Students From Libya--Kadafi’s Threats to U.S. Called ‘Bluster’

A husky, red-bearded 34-year-old student who shortly will complete his doctorate in civil engineering at USC said he believes some Libyan students in this area “are giving information” to lieutenants of Col. Moammar Kadafi. He said he wasn’t sure of the specifics, “but the FBI knows that.”

Another USC student on the verge of obtaining his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering said he thinks Kadafi “is very capable” of attempting to export terrorism to the United States “because he has a lot of money.”

But both dismissed the likelihood as “bluster.” The older man, who has been studying at USC for seven years, said that while Kadafi “talks about sending terrorism into the U.S. streets, he’s saying that to upset opposition Libyans living here. He can’t launch a major operation in the U.S. He won’t go after Americans. He knows his limitations. He’s a big liar.”

The two are among a dwindling species on the American college scene--Libyan students, many bankrolled by the Libyan government and circumscribed from certain studies by the U.S. government. The two students maintain that their passionate anti-Kadafi sentiments are shared by the small community of Libyan nationals still in this country.

Of the 10 remaining Libyans at USC, the graduate student and undergrad were the only two willing to talk to a reporter and only on the condition they not be identified. Both are outspokenly opposed to the regime of the Libyan leader who, the Western world maintains, sponsors and protects terrorists.

“And 95% of the people in Libya feel that way too,” said the graduate student, one of four Libyan graduate students at USC. “But they are living under the gun. They have to say what he (Kadafi) wants them to say.”

His tall, slender 22-year-old friend is one of six Libyan undergraduate students at the university--down sharply from the peak enrollment years, 1978 and 1979, when 61 Libyan nationals were at the school.

Nevertheless, the graduate student said the tiny group at USC constitutes the most Libyan students attending a college or university in the Los Angeles area. Northrup University in Inglewood, with three, has the next largest number, he said. Others, he added, may be enrolled at small colleges and possibly schools in the state university system. He thinks no more than 30 Libyans are studying at area institutions. None attends UCLA, largest in the area, the university says.

The estimated 100 Libyan nationals living in the Los Angeles area, the USC grad student said, “are scattered all over.” Most who are not attending schools are former students who, through various means, have managed to remain here, he added.

The graduate student, who has married an American, said he has been putting himself through school by working. The undergraduate’s education has been financed by his prosperous family, which fled Libya for another North African nation, he said.

However, both students said about half of the Libyans attending USC still are receiving funds from the Kadafi government, routed to them by an organization in suburban Washington. But even most of them are opposed to Kadafi, the two students said.

“That’s why they won’t talk to you. They would be cut off. So they disguise their true views,” the younger student said.

In recent remarks, Kadafi has threatened to “export terrorism to the heart of America,” and White House spokesman Larry Speakes has said, “We remain on guard for these types of incidents.”

A Rand Corp. researcher in international terrorism, Bruce Hoffman, said the “potential would seem to exist” among Libyan students in this country “whose education is being paid for by the Libyan government to act as a support group” for terrorism.

The USC undergraduate said that from time to time Libyan students here are visited by Kadafi henchman. About a year and a half ago, he said he and “a small group” of other Libyan students had a hostile meeting with a man who sought to “discourage any opposition” to Kadafi.

Visit by FBI Agent

Also about a year ago, he added, he was visited by an FBI agent seeking information about Libyan students who have since returned home.

An FBI spokesman said his office could only speak in “generalities” about Libyans in the Los Angeles area. “We are aware of certain Libyan interests and certain Libyans here,” he said. A spokesman in Washington said, “We have a handle on those who bear watching.”

The Secret Service, sources told The Times, has not had occasion to take special precautions regarding Libyans in the area during a visit here by President Reagan.

According to Jack Reichard, executive vice president of the Washington-based National Assn. for Foreign Affairs, the organization responsible for channeling Libyan funds to students in this country is the Peoples Committee for Students of the Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in McLean, Va. Jamahiriya is a Kadafi term that roughly translates as “the state of the masses.”

The United States has announced that it is excluding funds for student tuition and related school expenses from its order freezing all American bank accounts of the Kadafi government. Officials also said new students from Libya still will be allowed to come to the United States.

However, Reichard and other sources said they believe the Libyan government has markedly cut back the scholarship money it is supplying the McLean outlet. The McLean organization was created, he said, in 1981 after the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Libya.

The peak presence of Libyan students in the United States occurred in 1979 and 1980 when about 3,000 were enrolled in schools across the country, according to the annual report of the Institute of International Education in New York City, which keeps tabs on foreign students in the United States.

Figures Unavailable

Current enrollment figures are unavailable. However, Reichard, whose association is made up of university counselors involved in foreign affairs, said: “There aren’t many left. There never were many compared to other national and ethnic groups. Customarily, whenever problems develop between the United States and another country or there is a political change in their home countries, foreign students go home in large percentages.”

He estimated that the number of Libyans in this country probably has fallen to 600 or 700.

Other sources said that during the peak years some Libyan students in the United States were studying aeronautical and nuclear engineering, but as the Kadafi regime grew in disfavor, the U.S. State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1981 banned them from continuing to study either of those disciplines. The two agencies acted under a section of immigration law that says aliens can be excluded from studies where their participation would be “prejudicial to the (U.S.) public interest.”

In the past, many students also attended schools in the United States on scholarships offered by American oil companies, but these appear to have dried up. “When things got tense, the oil companies backed away,” said Dixon Johnson, executive director of USC’s International and Overseas Study Program.

Since the breach in diplomatic relations, the Belgian legation has handled U.S. affairs in Libya and the United Arab Emirates’ legation has represented the Kadafi government in Washington. However, to obtain a student visa to enter the United States, a Libyan has had to visit an American consulate in another country, usually in the Mediterranean.

FBI Clearance Required

Before the prospective student is granted a visa, he must receive an FBI clearance. A State Department spokesman said the number rejected is small but the precise figure is classified.

The two USC students said they have not experienced hostility from professors or other students because of their nationality. Each said, however, that their friendships among Americans are limited.

And both expressed ambivalence about the Reagan Administration’s tactics in dealing with the Kadafi government. Both agreed, as the older of the two said, that President Reagan “would like to see Kadafi overthrown but not until he can find someone to serve his purposes. You can be sure of one thing: The Administration wants to replace Kadafi with someone it can control.”

Both are concerned about what will happen when they finish their schooling.

The older student would like to return to his homeland--but not in the current political climate. “I will go back at the right time,” he said. “That’s my country. That’s my people.”

Said the 22-year-old: “Some of my friends have gone back and been jailed or even hanged. I don’t think I could go back.” He said he might ask for political asylum after his student visa runs out.

Relatively few Libyans seek asylum here, although the number more than doubled last year, to 85, compared to what it was in 1984, an INS spokesman said.

Both USC students said U.S. media coverage of Kadafi gives him “credibility” that he does not deserve. “They picture him as a hero in the Arab world and that’s not the truth,” said the 34-year-old. “Sooner or later the Libyan people themselves will get rid of him.”

“Sooner,” his friend said.