Civil Rights Questions : FBI Widens Inquiry Into Incidents at Arab Offices

WASHINGTON —  The FBI will investigate possible civil rights violations in a series of bombings and suspicious fires at offices of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Santa Ana, Washington and Boston, the Justice Department said Thursday.

The announcement marked a broadening of federal involvement in the incidents, which have resulted in one death and a serious injury.

Previously, the FBI had not been ordered to investigate the bombing last August outside the Boston office of the American-Arab Committee, which seriously injured a policeman, or the apparent arson fire last Friday that damaged the group’s Washington headquarters. The agency had already been investigating as a terrorist incident the Oct. 11 bombing in Santa Ana that killed Alex M. Odeh, West Coast director of the Arab-American group.

“The civil rights division (of the Justice Department) read about these incidents and decided they were something that should be looked at from the civil rights standpoint,” department spokesman John Wilson said.

The announcement came three days after Arab-American spokesmen, joined by leaders of various minority and civil liberties groups, urged intensified federal probes of the attacks.

James Zogby, director of the Arab-American Institute, said it was “about time” the FBI was called in to investigate the fire here last Friday. “It’s a clear indication that they recognize this problem is more than vandalism or an accident,” Zogby said.

Former Sen. James Abourezk (D-S.D.), chairman of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said a private arson expert had determined that the fire was deliberately set. Local investigators have not disclosed their findings.

“We have wanted the Justice Department and the FBI to start looking at this as a high priority, and this is an indication of it,” Abourezk said of the department’s announcement.

Abourezk is scheduled to meet this morning with FBI Director William Webster to discuss information that his group has collected on Mordecai Levy, a former member of the Jewish Defense League and now leader of the similarly militant Jewish Defense Organization.

The information, The Times has learned, concerns materials that Levy acknowledges he distributed at meetings in Passaic, N. J., Westbury, N. Y., and Washington, listing persons linked to pro-Palestinian, neo-Nazi or Ku Klux Klan groups as “enemies of the Jewish people.”

Within one or two weeks of each meeting, there were violent attacks directed at persons on the list who resided nearby. A firebomb killed a reputed Nazi, Tscherim Soobzokov, on Aug. 15 at his home in Paterson, N. J. Another firebomb on Sept. 6 narrowly missed another alleged Nazi, Elmars Sprogis, at his home in Brentwood, N. Y., and the suspicious fire hit the office of Abourezk’s group here.

Odeh’s Name on List

Odeh’s name also was on the list, which bore the title “Operation Clean Sweep.”

In a telephone interview Thursday, Levy said the list was “for legal purposes only” and was not meant to incite violence. He said he did not know who was responsible for the recent series of bombings and fires and “I don’t want to know who did it.”

“If people decide to use that list for other reasons, that’s not my business,” he said. “It’s possible somebody did.”

Levy, a 24-year-old New York accountant, formed the Jewish Defense Organization in 1982 when he left the JDL, claiming it “wasn’t militant enough.” JDL leader Irv Rubin said Levy was kicked out of the group because he was “undisciplined.”

An FBI spokesman has attributed the Odeh bombing and the New Jersey and New York bombings to the JDL, although the JDL has denied involvement.

Speech About Soobzokov

The Paterson bombing occurred shortly after the JDO was refused a permit to demonstrate in front of Soobzokov’s home. Levy said he gave a speech about Soobzokov and distributed the “enemies” list to “about 40” people at a nearby synagogue, Young Israel of Passaic, on Aug. 7.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Levy said, referring to the Aug. 7 meeting, “if he (Soobzokov) was there he wouldn’t have walked out of that synagogue alive. People wanted to take him out and hang him.”

Levy also said he “gave a speech about Sprogis” and distributed more copies of the list to “about 30 or 40” people at a private home in Westbury, N.Y., on Aug. 30. He refused to disclose the address where the meeting took place.

Investigators have told The Times there are similarities in the devices used in the Odeh, Sprogis and Soobzokov bombings as well as the device used last May 15 at the Northridge home of George Ashley, a former schoolteacher and a director for the Institute of Historial Review, a Torrance-based group that claims there was no holocaust during World War II. The device blew off the front door to Ashley’s home, but he was not injured.

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating the Ashley bombing. There have been no arrests, and no suspects have been named.

Some Similarities

Although some components of the bombs were different, most of them had nine-volt batteries and electronic fuses, investigators said.

Paul Houston reported from Washington and Dave Palermo from Santa Ana.