afghanistan with Bin Laden, was active in Jihad, a terrorist organization believed responsible for the assassination of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. Both Al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden became known as enemies of the United States in the mid-1990s.

Jihad leader Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted in 1995 in a plot to bomb New York City landmarks, including the World Trade Center.

Al-Zawahiri associates arrested last year in Egypt named the California Muslim as one of those who had helped the terrorist leader raise funds in the United States.

The California Muslim, a philanthropist who helped start several Islamic centers across the nation, has not been charged with any wrongdoing, but says the experience “ruined my life.” Both his business and family life have suffered. But he agreed to share his story to warn American Muslims about what he says are the perils they face from both Islamic radicals and overzealous law enforcement officials.

The Islamic Supreme Council of America has urged all Muslim organizations to open their books to avoid even the perception of wrongdoing. And the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Los Angeles, in a detailed position paper on U.S. counter-terrorism policy, is urging Muslim organizations to adopt greater financial transparency for fund-raising activities, more vociferously condemn terrorism and monitor and resist violent infiltrators.

The paper also urges the U.S. government to explore the causes of terrorism, condemn violence consistently--whether committed by foreign friend or foe--and improve relations between Muslims and law enforcement.

On that last score, FBI agents couldn’t agree more.

“We are trying to reach out to Muslims and Arab Americans and let them know we truly do believe we need their help to solve these cases,” Rolince said.