Thin Line on Rights in Federal Terror Probes

As his agents chased new tips about possible terrorist attacks, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III vowed Friday that the bureau would watch “very, very carefully” to ensure that agents do not abuse their newfound powers to fight terrorism.

“We have to be tethered to the Constitution and to the statutes that enforce the privacy rights of our citizens,” Mueller told a congressional panel.

Top Bush administration officials have characterized the FBI’s broadened powers to track terrorist suspects--including monitoring public events and surfing the Internet without evidence of a crime--as an essential reform with little or no downside.

When the new FBI powers were announced last month by Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, Mueller described the changes as an important step to “help remove unnecessary bureaucratic obstacles.”

But Mueller offered a more sobering assessment Friday when quizzed by several members of Congress, who were worried that unshackled agents could overstep their authority.

Although Mueller expressed his belief that the broadened powers granted the FBI were an important tool in fighting terrorism, he also noted that he was mindful of the FBI’s history of civil rights abuses. During J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year tenure as director, the bureau routinely spied on and kept records on Communists, blacks, radicals and other controversial political figures.

“I think most people recognize the awesome power that you have as an FBI agent to harm people,” Mueller said. “It is critically important that as we obtain new authorities, that we have in place mechanisms to assure that they are not being abused.”

Although he said he believes that current training and internal safeguards are sufficient to guard against abuses, Mueller noted that there is a fine line between spying on a possible terrorist and infringing on the rights of an innocent citizen.

“We have to watch that very, very carefully,” he said. “I want to make certain that that change does not trigger some activity that we would not want to see down the road.”

Mueller’s assessment came as the FBI warned of another possible terrorist threat it has received--the latest in a long list of alerts that have rattled the public since the Sept. 11 hijackings.

In an alert issued Friday to law enforcement personnel nationwide, the FBI said it had received “uncorroborated information” from intelligence sources that terrorists might be looking to use fuel tanker trucks against U.S. targets, according to a law enforcement official.

The threat includes the “possible targeting” of Jewish schools or synagogues, said the official, who asked not to be identified.

FBI headquarters in Washington urged field agents nationwide to contact Jewish leaders in their communities, as well as trucking and fuel facilities, to pass along the threat.

Officials at the Los Angeles office of the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish group, discussed the threat Friday with the Los Angeles Police Department and local rabbis. The group urged local synagogues to be alert to any suspicious activity.

“We are trying to be vigilant in maintaining calm and taking the warning in context,” said Sue Stengel, Western states counsel for the Anti-Defamation League.

LAPD spokesman Sgt. John Pasquariello said police would provide “extra patrols” and personally meet with people at “high-profile Jewish facilities and fuel depots.”

In Las Vegas, meanwhile, the FBI termed as “not credible” a report from a man who said his cell phone had picked up a conversation last weekend among several men speaking cryptically in Arabic about what he took to be a possible attack on Las Vegas on July 4.

According to Michael Hamdan, 54, a native of Lebanon and an Arabic speaker, one of the men he overheard said, “We are going to hit them on the day of freedom.”

Hamdan agreed on Friday to a polygraph test, after which Special Agent Daron W. Borst called the investigation “substantially complete.” Hamdan, a resident of Henderson, Nev., subsequently told Associated Press that he had failed the test. The FBI would not comment on the results.

FBI officials have picked up numerous bits of uncorroborated intelligence about possible July 4 threats and have been anxious about a possible attack, perhaps involving subways and chemical or biological weapons.

Asked about the issue at Friday’s hearing before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, Mueller said: “We are investigating that threat.”

Mueller, outlining his plans for a remodeled FBI that will focus more squarely on counter-terrorism, told the panel that the FBI must “learn much more than we have in the past about Arab American communities, Muslim American communities, Sikh American communities” in order to fight terrorism.

But he stressed that “we protect the civil rights of everybody in the United States.”

That issue was of deep concern to several committee members, who pushed for greater training and safeguards to prevent abuses.

The effort to broaden the FBI’s powers in the fight against terrorism “is unprecedented in American history. It could allow you to do great harm if agents didn’t watch their step,” warned Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.).

Civil rights groups complain that Arab Americans have been unfairly targeted in the FBI’s terror probe, particularly in the secret roundup of hundreds of people on immigration violations in the weeks and months after Sept. 11.

A federal judge last month barred the Justice Department from enforcing a blanket policy on secret deportation hearings in those immigration cases. But on Friday, the Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to keep closed the hearings for some suspects.

The Justice Department maintains that public disclosure would compromise national security. But in a May 29 ruling, Chief Judge John W. Bissell of the U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., said such hearings may only be closed on a case-by-case basis by the immigration judge conducting the proceedings.

An appellate court in Philadelphia rejected a Justice Department appeal earlier in the week.

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Times staff writer Peter Y. Hong in Los Angeles contributed to this report.