FBI Tries to Ease Muslim Fears

An FBI official made a rare appearance at a gathering of Orange County Muslims and Arab-Americans on Friday, offering assurances even as he urged cooperation in the massive national search for suspects in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“We are not contacting you for intimidation,” Steve Steinhauser, FBI assistant special agent-in-charge, told about 200 people at the Orange County Islamic Foundation offices in Mission Viejo. “We are contacting you as Americans, for your assistance. Because of the urgency, we cannot conduct business as usual, because these are not normal times. . . . We are also trying to save lives because we believe this is not over and we have no information where it may occur next.”

Steinhauser was among the Sheriff’s Department officials, city representatives and state and federal legislators who attended.

But he found himself the sole target of questions during the hourlong meeting when the subject turned to the anxiety many Arabs and Muslims feel about possible law enforcement profiling of them.

“The worry we are having,” said Hussan Ayloush, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Southern California, “the fear, is that slowly but surely every member of the community is becoming a lead.”

Ghassan Attar, 52, of Placentia, told Steinhauser that his 26-year-old son who is attending law school at Syracuse University in New York state was stopped by state troopers for speeding Thursday.

“When they saw the last name in the driver’s license,” Attar said, “the officer said he had to run the name through an FBI database.”

Steinhauser said the officer may simply have sought to be thorough, adding that the FBI is not profiling any group or directing any law enforcement agency to do so.

Steinhauser, who is in charge of operations in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said his office has not uncovered any local connections to the suspected hijackers of the planes that crashed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

The FBI is simply following the “snowballing” number of leads generated since the attacks, he said.

Steinhauser said terrorists may seek to blend into local Arab and Muslim-American communities, and that authorities must move quickly to counter any new threats.

“Do we really believe that we are immune from an attack on the West Coast?” Steinhauser said to a small group gathered around him after the meeting. “We have to function on the belief that there have been planned attacks in the West Coast, and we’ll go on that assumption.”

But even as investigators move to “turn over every leaf, every stone,” it is not their intent to frighten anyone, said Steinhauser, who was applauded several times.

“If the FBI agents seem tense or nervous to be approaching you, it is because of what happened last week, but also because of the fear of what might happen if we don’t act fast. I beg for your understanding,” he said. Many in the audience expressed gratitude for Steinhauser’s comments, saying it was comforting to have an FBI agent addressing them directly. “I feel much better no doubt,” said Attar. “It was good to actually talk to someone, rather than watch it on television.”